Of course, many of her too timid compatriots did not yet share her goals. They were too used to the old ways and reliance on old allies. Nogah smirked. Despite themselves, she convinced more and more to her way of thinking. They were beginning to accept the better place kuo-toa deserved in the world. In a world where Nogah would be transcendent. But first, she must bring all of Olleth to her side.
The city of Olleth was once a watery realm ruled by spell-savvy morkoth, who called their magocracy the Arcanum of Olleth. These cruel creatures ruled a city built on the labor of slaves. Morkoth slaves included captured individuals of several other aquatic races, including uncivilized locathah and even vicious sahuagin. In their arrogance, the morkoth ambushed a kuo-toa delegation that traveled beneath the Sea of Fallen Stars under a truce vouchsafed by the Sea Mother herself. Half the kuo-toa embassy was slain and eaten, and the survivors were brought to Olleth to serve morkoth masters forevermore.
The Arcanum erred when it failed to purge the surviving whips from their new contingent of kuo-toa slaves. Whips pledged to the Sea Mother make poor slaves, for their resources are only a prayer away. Within a decade, the Arcanum suffered so many, setbacks, uprisings, and disasters, secretly orchestrated by kuo-toa whips both within Olleth and hidden outside the city, that it teetered on the edge of collapse.
Thus most believe that even in the absence of the Spellplague, when one in three morkoth mages dissolved in blue flashes and the remainder lost their grip on slave-taking spells, Olleth would have fallen to kuo-toa anyway. Regardless, in the aftermath of that day, the kuo-toa rose up and claimed the city for themselves.
Surviving morkoth of Olleth were purged, though a few escaped. Other creatures were allowed to remain, slaves still, beholden to new masters. The kuo-toa of Olleth called out to their kin, and so it was that kuo-toa came to the Sea of Fallen Stars in large numbers for the first time. Of the Arcanum, only bitter memories remained, as well as a few morkoth specimens preserved in pickling fluid to remind future kuo-toa generations of their past trials.
Nogah wondered how the old morkoth Arcanum would have reacted if they had found the Dreamheart?
They would have pursued the very stratagem Nogah had chosen, she supposed, and probably more successfully. They would not have had to put up with resistance among their fellows, who feared breaking tradition more than anything else. The Arcanum hadn't been tied to the dogma of a progenitor god like the kuo-toa were.
She blinked away fruitless comparisons and dead memories. The Sea Mother's creed would crumble soon enough, and she would usher in a new age of greatness.
Nogah rose from the lounging pool. She retained her hold on the Dreamheart with both hands. For all her familiarity with the relic, it remained an awkward size.
Rivulets of clear water trailed on the tile behind her as she moved from her quarters to the outermost chamber of her hall.
There, under a great dome, her growing congregation would hear Nogah speak, as they had done for many previous tendays. Today, Nogah thought, I will show them something so extraordinary their souls will be mine forever.
An audience was already gathering in the chamber, some murmuring in anticipation, others looking timid and uncertain. Many she recognized, but as with most days, she saw several new faces too, who'd heard rumors of her sermons. There were even a few sullen locathah. Word of Nogah's creed was spreading. Soon enough, she'd have to find a larger place to conduct these gatherings. She'd already moved three times to accommodate the growing crowds. This spacious hall, half submerged under a mother-of-pearl dome, was located at the very periphery of Olleth.
Nogah's popularity grew despite her excommunication. The disruptions following the Year of Blue Fire were ongoing, and theocratic control over the city was still unsteady. On the other hand, things were much better than they had been a decade earlier, when random outbreaks of spellplague might suddenly ignite and burn away a kuo-toa or mutate him into a monster. Nogah's timing couldn't have been better.
When she began preaching her new creed, the church stripped Nogah of her status as a whip of the Sea Mother. Nogah's ability to utter prayers in the Sea Mother's name failed. They thought her helpless. They moved to strip her of life and limb too. But the Dreamheart trumped their power. Nogah's doctrine proved stronger that day. She had killed two whips with the power of the relic and sent the remaining priest fleeing from her hall.
The Sea Mother's influence was on the wane, while Nogah's strength was bolstered by a power more ancient! Her flukes warmed just to think of it. Her growing power emanated from the Dreamheart, or at least, was channeled by the stone from some strange, grim source.
The corpses of the three additional kuo-toa whips who'd returned later to slay her for blasphemy were proof enough that Nogah's claim of approaching transcendence was no idle boast.
These stories and other similar accounts of Nogah's defiance were galvanizing interest in her sermons. She couldn't have planned it better if she'd tried.
The ex-whip walked out onto a dimly lit dais beneath the humid dome, buffeted by hundreds of kuo-toa voices immersed in excited speculation. Only a few saw her.
"My children," Nogah said to the gathered crowd. They quieted instantly.
"My children, you have come to hear the truth. The truth! After a lifetime of lies, you deserve to know."
Whispers skirted the chamber's periphery. Illumination began to leak away, but around Nogah, the light intensified like approaching dawn.
Nogah continued, "I, like you, also believed the lies. I believed them so much, I entered the service of the Sea Mother. Like many of you, I was willing to sacrifice everything to her, regardless of the cost to myself. It was our way! How could I do otherwise?"
Eager murmurs rippled through the throng, reflecting off the knee-deep, clear water that filled the chamber. It was almost completely dark, even to kuo-toa senses. But Nogah shone like a star come to earth. Their attention was rapt upon her; she could feel their combined gazes like a caress:
Despite the sermons being declared taboo by the hierarchy of Olleth, the curious still found her. After all, what other kuo-toa had ever disregarded the commands of the combined opinion of the Sea Mother's whips with such impunity without being immediately expunged?
But she commanded their attention with more than spectacle; as Nogah spoke, she leached subtle dream magic from the relic she clutched like a talisman, and broadcast it into the receptive mind of every creature present.
"I, like you, accepted my lot. Even as a whip of the Sea Mother, I was below Her notice. To Her, I was as a slug-useful, barely, but worth not one bit of regard. I gave Her my undying attention and service. In return, She gave… what?"
A twitter of angry voices sparked in answer across the darkened audience.
Nogah interrupted, "Nothing! Nothing but more demands, still more commands for sacrifice. I obeyed, for what could I do? What could you do?"
Nogah raised the Dreamheart over her head. The light around her shone twice as bright from the relic. Twisting and twining strands of radiance burst out of the stone to extend up and over the heads of the audience.
"I have an answer for you."
A sound, low and rumbling, began to beat from the relic, like a dead heart shocked and stuttering back to life.
Nogah spoke, "You have a choice. Will you stay shackled to the Sea Mother and Her stagnant servitors, or leave Her behind? A new way beckons, right here, right now! I offer you a new vision to pursue. If you pledge yourself to me, your sacrifices and service will not go unrewarded."
She shouted over a murmur of protest, "Instead, you will be exalted! Come with me and find a new future. Even now, I can feel the current change. I am ascendant! I am the handmaiden of an ancient strength that begins, even now, to turn its attention back to the world it so long forgot."