Prologue—A Troupe Summary
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From the shadows, hid a short, decrepit figure who perched over a metal pyre of smoking cinders and sulfuric, yellow smoke. Its face obscured in darkness, lost in wrinkles, real as a witch, it stood decrepit, goblinoid, clothed in hooded garments, dark and soiled, that piled over its hunched form around a once-lavish, dark-red tunic—the epitome of age and established-evil.
It neared its putrid, crone-like face against the bed of glowing coals, leaning in as it brought together cloven hoofs, clattering, clanking, piercing the static silence of the room with each collision. And red sparks, molten hot, fell into the arcane, esoteric pile. Time passed, and no results, the ugly creature spat thrice over its left shoulder and spoke, calling out to the prancing noises in the dark, "Moldy! I need new devil's feet!"
The satanic ungulate were a crucial component of hellfire, that would always burn and never go out—if it could be properly transmuted from Hell, of course. The evil creatures in the room had once used the infernal lights to illuminate their lamps and torches, but that was a long time ago, with a different sorcerer as leader—the figure kept trying.
Around it, inside the crumbling room, were piles of broken and rusted blades, arrows, and pieces of battered armor. Wooden poles, snapped in half like spindles, their flags and banners torn and ragged with age, worn down by dust and disuse, hanged about the room like a dying, stagnant forest. And lumps and cracked sections of carved rocks, that had once been part of grandiose statues, littered the floors, creating an abysmal air within the room that would clog the lungs of lesser creatures. It was a wonder how these creatures lived, how they stayed alive, but they prospered, as though living in the ruins of carnage offered them more than one of bountiful beauty.
Everything was still and frozen within the room. Clouds of dust and light and snow floated static in the air, unmoving, unwading, unopposed, through the river of time. The stone of the floor and of the walls were cold and covered in countless nicks and chips and cracks from the passage of centuries in disregard and without repair. It was a wonder if the gnarled, slovenly creatures who inhabited these ruins could ever hope to wield hammers or saws; proper architecture, it seemed, has been lost to these lower animals. The dark and barren chamber, open to the outside snow, the tundra of ice, flowed with decaying winds and the glacial approach of complete ruin.
The dark figure stood on a large ashlar of fallen masonry by the cold pyre. Grey, wrinkled hands clawed over the handle of a torchlight, scratching stone as it waved the crystalline light back and forth, scurrying over brickwork, moving in clockwork about the broken rock with animal precision, in a fleeting stumble, as it tried to escape from some unseen terror.
The torchlight fell into a puddle, the light being lost in brine, scum-covered water, and the room went dark. Darkness coiled like a snake around the room, extinguishing the creature's flight from view, until it wrapped just around the glowing charcoal cinders within the iron pyre.
Suddenly, a loud explosion filled the room with red light—followed by maniacal laughter from the cinders of the unlit fire. Debris flew around the room, concussion forces slammed glass and clutter against the walls, against the already-ruined room and room-occupants. The light killed the shadows, and a rabble of the dark creatures (resembling the short, gnarled figure—though, decidingly more youthful in movement and appearance) could be seen on fire, squealing and spasming in pain; the creatures flailed their long arms wildly, howling like slaughtered pigs.
The dark figure, that had been the one trying to temper the fire, could be heard screaming as it contracted and contorted in pain, audibly shouting for all to hear, "The devil has escaped the flame! Find it—ahhh!"
Miniature flames and puffs of smoke filled the room with explosions at random, and the expanding heat caused all the wood and everything made of wood within the room to go up in flames. Everything was in chaos: the shadow-brown creatures were all flailing their weapons in the air, trying, in vain, to hit the unseen spectre. A few creatures, horned and puce, kneeled ritualistically over the fires, holding affinity to the flames not shared by their inflammable (inflamed) cousins and brothers, absorbing the wayward infernos within their breasts, acting as fire control (though, sometimes, lighting their own).
The chaos within the room endured long enough to destroy every already-unbroken thing, and then the occult pain for everybody and the maniac laughter abruptly stopped when one of the dark creatures had managed to find the hobman, the small devillet; the room broke into cheering and celebration as the devil-imp was grabbed around the neck and strangled with bovine hands until it dropped, as others beat it with clubs and rocks, wailing on it until it died. The aftermath of the plight, the confrontational fight, was that many bodies of the bizarre creatures laid dead on the floor and the rest near-dead, bleeding from tortured cuts and tears, pockmarked by burns. Some of the bodies got slowly up, and the rest remained on the ground, either moaning on the floor, flaring in pain, or staying silent as a corpse. Once the short, dark figure managed to get up, it limped hurriedly over to the still-burning crimson fire and quickly scratched away the infernal goetia, not bothering to recoil from its blazing heat, with its claws. It then breathed out slowly, wheezed, and sighed in sullen displeasure, "Another failure. Need to try more brimstone and less alkaline salts—or maybe it was the seal? Bah."
It pulled out what appeared to be a binded notebook from within its cloak, and scribbled its musings in pen, "Devils, you can't ever trust them to behave themselves, one mishap on their binding circle, no matter if you formed a contract or not, or prepared the proper protective wards, can cause them to escape unto the world, wreaking wanton destruction and apocalypse with no artistic flair! Bah—better the devil you know than devil you don't."
Around the room the pathetic creatures finally adapted to the aftermath of the situation, and commented, "That no fun," one blurted stupidly.
"Fire! Boom boom!" One said, while watching smoldering wooden beams fall from the ceiling.
The old creature barked, "Somebody get a cleanup crew in here," and tucked its notebook back into the recesses of its cloak.
The old creature crept and hobbled with newfound, flaring pain back over to its black ashlar block and sat, then spoke in a high-pitched yowl—a shrill canker—but in an oddly articulative manner, as if nothing surprising or out of the norm had just happened. Yellow, macabre orbs shined within its wrinkled eye sockets, a clawed hand went in an acquired habit to the white wisp of whiskers at its chin, probing the hair as though in deep thought, in an intelligent way. Its head tilted to the side, and large, goblin-like ears with tarnished rings flopped downwards, as its eyes looked upward, then forward in a slow, ugly way and shouted, "Exeunt the clowns!"
And exeunted the clowns almost immediately from the doors bordering the room, and in a tumble of tongs and drums, came raucous chaos: a throng of short, brown-grey, sinewy goblinoids—small orclings—came into the room with flips and rolls and jumps forward in a clanker of brown metal, fur, and leather. Yellow eyes glowered piercingly on their wretched, disfigured faces in the dark room, and mouths filled with white fangs spoke all at once at random as they happily chirped and laughed and frolicked over the room's clutter and the corpses of their fallen litter—three of them, the mechanicals—as a drummer, yet another of the hideous creatures, began to set up his hulking instrument.
"Garble!" Gnarl, the ancient, crone-like, grey-black one—who had been the dark figure in the shadows—said like a proclamation as it crept away from the crackling pyre to stand under a beam of light from a hole in the ceiling, its spotlight onto a stage, to stand at the forefront of the troupe of heinous clowns, who quickly got quiet, quieted down, and waited for instructions; they being officially ready to start their often rehearsed routine and play—its prologue—seemingly oblivious to the multitude of smoldering bodies with the room or the smell, or simply not caring.
The creature named Garble took a gaited step forward in a prance, long bat-like ears twitched and bounced like a jester's cap and bells, as it moved with rat fur pasted onto its bare chest. It cleared its bony throat, which wasn't necessary, and spoke with bad pronunciation and a too-quick, garbled tongue, sounding childish and stupid, "The Dark Lord, our Lady, hath lingers," it took a small pause, and said like a beaten cat, "Away in Fairyland she hath been trappèd."
Another of the minions took a step forward, being cued by the ancient, gnarled commander with vapid gestures—frantically waving hands—as it grinned like a madman, and said, "Seduced by fair Cerve's love and led away," is paused for effect, and said, "For Fairy's moon hath passèd slowly by."
Another of the monsters came forth, making a line of three, and said, "But under doth sky of ours: a century."
The drum and tongs behind the three players began to beat louder, a cacophony of vibrant sound; the drummer banged and bashed out a deep, low-toned overture, that grew louder into a vibrant, cascading crescendo. The drummer began to screech and yelp agnostically, becoming too excited for its own good—a battle cry and inciting cheer—a hum he thought fit the tune.
Going down the line of clowns, speaking faster to keep up with the wayward drummer, "We thinketh it has been ten Fairy-nights."
"Which meaneth a millennium hath passed."
"Since the Dark Lord, our Lady, has been away."
"At last, she hath now breaketh Fairy-spell."
"And returned to us, her slaves, her minions!"
The trio then erupted in a fit of cheers, rude noise, and laughter, as they did carnage onto the ruined room; they jumped up and down and happily shouted, or bellowed, their primal joy like tortured men. They began to lose their wits and began to hit at each other and one another and the room with fists and kicks as the old, hunched, and disfigured Gnarl slipped back into the shadows of the room, wringing its black hands, as the yellow pearls of its eyes began to glow brighter with foreboding hate.
It spoke in a cackling laughter, and said, "Yes, of course, she has returned, as Evil always finds a way—"
The orc-like players continued to fight and whack fistacuffs at each other until they began knocking each other out and over at random. Until they got bored with inflicting pain, and began to chase around the large black rats, that scurried around the room, to kill, that gnawed on the bodies of the earlier fight's casualties.
They shouted random fragments of phrases and words the whole time, either comprehensible or not, but the general meaning was this, "The Dark Lady is coming! We will reform our minion hordes. Summon the dragons, wraiths, and fiends! All Evil serves the Overlord, our master!"