○ DZ + 30: Electh 17th 440 PV is known as the “Day of Fight” or DOF.
• One day later, Saint Hilda of Rivenrock arrived as part of a scouting party for the Host of Tiernon’s arrival; she quickly determined that things were very odd, and the Archons of Tiernon decided to abort the Hosts' appearance and proceed more surreptitiously.
• In the Abyss, the members of the Courts of Chaos celebrate Tom’s victory and try to figure out who and where he is.
• The incubus Reggie is summoned by Merit-Ptah as part of a plot to secretly repopulate Astlan with followers of the Nyjyr Ennead.
• An expedition to investigate a vision of an orc uprising and the nature of the demon Bess was launched by the Council of Wizardry and the Grove, led by Trevin D’Vils, Enchantress of the Grove.
• Within a few days, as the expedition left the Grove in the cloudship Nimbus, it was attacked by a contingent of Storm Lords of Nysegard, undead liches on ice dragons.
• Shortly thereafter, the wizard Exador was exposed as an archdemon. In anger he attacked those that witnessed his unmasking. He was driven from Astlan by Randolf, Exador, Gandros, Lenamare, Jehenna, Tureledor and Davron. In the process, Exador launched an unprovoked attack on the djinn, Crispin, thus unleashing the wrath of the djinn upon himself.
• Ten days after absconding with the knight Talarius, the D’Orcs of Mount Doom swore allegiance to the Dark Lord Tommus. This day is known as the Day of Allegiance or DOA: Demoni 7th, 54,760 MDT (Mount Doom Time) (DZ + 40).
• The following day, the D’Orcs, Lord Tommus and Sekhmekt, the Nyjyr Ennead Goddess of War, defeated two thousand-plus demons sent by Lilith and more spectacularly, destroyed twenty-three Knights of Chaos that arrived at Mount Doom in a Chaos Maelstrom.
Time of Day
Timekeeping in the Abyss, and most of the locations in the localverse, is imprecise. Aside from the cost of accurate timekeeping devices, there are few official authorities. Typically, the ruler of each region dictates the hours of the day in their region. For Astlan, in most cases local scholars base the time of day on observations of Fierd and the moons. These scholars are then charged with synchronizing the sometimes-faulty timekeeping devices.
The most obvious effect of this is that there is essentially no synchronization of time between kingdoms. Most mana users who have an interest in interregional trade typically have a table of offsets so that they can coordinate communication via mirrors or other long-distance communication devices. The same is true for interdimensional traders, where time can be even trickier since different worlds may not only have a different breakdown of time, but often have different periods of rotation, and thus different day lengths.
The Abyss is even stranger since it doesn’t have days. As far as anyone has been able to determine, the Abyss is flat and probably infinite, or at least very large. No known entity has found and reported an edge, nor has anyone managed to circumscribe a spherical Abyss, despite journeys by intrepid explorers lasting centuries to millennia.
Further evidence of the Abyss’s flatness, or extremely large spherical nature, was provided during the construction of the Boom Tunnels. Throughout the breadth and scope of the Boom Tunnel network, Altrusian engineers were unable to detect any sign of systemic curvature to the Abyss. While there were numerous differences in elevation over the vast distances, there was no evidence of actual curvature.
Most demons that visit the localverse use Court time, based on the artificial days of the Courts of Chaos. While there are other cities or regions in the Abyss that have their own time, most copy the conventions of the Courts.
Chapter 116
Sammael, the Cofactor of the Abyss, Emperor of Demons and Supreme Adversary, stood on an icy boulder overlooking a snow-covered mountain slope. Sammael was in his preferred human form and bundled tightly in his high-altitude furs. This slope, at a relatively low altitude, was far colder than the highest peak he had ever scaled in the Abyss. It was, in short, quite remarkable. The current temperature on the side of this active volcano was far below anything he had seen in the Abyss during his extremely long reign. The ambient temperature should have been near the boiling point of water; instead, a few minutes ago he had seen his breath start to liquefy as it left his body and cooled. Clearly, it was the carbon dioxide, but as it had gotten colder, he began to wonder about the oxygen, nitrogen and argon. This form liked to breathe and it would be terribly inconvenient if the air suddenly became liquid. His furs would also get soggy.
CRUNCH! came a loud noise from the battlefield he was surveying. He shook his head in admiration; a giant stone sphinx had just squashed another frozen Knight of Chaos. Tom had certainly outdone himself here. He had never expected the two thousand-plus assorted lower ranked demons to do much against the D’Orcs — and they had not. The D’Orcs had always been a true force to be reckoned with, and with an active Mount Doom… well, the idiots should have expected to get buried under volcanic ash and lava. That fight had been almost comical.
The Knights of Chaos, on the other hand? That was quite unexpected. The fact that Tom and his best warriors had been able to kill a few of them under normal circumstances was impressive, but then this freezing business — clearly masterful. Extreme cold was a weakness he would never have expected from the knights. He would have to remember this; one never knew when the tables might be reversed.
Of course, the fact that Tom had been able to freeze such a large region of the Abyss was rather intimidating. Sam had no idea how the demon had managed it. The amount of mana required to do this would be insane. He shook his head as the last of the knights shattered without an explosion. It was the dying chaos stream that usually took out the rare “victors” battling a Knight of Chaos.
Lilith would be shitting frozen bricks when word got back to her of this battle. Sam chuckled. If anyone deserved such a dose of raw anxiety, it was his “beloved” spouse. He supposed that technically, he understood her thinking in doing a first strike; but it had, rather predictably, backfired on her. What he was not sure of was why she felt such an overwhelming need to strike first.
True, Lilith had never had good relations with Orcus, but Tom was not Orcus. Having known Orcus and having met Tom, he was sure of that. Yes, there might be some similarities, including physical appearance; however, Tom was way too relaxed, too casual, too completely insufficiently paranoid to be Orcus. Actually, way too un-paranoid to even be a demon prince, Sam reflected.
However, this little freezing trick clearly demonstrated that Tom was a peer. The most burning question being, where had he come from? Had he been hiding out in the hinterlands? There were numerous rogue demon princes and their followers out there; but he was fairly certain he knew of most of them.
Tom, on the other hand, had suddenly appeared no more than two Court months ago, and started really shaking things up in the last few weeks. Sammael rotated to look at the smoking volcano cone. Unless Tom had been hiding here at Doom, preparing the D’Orcs and the volcano until he was ready to reveal himself. From what he gathered, Doom had only restarted a few days ago. How it had restarted was a mystery, but Sammael certainly recognized the mace that Tom was wielding. That would be key, he was sure.