Apostles of Doom

Tom shook his head in disagreement. “No, it was more than that. He lost contact with Mount Doom, and he was upset that his links didn’t fail over to the Etterdam Doomalogue. He tried to reestablish the links through the Etterdam Doomalogue, but it was broken — something was wrong with it and he was having problems. He then tried to connect via other Doomalogues, such as on Astlan. For all those he tried, he got no response, nothing. That was different from what was wrong with Etterdam. He could sense Etterdam; he just couldn’t get the linkage up and pull mana.”

“We stayed active for some time after we presumed Orcus dead,” Targh said. “It was a graceful shutdown because the control connection to the Wand was lost. I would assume that Etterdam would have done the same.” He shook his head. “In fact, Etterdam should not have shut down because he was there with the Wand.”

“This is interesting,” Phaestus said. Tom blinked, he had not been aware that Phaestus, and Völund as well, had joined them.

“Etterdam was the first link to shut down,” Völund said. “It shut down, or our connection to it was lost before Doom itself shut down.”

Phaestus nodded. “That is one of the few things we were able to determine after the fact.”

“At the time, we were all too busy trying to expel Lilith’s forces,” Arg-nargoloth said.

“We never did determine how she got into Doom. Every entrance in the Abyss was heavily guarded,” Darg-Krallnom said.

“Perhaps she came through from Etterdam?” Roth Tar Gorefest suggested.

Phaestus nodded. “It would not have been as heavily guarded. If she had taken that, sabotaged it and then taken the portal back to Doom… that would explain a lot.”

“However, Orcus should still have been able to make contact with Astlan, or even Nysegard for that matter,” Völund said.

“But he could not,” Tom said. “I — he was at a loss to explain it. But if it was something like this, what has been reported at the Citadel, that would explain why he could only contact the Etterdam Doomalogue.”

“Which Lilith had already sabotaged,” Phaestus said, nodding.

“It would also explain how we lost so many D’Orcs,” Morok Deathstealer said. “If all extra-planar access had been severed around the battlefield, any D’Orcs that were killed would have been unable to return to the Abyss.”

That caused all chattering in the room to cease as everyone was struck by the sheer horror of the moment. In many ways, it personified the situation that those at the Citadel were in now.

“I am not so sure,” Darg-Krallnom said, shaking his head. “If this thing was blocking interdimensional access, Orcus should still have been able to reach any of the other worlds in the localverse — Astlan, Nysegard, the rest.”

Tom looked at Darg-Krallnom, puzzled. “Those are different worlds, different planes. So if you cut off all communication with other planes, they would have been cut off.”

Arg-nargoloth shook his head. “They are other worlds, different planets, but they are all in the same localverse. They simply orbit different stars, possibly in different galaxies. That’s why it’s called a localverse.”

“However,” Phaestus interjected, “while they are different planets, unless they are within the same star system, interstellar distances are so vast that such links are extremely mana-intensive. Therefore, the links can, and do, take the shortest available path. For demons, that means going through the Abyss or the Astral Plane; for gods, it generally means their Outer Plane or the Astral Plane.”

“I would doubt, if he was actively engaged in combat, that he’d be able to force the link across interstellar distances,” added Völund. “Too much concentration would be required. As for intergalactic distances, that would be off the table without an amplifier. I also doubt he had any idea of where those worlds were relative to Nysegard, since the links have always been able to shortcut through other planes.”

“Either way, in the heat of battle he was stranded,” Tom said, and the others nodded.

Zelda sighed. “That solves the biggest mystery. They all battled to the death and could not return.”

Darg-Krallnom nodded somberly. “We never could figure out why none returned. They were trapped and slaughtered. Twenty-two thousand, four hundred and sixty-three D’Orcs, and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of mortals.”

Tom closed his eyes and thought about that. He’d known there had been well over twenty-five thousand D’Orcs at one time, but this was the first time he’d heard the exact death count. It had been a slaughter, almost a genocide. Presumably some mortal followers had survived; there were good numbers of orcs still on Etterdam.

“It is a bit ironic that the Citadel, followers of the Five Siblings, are now reaping the same fate that Tiernon sowed upon Orcus in Etterdam,” Morok Deathstealer noted.