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The Mephiteer
by Tom Bubul

On the crammed streets of Sigil's Market Ward, a woman walks with her child...

"Oooh! Mum, look! A pubbit show!"

"Those aren't puppets, those're Mephits. Dirty little buggers, those, let's go."

"But mum, I want ta see the pubbit show!"

The woman sighs. "Fine, but we can't stay long."

Behind the makeshift stage that the Mephits were performing on, batting eachother over the head with bladders-on-sticks and other humorous items, was a spindly human - his face blackened with ash from recent explosions, his hands blistered, and a manic grin on his face. He sat in the dust, drawing odd sigils feverishly with a stick and mumbling Lower Planar mantras. Soon enough, the curiously overlapping elliptical designs he drew in the dust began to smoke heavily, a choking, black smoke that was quite visible from the street outside.

"Oh no, he's summoning another one," said a disgruntled father nearby the aforementioned mother, holding his raptured son by the hand.

"These Mephiteers are such bloody nuisances," sighed the woman.

Back inside the tent, the man choked and spluttered. A fat little creature sat swirling in his designs, smoking a long pipe.

"G'day, guv," it said in it's low, raspy voice.

"Quick! You're due on stage!"

"Don't get pushy, don't get pushy," said the Mephit, swirling itself together and moving out onto stage. It equiped itself with an egg, which it would splatter on a Fire Mephit's head when it got on stage.

"This job just gets more and more stressful, but it's rewarding," mumbled the Mephiteer to himself, picking up his stick to begin mucking about in the dust again.

"This city just gets more and more stressful," said all of the parents outside, watching the abominable Mephits bonking eachother tastelessly. "What kind of a sod would want to do that for a living?"

Role: The Mephiteer has harnassed the most unusual (though most usually irritating) ability of summoning Mephits. The Mephiteer uses his abilities to entertain, to annoy, and to just keep himself company - as Mephiteers are usually an odd breed of people. Not every berk off the street wants to summon Mephits all the livelong day - in fact, most people don't want to summon Mephits at all, or have anyone around them summoning Mephits. Thus, it's usually the kid in the orphanage who's always dropping frogs down people's pants, or the irritating little urchin outside of the Gatehouse who hasn't seen clean water since birth and brags about it who grow up to be the much maligned mage-jester Mephiteers.

Weapon Proficiencies: Mephiteers are talented in the art of fighting with spoons, divining rods, colourful sticks, powders, and other such eldritch items with which they summon Mephits from their Inner Planar homes.

Nonweapon Proficiencies: Mephiteers get the juggling and running proficiencies as bonuses, as they usually need to quickly gather up their equipment and run away. Proficiencies related to summoning are recommended, and the Mephiteer can take any other proficiency normally alotted to a Bard.

Equipment: Mephiteers usually carry around several pieces of coloured chalk, a stick to draw in the sand and dust with, a bowl and a spoon for mixing things, and a movable multi-coloured little pavilion in which to perform, hide, and sleep.

Special Benefits: Mephiteers have a great affinity with Mephits, and gain a +5 reaction adjustment when dealing with them, and a +3 reaction adjustment when dealing with children. They can also summon a single Mephit every five rounds, provided that they have the proper materials and aren't being distracted by Harmonium officers trying to clean up the streets.

Special Hindrances. Mephiteers are shunned by society, and suffer a -5 reaction adjustment when dealing with any self-respecting or clean adult. In addition, the Mephits they summon consider the Mephiteer as an equal - thus, they refuse to do any tasks that they consider physically compromising, like fighting. Mephits will generally obey any other command, other than to fight, as long as that command's direct and obvious consequence isn't pain.

Barmy Spotlight of the Week
Orb of Day and Night

From: Planes of Law: Arcadia, page 4.
About: Standing at the center, well maybe a bit to the rightish, of the perfect orchards and fields of Arcadia is the Orb of Day and Night, a squat spire of a peak topped with a big old crusted and pitted orb of half light and half dark, a peak to make any visiting barmy, while being chased around by the Harmonium, drool and be homesick for the Spire. The thing floats like a big meteor-struck moon in the sky, it's light side shinning all over the infinite plane to lend a nice healthy glow to plump oranges on the trees, and it's dark side emitting a nice soft twilight so a sod will have an excuse for tripping over all the irrigation ditches in the dark and the smell of flattened oranges in his nostrils. Local legend - sitting around in perfect harmony with nothing to do but occasional have a nice friendly run from the Harmonium wanting to wash your ears out makes for some bored locals with nothing better to do then make up legends - says the whole thing is made of cheese, blessed by some god of goats or somesuch who thought the place needed some spiffying up and a good cheese culture, with one side a white mozzarella and the other a dark munster. Chant also has it that the orbs been flickering a bit lately, and someone needs to bloody figure out how to put a new bulb in, but no one can agree how many sods should try.
Barminess: It's a barmy orb that spins about throwing light and shadows all over the place. And it's made of cheese.
Quote: "Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh zzzt" 
Likes: Being worshiped, though it hasn't yet, and occult young types getting all philosophical about it's moods, which hasn't happened yet either. Having a dual nature and a nice personality.
Dislikes: Being arrested once by a barmy Harmonium officer for mooning half the plane. The storm kings throwing all kinds of soppy water and soapy fog all over the place and upsetting it, and especially when the sods decide to pick up the orb and bowl a bit to the sound of thunder.

Barmy Bonus:
Bing Moth. The bing moth, a strange creature that seems to be the very essence of lawful good - that being lawful as in boringly repetitive and good as in slightly fluffy - is the well known cause for 'orb spots' or 'orb flares'. The strange insect, somewhat larger then a very large hawk and made almost entirely of a glowing light blue and fuzz in between, emits light or darkness depending on it's surroundings. On the light side of the orb they emit a nice comforting shade and on the dark side they emit a small pool of light. And they're attracted to the orb like a starving bleaknik in the hive to rotting smelly cheese. They buzz constantly about it making spots of black and white flicker across the orb like a bad astral color pool, and when one decides it can't withstand the urge any longer, it zooms toward the orb in one last bright flare and a low bing rolls out from around the orb's peak. Always good for a lightshow when there's nothing better to do then stare at the orb, they're sometimes used in glass cages as a light source, but the things tend to break out and try and smear themselves against the nearest orbical object, which often case is a berk's head. They still make a nice bing sound though.

The Sensaesthetics
of the Pure Search of Combination Through 
Mediums Which No Mortal Mind Could Comprehend Yet. . . 
(The splinter-factions title continuous for another 8 pages)

The Sensates don't have many splinter factions, unlike such as the Signers or Mercykillers, mostly due to the charismatic Erin Darkflame, but when they do splinter, it wiggles into your skin and bloody won't come out even if you suck on it and go with it with really fine tweezers, and it itches. Such is the case of the small but vocal group of the Sensaes (Sometimes slanged as Sense-sissies), who believe in quality of an experience as much as any Sensate, but feel that doing them all at the same time would be better. Thus they collect not just experiences, but entire groups of them, each one adding to the new combination of senses before. They are the ones that mix all the finger paint colors together, the ones that will stick anything into a perfume, and especially the ones that will start a one man band, all the trumpets, banging, and jangling going on at once as they combine it with their new screechy singing lessons. To say the least, they get a bit annoying, but hey, it's truly an experience to see them go at it. Some of their more outlandish members are such as the artistic P'kawsaw, who wants to draw every planeborn type in the multiverse, surely a Sensate goal if there was one, but the key is that he wants to draw them all together. Thus inevitable giving rise to "The Planeborn, a heap of limbs and explosions by P'kawsaw during his mint green period."

The de-facto factol of the Sensaes, and one charming crazy woman, is Carbeu Darkash De Tanar-Symth (Pl / Marilith Tanar'ri / B6 / CE), who has allot more sodding names then that. Always covered in all the latest jewelry and trinkets from the Cage, including the new gaudy looking one that looks like a fluffy bear with a wobbled jewel for an eye, and adding more everyday, she always tinkles softly as her now brightly covered and tattooed tail moves across the ground. Active in every way, she's always sure to be experiencing at least eight things at once, from talking to some sod about how that soppy Erin can only handle one experience at once, tapping a finger impatiently, using another hand to stroke her bet gibbering mouther, another to pinch her nose to test if it really smells that bad, another to make shadow puppets on a wall, another hand to draw her self portrait with twenty thousand arms to experience it all, another to whistle off a tune she heard before peak, another to scratch a scale on her tail that's curled stranglingly about the aforementioned sod she's talking too, and another hand to count how many bloody things she's doing.

"Hello-welcome-geetings-grace. Time-clock-change and Space-field-demension are no barrier-wall-fence, for all experiences should be one-single-alone. "
- Carbeu Darkash

The Sensaes philosophy is that eventually all experiences could be combined into one giant experience-o-ram, and it's this type of reason there building an amusement park on the Outlands that is a truly frightening collection of every experience imaginable. It's like the sensorioums, but cheaper and if they all hit you on the head at once quite literally.

During the construction a rilmani tried to explain the flaw of there goal - some experiences would just never be combined (such as being frozen and boiled, or bored and mind-boggling-doing-things), but the Sensaes just worked the harder for trying to do all that at once, resulting in one frozen foot, one burnt hand, a waving right hand that was a blur, and putting their other leg to sleep, plus making a funny face at the rilmani. In fact, that rilmani now is an attraction at the "Dunk the Balance Rilmani Tank". Bizzare eh?

Last Week's Chant

All content copyright 1999 Jeremiah Golden or credited authors.