Part VIII – Weapon of Mass Destruction
Chapter 1: Those Meddling Kids
Timline: AO 287
Over a decade ago I’d pretended to the the Drokka Gods Rhokki and Myndoz and appeared to the legendary arms maker Hef Fastuz to commission him to create for me a weapon of mass destruction according to my designs.
Unfortunately for me it turned out that ol’ Hef was a little too good at his job because what I didn’t know was that he made not one, but TWO magical weapons. The first blade was exactly as I hoped – an amazing battle axe that, in the hands of the right person, promised to be an incredible killing machine. As for the second secret weapon, it was also a beautiful deliverer of death – however the death it sought was mine!
[Why is everyone so intent on getting rid of me? Seriously, as if Dagaal wasn’t headache enough, now this little Drokka goes and crafts another blade aimed squarely at yours truly? It’s almost flattering, really—if it weren’t so damned annoying.]
How could I have made such an error? Why didn’t I just read Hef’s mind to know what he was up to? Alas, if only it would have been that easy. Although I did possess the skill to listen to the thoughts of humans, unfortunately Hef wasn’t one of them. His thoughts were always closed to me – certain ‘innocents’ of the world have always given me difficulty.
[In retrospect perhaps I should have chosen a different smith to make The Ghast, but traveling down the path of regret has never served much purpose to me so why ponder What Ifs now?]
The fact is that I (in the form of fake Myndoz and Rhokii) was the one who gave Hef Fastuz instructions to forge The Ghast. That much you know already. And you are aware that I gave him the magical gemrock to make the blade from. All good, right?
So what happened? Well, after I gave him the materials and instructions I kinda left Hef alone. I knew the creation would take some time and while I did occasionally check in on him, because the process for interacting with Hef actually required me to visit him in person (which was so tedious), and because I had lots of other things on my plate (like, you know, trying to take over the universe and all), for the most part I left Hef to work without interference.
That was a mistake – unbeknownst to me, the gods Rhokii and Myndoz—those eternal meddlers—visited Hef behind my back. They whispered their secret commands into Hef’s ear, instructing him to forge a second blade from the very essence I had gifted him – a dagger called The Grim.
[Can you believe the nerve of those two deities? In my wildest dreams I would not have imagined interfering with another god’s experiments – you just don’t do that. It’s like an unwritten rule among us gods – don’t mess with someone else’s work! The sheer lack of respect involved here is unfathomable. I realize it may not sound like much to you – after all, humans backstab each other all the time — but for a god to do this to another god? That’s like violating Divinity Rules 101. It just doesn’t happen – only it did. And to me!]
But that’s the truth and that’s how The Ghast and The Grim were created. Both came from the primary ingredient I had provided: a dark stone that was magical in its own right, for its carbon-based rock was practically a living part of the earth and had been on the very verge of turning into unbreakable diamond just when I had harvested it from the bowels of Mittengarten.
I knew that in the hands of a master craftsman like Hef Fastuz, he could use this magic gem-rock to create a blade for The Ghast that would turn the battle-axe (and the man who wielded it) into a killing machine — and my intention was to raise up a Drokka king (one Hacktor Derkillez) who would use the blade to make war against the Derkka — with the resulting war providing nigh limitless fodder for me to later conduct death communals with as pursued me real goal – searching for intelligence about Dagaal so I could protect myself.
What I didn’t intend was that the real Rhokii and Myndoz would not only instruct Hef to create that second blade, but more importantly that they would provide the smith with magic of their own to put into BOTH weapons. Yet that is exactly what happened — and so it was that the drokka Hef Fastuz turned that mysterious stone I gave him into into the two most powerful weapons ever created in the entire history of your world!
Only much later did I learn all this – and it was worse than I could ever have imagined. Because of Rhokii and Myndoz’s infernal meddling, those blades—born of fire, blood, and magic—were imbued with the power to slay any of the wrathful gods of Ragnaroken. The mere thought of such a weapon, glinting in the hands of a mortal, was enough to send a shiver down even my spine—a sensation I had not felt in eons.
What did it all mean? Well because of my rivals magic that imbued Hef’s creations, both the Ghast and the Grim spelled doom for Baal-Zebub’s minions: dread Zar (the God of War), Hekubuz (the vile Seductress of Temptation), Naxos (Lord of the Raging Seas), and Nektar (yours truly) were all viable targets– because the deadly strike of either The Ghast or The Grim could spell our doom.
[I mean, do you really think I would have let Hef create such weapons had I known all this?!? Well, maybe taking out Zar, Hekubuz, and Naxos wasn’t all that bad, but certainly I wouldn’t have given Hef the power to create a blade that could kill me too! C’mon, man, that ain’t cool!]
How, you might wonder, could The Grim or Ghast spell doom for beings as mighty as my fellow gods and I? After all, aren’t we immortal, beyond the reach of mere mortal weapons?
That’s what makes this betrayal cut so deep. To think that all my power, all my schemes, could be unraveled by a single strike, by a blade that should never have existed. But alas, forget not my flaw, friend (yes, I know it’s hard to believe but I did/do have flaws) – back then I was still subject to the control of Baal-Zebub in Illusia (which the Drokka’s called Ragnaroken). As a result, recall that the lifeforce which sustained me on the middle plane (wherein your world was located) was called <hellfire>. This <hellfire> allowed me (and other fallen lumenarcs from BZ’s camp) to survive upon Mittengarten for nigh a thousand years, but as our <hellfire> dwindled we had to return to the underworld to beg BZ for more.
The important thing to know is that if our <hellfire> ran out, then so did our immortality – we wouldn’t necessarily die on the spot just because we didn’t have any <hellfire>, but we’d have nothing to protect us from death just like any other helpless mortal – so if a killing blade got to us, we’d be toast. [That may be all well and fine for a sheep like you, but for a god like me with BIG plans, well, that just can’t happen].
And what made The Grim and The Ghast a problem for my friends and I was that their blades were capable of instantly draining our <hellfire>. With our lifeforce thus depleted, either of the mighty blades could then literally hold the aura of any of the gods of Ragnaroken around itself, and strike us dead — before we had the opportunity to return to BZ for help. For, as The Kroniklz attest, Rhokii provided the might, Myndoz the magic, and Hef Fastuz the weapons crafting skills, and thus were born the blades with which to kill a god!
The Apocrypha of Azazel 