Apostles of Doom

Tom blinked. “How many different forms did he have?” From his experience and discussion with Rupert, having lots of forms could be tricky.

“Oh my, let us see, many. Certainly one for every race he routinely worked with: his default orc form; actually about a dozen variants of his orc form; a couple human forms; dwarven; several species of giant; even several alvaran forms, if you can believe it. Then of course, he had custom demon forms, his hearthean form, his I’iskatha form, his—”

“I think I am getting the idea; no need to list them all. I am sure I will see them soon enough in my wandering,” Tom said, cutting the librarian off.

“Indeed, there are a number of gallery rooms with his portraits, as well as portraits of his various friends, colleagues and enemies, of course.”

“He managed to get his enemies to sit for portraits?” Tom asked, surprised.

“Sit? That might be a strong term in some cases. Strapped to a rack, or strung up in a stockade, frozen by a spell, so many different methods…”

Tom laughed. “I get the idea.”

“And in many cases, he purchased the portraits from others. That is, for example, how he got the portraits of the other demon princes.”

“So he has portraits of the other princes?” Tom asked.

“Yes, multiple. Typically, of their most common forms. His goal was for his agents to be able to recognize them in their different forms,” the librarian answered.

“That seems like a very good idea.” Tom nodded.

“Would you like me to guide you to one of the galleries?” Erestofanes asked. “If not, the library map can direct you to them, as well as interface with the card catalog system and locate any book, scroll, picture, artifact, relic or whatever else the library and museum contains.”

“Hmm.” Tom had to stop and think. It would probably be good to see what Orcus had looked like. At first he had assumed that he was a large D’Orc, but having listened to the others around Doom, he had come to the conclusion that Orcus had been a demon, not a D’Orc, because in fact, Orcus had created the D’Orcs.

“Yes, that sounds very interesting. Lead the way.” Tom gestured for the librarian to lead them.

“Excellent, this way…” Erestofanes led them across the room, over to the last aisle on the wall to their left. “Lord Orcus felt that his portrait gallery should be quite sinister, hah, hence to the left as we enter the library.”

“Sinister? As in the Latin word for left?” Tom asked.

“Exactly!”

“But Rome was founded and collapsed within the last four thousand years; Orcus was dead at that time,” Tom replied. Something wasn’t making sense.

“Perhaps on the worlds you are familiar with, but there have been a number of Latin civilizations throughout time. It is one of several pet cultures for the Olympians. As they move from plane to plane, they — like most pantheons — like to set up structures of power and social alignment that they are familiar with. Typically, they will have three or four variants of each spread around at any given time,” Erestofanes explained as he led them down the book-lined aisle.

“Individuals and names will vary from plane to plane and world to world, as will, of course, geography and history; the gods, however, tend to like things to follow certain predictable paths. Destinies if you will. If something doesn’t work out their way on one plane, they will tweak it for the next. And so on.”

“Seems very manipulative,” Tom said.

“That’s stability — immortality preservation.” Tamarin said.

“Exactly, my dear!” Erestofanes exclaimed.

“Rather seems to trivialize individual free will,” Tom said aloud.

“It varies by pantheon of course,” the librarian said. “Not all are so rigid, and even those that are do like some changes and variations. They don’t want to play the same exact game over and over again. That gets boring. No, they want a good match, yet one that they feel more comfortable with than their enemies.”

“Seems like a sound strategy,” Tamarin remarked.

Tom snorted. “I don’t know; I hear something like that and I feel like I want to put my claw on the board and perhaps tilt the playing field in favor of the little guy. Make things a bit fairer for everyone.”

Erestofanes laughed as he walked ahead of them. “Some things never change, my lord! I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard your prior self say exactly that!”

Tom felt his stomach drop at that statement. Surely the invasion of memories wasn’t subconscious as well? Was it? Tom thought back. He had always rooted for the underdog; it was a natural instinct. He was sure this had to be pure coincidence. It had to be… didn’t it?