Veterans of the Psychic Wars

As the last of the Githmorein in his vicinity fell, Hildraft looked up and was horrified to see a wave of tattered slaves charging towards him. Overwhelmingly comprised of dwarves mixed with some humans, ogres, orcs and a few types he couldn't place, the new force were screaming with bloodlust, but were clearly being driven to fight by the Ithilid slavemasters.  He had come to rescue the dwarf slaves not slaughter them!

Thinking quickly, he cast a hitherto untested spell, a Telepathy Block, and grinned as the slaves charged into the area of effect and stumbled to a halt, slack-jawed. The domination of the Flayers was still active, but severed from their controllers they could receive no more instructions.

Across the level, Sack had slipped his Ring of Invisibility on, and was cautiously approaching the huge double doors he'd discovered. The two Githmorein guards showed no sign of knowing he was there, but someone or something did. A few paces away, a wave of dominating force crashed into his mind, overwhelming his resistance in an instant. His limbs moving under another's control, he was forced to lay his weapons down on the floor, turn, and walk, raging internally, into the centre of the monolith level.

Meanwhile, Surya and Ruthric had touched down, and flanked by berserk Githyanki maniacs, were piling into the Githmorein defenders. They also, like Hildraft, were beginning to overwhelm the first wave of defenders (although Surya took a near-fatal wound in the process), and encounter the poor doomed mindslaves. The Githyanki, unlike Hildraft, had no qualms at all about fighting these, and tore through them like a crossbow through paper. Surya, a little less heartless, turned his blades to the flat and battered the slaves who attacked him into unconsciousness. As he did so, he felt invisible fingers of possession clawing at his mind. Twenty yards away, two Githyanki warriors suddenly went blank-eyed, dropped their weapons, and started calmly walking through the battle towards the stairs. Breaking through the slaves, he made for the same doors Sack had been approaching, battling with the compulsion that tore at his willpower.

Sack reached the spiral iron staircase leading up into the ceiling at the centre of the level, and began to climb. The ceiling above seemed very thick; it took several revolutions of the stairwell before he emerged, to find that the stairwell, enclosed in a cage of stout mesh, continued up 20' above the floor of the second level, to join a webwork of metal gantries poised above the floor.

As Surya reached the point where Sack had been overcome, his eye was caught by something familiar - the Blade of the Sun and Bloodfang, lying on the floor. He glanced around, but there was no dead or wounded half-orc nearby. Crouching, he picked them up, and slid them into the Quiver of Efficiency. Then, as he straightened, the unknown psychic assailant finally drove a thought through his defences, and his body was lost. He watched helplessly as his hands laid Tormentor and the Sword of the Dead Legions on the ground, and then felt himself turn and walk calmly towards the stairs.

Above, Sack had emerged onto the gantry, and could see what lay below him. Stretching in every direction, the floor of the level was dotted with hundreds of pits, fifteen feet deep and ten wide, crammed with wretched captives - humans, elves, orcs, gith, but predominantly dwarves. This looked to be the prison of the Ithilids' slaves, and, sure enough, Sack's unseen puppet master walked him across to above one of the pits and constrained him to jump in.

The fall would have hurt him rather badly, were it not for the unfortunate slave he landed on who broke his fall effectively but fatally. As he struck the pit floor, the domination vanished as if a switch had been thrown, and he was his own master again. Apparently, their foes considered a being helpless once dropped into the pit. Sack smiled grimly. A fatal mistake. He turned to the wall and Spider Climbed out.

Below, Hildraft looked across the carnage of the battlefield. The vast wave of slave warriors, although made up of weaker individuals, was pushing the Githyanki back in places. Worse (to his mind) the wretched thralls making up the force were being decimated by the merciless Gith. The ones in the effect of his Telepathy Block were safe and quiescent, but it covered an area of only eighty feet; there were thousands of slaves flooding across the level. Something truly effective was needed to free their minds.

Reaching deep within, he gathered his faith and offered it up to his God, asking Kord for a miracle - not for him, but for the poor helpless dwarves suffering here. Shaping the spell Break Enchantment in his mind, he released it, beseeching Kord to add his power to it.

As the spell was woven, he felt its' power build up and up, spiraling way above that normally involved. The magical power vested in him by Kord to wield the God magic drained into it, the energy for half a dozen spells of similar type channeled into the one casting, leaving him drained and shaking. Radiating out from him like a shockwave, the magic leaped on the mental slavery like a starving panther, tearing at the structure of the domination and shattering it. Across the entire level, all the slaves suddenly dropped their weapons and either fled or hurled themselves to the ground in surrender as their free will returned.

Above, halfway up the stairs, Surya felt the control blasted off his mind, and turned back for the ground floor. All around him, Githyanki warriors were doing the same, and surprise was etched on many of their faces.

Arriving back on the ground floor, Surya and (a few minutes later) Sack discovered the tide of battle had turned. Unsupported by their horde of slaves - and indeed attacked by those few of them who still had stomach for a fight after being freed - the Githmorein were quickly overwhelmed by the Githyanki and the first level was conquered.

Once the battle was clearly over, Hildraft pulled himself together, and wove a Gate leading back to Nisur. Gathering some of the less bewildered dwarf slaves to help him, he began shepherding the freed slaves through to safety. 

Surya, Kazoth, Morodric and Ruthric approached the doors once more. The guards stood their ground, and Surya and Ruthric engaged them without hesitation. These were clearly elite warriors, and were tough, but eventually were defeated. Surya unpacked Sack's weapons and handed them back.

A telekinetic gesture from Kazoth opened the door. From within came an unhealthy pale blue glow, emanating from a deep pool in the centre of the dome. Silhouetted against the radiance were ranks of Githmorein warriors, poised and ready. With a roar, Kazoth's knights charged in, and battle was joined. Surya remained at the rear, sending feathered death singing into the ranks of the foe, while Sack waited for his moment.

Hildraft arrived at this point and began to ready his magic for when the defenders were cleared away.

As the battle raged, Surya noticed that some of the Githyanki warriors dropped and died without being struck. There was clearly mental mayhem afoot as well. More, as the defenders were forced back towards the pool, a huge, needle-tipped tentacle, similar in colour and shape to a Mind Flayer tentacle but far bigger, arched over the fight and punched through the skull of a Githyanki knight like so much paper. A second later, it withdrew, ripping the unfortunate warrior's brain out in a shower of blood and spinal fluid. The knight collapsed bonelessly, killed instantly.

The shock of this caused a ripple in the melee, and for a second Sack and Surya had a clear view of the pool's contents. Floating amid schools of vile tadpole-like creatures,  a vast, bloated cortex occupied the pool, its' four tentacles writhing and pulsating. It had no face, no features, no form of what they knew as expression; and yet they knew it was intelligent, perceptive and evil. This was an Elder Brain, the core of every Mind Flayer community and repository of their shared knowledge.

Hildraft cast a Blade Barrier into the pool, sending bits of brain flying across the room, and Sack and Surya turned their bows on it. A wickedly precise shot by Sack drilled into a critical area of the creature's system, and it died, tentacles thrashing.

The effect on the morale of the Githmorein defenders, and that of the Mind Flayers who had been tending the Elder Brain, was catastrophic, and they were soon mopped up by the victorious Githyanki. Across the level, the same result was occurring in the other dome, although at the cost of far more casualties.

Once the last defenders were slain and the first level secured, Hildraft paused to work some healing magic on his allies, and then they moved cautiously up the stairs and back to the slave pits.

Peering up from the dark holes, wretched, ill and exhausted, it took the slaves some time to realize that rescue had impossibly come. The Githyanki seemed indifferent, but Surya and Hildraft lowered the ladders into the pits and began letting the prisoners out.

There was a subdivision of the area, with the smaller far section containing prisoners of a different stamp. While the majority were merely workers and beasts of burden to their captors, the ones in the special area were the more skilled, the better travelled, the more intelligent. Those with the more varied neural structure. They were the food slaves, and they knew it. Escape was even more attractive to these, and they were out of their pits immediately the chance presented itself.

Once there were enough free slaves to carry on opening pits without his help, Hildraft opened another Gate to Nisur and started sending the rescued slaves through. All of them; dwarves were the majority, and any others ungrateful enough to cause trouble would be easily contained by their hosts if need be.

Leaving the more robust slaves to carry on supervising the exodus, Hildraft and Surya joined the Githyanki on the next floor up. This had evidently been the Githmorein living quarters; unlike the rest of the Monolith, it was lit, albeit rather dimly. It was deserted; most of the Githmorein garrison had clearly died in the battles below. As they left, Sack joined them.

Pressing on, the invaders ascended to the next level. To a scene out of nightmares.

The whole level was one open space, half a mile across. It was dotted with complex tables, ten thousand of them, gathered in clusters of four, each with a Mind Flayer seated in the middle.

Each table had a dwarf strapped helplessly to it, face down, head towards the centre of the cluster. Each spine and skull were laid open, the fragile brain exposed and pulsing. A viscous fluid bathed the bare nerves, a fluid that Surya recognized uncomfortably as Agony, the liquid pain that Bramandin had been carrying.

Each Mind Flayer had a tentacle delicately buried in the brain of each suffering dwarf, and with the vision of his Robe of Eyes Surya could see streamers of psychic energy rising from each Flayer, twining together and disappearing through the ceiling, focussed on whatever was above with all the skill of two and a half thousand Ithilid psions.

Up until this point, the Githyanki had been confident, sure, familiar with what they were doing; hunting Mind Flayers to their lair and wiping them out. Here, though, they were clearly bemused and a little afraid. Never had they seen anything like this, such a gathering and focussing of psionic power. What was it all for?

Gradually, the invaders realized that the ithilids in the chamber were not only not moving or reacting to their presence, but were unable to. The powers they were wielding were so great that to lose concentration would be to be destroyed. Testing this, Surya stepped closer and hewed one down. It died silently, and the four dwarf victims around it twitched and thrashed horribly before finally finding merciful oblivion.

With heavy hearts, the companions walked out into that dreadful place, smiting with mercy. Flayer after flayer died, its' victims freed to peace in death. Kazoth and his Githyanki joined the task, not from a desire to save the suffering dwarves, but to frustrate whatever the Mind Flayers were doing with their channelled pain. Finally, the task was done, and the torture was ended.

Remaining was the question of why; what lay above that this monstrosity had been perpetrated to fuel?