J. L. Langland
The Heavenly Host
Special Thanks and Dedication to:
Michael Begal, Jay Haesly, Sean Jones, Bob Bingham, Jeff Hodapp, Rick Szekeres, Don Meyer
Edited By: nrc1963@zoho.com
Cover Art By: Jacob Atienza (http://jacobarts.weebly.com)
Visit http://www.Astlan.Net for Maps, History, Details and Artwork.
Special thanks to all the Beta Demons who helped get the story into shape:
Prolegomenon: Dates, Time, Calendar and “Previously On”
Reminder from Volume I: The planet of Astlan has two moons, Uropia, the closer moon orbits Astlan around the axis of rotation from East to West (like Earth’s moon) and Anuropia, the further out moon orbits Astlan over the poles of rotation from North to South and then South to North.[1]
Uropia, the moon with a feminine aspect has 10 months per Astlanian year, Anuropia has 5 months per year and thus for every one Uropian month, there are two Anuropian months. The five months of Anuropia conveniently correspond to the five seasons: Hearth, Winter, Spring, Summer, Harvest.
Anuropian months are not specifically named, given that they also correspond to the seasons which are reversed in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Anuropian quarter months are however named, each named quarter month has two ten day weeks that correspond to the relative positions of the two moons.
While timekeeping does vary across Astlan, the dates are fairly standardized for trade purposes. Typically, dates are given as Anuropian Quarter Month/Day of Quarter Month/Year. In texts, the quarter month is denoted by either a number 1 to 20 or the name of the month.[2]
There are multiple calendars that designate the current year depending on specific events; over the last few centuries, those calendars that do not start and stop at the same time have fallen out of favor so that currently the major calendars in use have years that are only offsets of each other.[3]
The Council States, where most of the humans in Demons of Astlan live, officially uses the Post-Vargosian Calendar which dates from the fall of the Vargosite Empire 424 years before the arrival of the Dark Lord Tommus. Mount Doom is obviously in the Abyss which does not have real days or nights, nor seasons. However, they do use a rough calendar system in which the years seem to roughly correspond to Astlanian years, although this is a completely arbitrary choice made by various demon lords.
To understand time tracking during the day, please refer to this Appendix on Time of Day[4].
As a reminder, here are some recent historical points.
• Approximately 10 years ago, Lenamare the Great learns of a book of immeasurable value to both conjurors and demons alike. Lenamare’s nemesis, Exador and his allies Ramses and Bess were already aware of the book and had been trying to locate it for many years.
• A few years ago, Lenamare ascertained a very likely location for the book and hired a band of interdimensional rogues and bounty hunters to retrieve the book from ruins inside of Oorstemoth.
• Lenamare’s agents acquired the book but were captured; Lenamare, however, had planted magic items on his agents that caused them to blame Exador for the robbery.
• Exador spent nearly a year clearing himself of the charges, and determined that Lenamare had the book that he and his allies wanted.
• Exador and his allies plot to seize Lenamare’s Academy of Wizardry and more specifically the book. Lenamare discovers the plot by Exador and begins planning his defense.
• On Cyclos 7th 440 PV during a training session with students, Lenamare and his partner Jehenna discover what they thought was an unbound lesser demon. Upon trying to summon the demon for the first time they realize it was actually a Greater Demon. With great risk to themselves and the students Lenamare succeeds in binding the demon to his will.
○ Cyclos 7, 440 is Day Zero for the events detailed here. It is the day that the Demon Tom is first summoned.
• 14 days later (DZ+14), Lenamare blows up his own school and takes out the majority of Exador’s forces.
• The following evening (DZ+15) the Verigas, High Priest of Tiernon in Gizzor Del has his own demon summoning hijacked by a Demon Lord with a party of humans. This begins the Rod’s involvement
• A few days later, an Oorstemothian ship attempts to apprehend a smuggler and is illegally destroyed by one Lord Edwyrd, a powerful animage that also controls demons. This begins Oorstemoth’s involvement
• 30 days later (DZ+30), on Electh 17th 440 PV the Greater Demon Tom battles Talarius, Knight Rampant of Tiernon, Tom defeats Talarius by subverting the mana links between Tiernon and his priests, and using it to take control of the Rod of Tiernon, the holy army. Further, he reverses the blade used to kill Orcus and tosses Talarius “Into the Abyss.”
○ Electh 17th 440 PV is known as the “Day of Fight” or DOF.
This volume begins on DOF, mere seconds after Talarius is tossed “Into the Abyss.”
Chapter 80
“...Thpp” Ramses made a tongue-sucking noise on his teeth. “Did you, my dear compatriots, witness what I think I witnessed?”
Bess and Exador were silent. Everything around them was quiet; one could hear the tassels on their flying carpet fluttering in the wind.
Or at least, it was quiet to persons of typical human hearing; if they’d so chosen, the three archdemons could have heard what was going on down on the ground below them and in the sky behind them and to their left. Chaos, insanity, slaughter, you name it — that’s what was going on all around them.
In the air behind them, the Oorstemothian Sky Fleet was eradicating the last of a horde of several hundred to a thousand lower-level demons that had just been expelled, forcibly, from the city of Freehold. Demons that had been under orders from Exador, one of the three occupants of this flying carpet floating about a thousand feet above the encampment of the Holy Rod of Tiernon, the military arm of the Holy Church of Tiernon.
“Is there anyone on this carpet who does not think that an, ahem, fourth-order demon just started Armageddon?” Exador asked.
“It’s going to take a bit of work to avoid it,” Bess commented sourly.
“I think we should adjourn to the Abyss to discuss this. Agreed?” Ramses said quietly. “My place?”
“Yes.” Exador agreed.
“I don’t want to be here when Tiernon’s flunkies show up,” Bess stated. “After getting kicked out of Freehold on my ass this morning, I’m not up to dealing with a bunch of avatars.”
“Particularly not his,” Ramses agreed. He shook his head and opened a demonic gateway in front of the carpet, and Exador flew them through into Ramses’ estate in the Abyss. Once through, Ramses closed the gate behind them.
“This is very inconvenient,” Exador complained as they sat around a table in a smaller, cozier chamber of Ramses’ palace. One of the servants had brought them cups of Denubian Choco-CoffeeTM, the extremely caffeinated beverage with a great mocha taste at 132 degrees centigrade. Among other effects, it was quite intoxicating to demons. Completely lethal to humans, even if served chilled — meaning any temperature below the boiling point of water.
Timekeeping in the Abyss, and most of the locations in the localverse, are 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. 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 lasting centuries to millennia by intrepid explorers.
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 elevation differences 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.
