path: root/src/dnd/SpellGauntlet.org

#+TITLE: Spell Gauntlet: Practical Spellcasting
#+CLASS: dnd
#+CATEGORIES: FF SS WP

* Teleport

** Wizard - ft. Ula Mindis
The young Wizard Ula Mindis awoke to the smell of steeping tea.

She sighed, opened her sleep-encrusted eyes, and yawned.  Another day.
Another attempt.  She rolled out of bed and drifted over to the
window.  It was cracked open, but she threw it wide to welcome the
morning air and golden sunrise into her bedroom, or study rather.
She'd recently moved her most used bookcases in here for easy access.
Her spellbook sat open at its usual spot, turned to the page she'd
most recently been studying.  This particular spell she'd attempted
half a dozen times to no avail, but this morning felt somehow
auspicious for it.

Ula looked over the first line.  The elven letters were written in her
own hand.  She had copied the carefully penned italic espruar letters
from an old scroll recovered from a captured pirate ship no more than
a tenday ago and had tried to cast the spell immediately.  When she
failed, she had rechecked the writing a dozen times against every
source she could find, so she was sure that the letters weren't the
problem, she was.

The tea arrived, cup wobbling in midair, held by a construct of pure
magical force, whom she thanked politely.  The morning breeze caught
the bay spray and filled the room with the smell of salt and sorcery.

Perhaps she could not cast the spell, Ula mused, because she was
perfectly happy exactly where she was.

Emboldened by the tea, she shook away the thought and dove again into
the spell.  Just imagine what was possible!  No longer would she have
to send away for expensive spell components.  She could just say the
words and pick them up herself.  She could visit her family back in
Mulmaster or take a vacation on the shores of some exotic beach
island.

She finished the first line, an anchoring, and began on the second.
While the first had been filled with words of permanence and
stability, the second was quite the opposite, using words of whimsy
and transcendence. She had gone over this before, even looking up
words and pronunciation from the deepest parts of her library.

This time though, the spell began to make sense.  Like a distant blur
on the horizon solidifying into a ship, but that didn't mean that she
could sail upon it.  No, the spell would likely take another tenday to
work through at this rate.

She moved to the next line, back to permanence, repetition, solidity,
before turning again to shifting sand and billowing wind.  The salty
sea-spray began to blow against her spellbook, almost flipping the
page mid-sentence.  She nearly cursed, but a mage learns to be careful
with errant words early in her education, and she remained silent.
She reached for her tea, but it had grown cold.  She absent-mindedly
heated it with a cantrip and brought the near-boiling mug to her lips.

Ow!

She set it down again and sent her unseen servant for an ice-block for
the tea.

She thought about ice, about water, then again about the spell.

Permanence. Transience. Solidity. Liquidity.

That was it!

By the time the ice-cube arrived the tea was long forgotten.

"Of course!  The key isn't thinking about location at all, it's about
matter!  I'm solid right now.  I need to be liquid!  A solid cannot
move, but a liquid flows, through time, through space, it doesn't
matter!"

Ula poured herself into the spell and the teacup clattered to the
floor as she used her full concentration on the spell at hand.  She
focused on the market down below her.  Fish-mongers barked their
catches to the passersby and coin flowed freely.

The words came one after another perfectly, Ula could almost predict
them.  Permanence.  Transience.  Solidity.  Liquidity.

And suddenly she was in the marketplace.

The surprised merchants around her started then blushed as she cheered
"I did it! I did it!" and jumped up and down.

Only after nearly a minute of excited and likely bewildering
explanation to the surprised fellows did Ula realize she had not
changed from her slip and nightgown yet.

Oh well.  She needn't be that embarrassed.  She could always move; now
the world was at her fingertips.

** Sorcerer - ft. Saffron Dayl'asaar

Saffron looked at the picture of the remote village.

"You've got to be kidding me." she stated in deadpan.

"No, I assure you that is the location of the disturbance!" said the
thin old actuary.  He stooped over the table with a lens held to one
eye peering at her as if he expected her to pop out of existence at
any second.

Which, admittedly, she was likely to do, assuming of course that she
could locate the stlarned place to disappear to.

"No, I mean, this is the best information you have?"

"Oh yes.  Absolutely positively the best.  The mine is just right by
the village you see.  That is where Betrice, our informant that is,
recovered the clues.  It's just luck that she thought the mine pretty
and drew it for us in such exquisite detail."

/Exquisite detail my arse./ thought Saffron.

The eldest child of the now-esteemed Dayl'asaar family of Aglarond,
Saffron had always been the adventurous one, even more so than her
trio of older brothers.  So when the Institute came knocking three
years ago, Saffron was the one to take up the call, not her father,
not her brothers, but little Saffron spell-touched. Plus, she was the
only one of them capable of the kind of magics that the Institute
really lacked, even though the spells didn't always go off exactly as
she planned.

"Okay.  It will have to do."  She snatched up the paper and her
traveling gear and concentrated on the picture and on her breathing.

The mine was rather typical, but the old actuary, the elder one of the
Minster Brothers who ran the Institute for the Recovery of Rare and
Dangerous Artifacts, had supplied her with an atlas of remarkable
detail and enough stories to feel as if she knew the place intimately.
Or perhaps at least enough to try to translocate to it.

Saffron felt her breath go out into the world and spread out
impossibly far.  The world shift beneath her.  She felt connected to
the strands of the Weave around her, following them like a cart along
a track, but moving impossibly fast.  Her mind raced across the land,
across the sea, to where the atlas had shown her.  She hesitated above
the island for a moment gauging the possibilities.  Then suddenly she
was plummeting into the jungles.  This was no divination, so she could
not actually see any details, only what she imagined the jungles to
look like based on the dark greens and browns of the atlas.  Suddenly
a mine was in front of her.  There was no saying if it was the right
one, or if it really was a mine or not, but Saffron was tired of
waiting.  She drew up the power within her and stepped through the
world itself.

She stepped through the Weave and out into a monsoon.  She snagged a
strand of loose magic on the way out and an explosion of cold air
burst forth from where she was standing, instantly freezing raindrops
into mini-hailstones which pounded her mercilessly.

"Ugh, Mystra you're working with Talos now to make my life violent and
unpredictable?  Is it too much to ask for--I don't know--a normal
casting every once in a while?"

Her curses as she trudged through the rain would have made her
ancestors, the Day'lasaar pirates of the Sea of Fallen Stars, proud.

** Bard - ft. Orryn Raulnor

"You mean you're the third Raulnor with that name?!" the sellsword
asked incredulously.

"No, no. Where I'm from that means that I'm the third oldest son." a
gnome in gilded leathers replied.

"I see.  Still too long for my tastes, I'm not for knowing what yer
parents was for thinking, but nobody needs a name that damn long.  And
what about that 'sonoviches' part?"

"Well, that's a bit complicated: it roughly translates to something
somewhere between 'indefatigable one who spits on witches' and
'largely punctual' ... it's a family name."

The table erupted in laughter.

Soon thereafter, the group seated around the table parted company and
the gnome made his way into the street.

He wasn't nearly as drunk as his companions had been, but he only
barely noticed the shapes in the alley before he'd walked into them.

Orryn licked his lips and looked over at the subtle shapes of his
soon-to-be assailants.

There were perhaps eight of them now, arrayed in a semicircle around
him in the darkness.  He should have known better than to flaunt his
gold around the tavern as he'd done.  But them again, it wasn't all
bad.  It had been far too long since he had a chance to live a good
story instead of simply tell one.

"Excuse me gentlesirs, how can I help you this fine night?" the
gnomish bard, twirling a strand of his green beard around his finger
in a gesture of mock-nervousness, asked the group of local toughs.

One of the larger of the group stepped forward into the alleyway and
quickly botched whatever ready line he'd been prepared to say.  They
evidently hadn't realized the gnome has seen them before he'd spoken.

"Halt there, uh, sirrah.  It looks like you've, uh, forgot to pay the
toll."

"Hmm, I hadn't taken ye to be trolls, but now in the light I do see
the resemblance."

The group was not particularly disciplined, most likely coming
together recently at the smell of gold and lacking for a real leader.
About half of them were silent and nearly shaking with anticipation.
The other half were blustering fools.

"Did'ja he just call Cratch t'be a troll?" one asked.

"He is a troll!" another joked.

"Your mother's a troll."  Cratch replied.  "Now little one, hand over
your money or you'll wish I's a troll."

"All right, all right.  No need to be hasty.  I'm sure you're all
upstanding gents and just want to use the money to pay off your debts
and buy your mothers veiled carriages.  Here, take the money."

Orryn pulled at a pouch on his waist, snapping the straps, and tossed
it on the ground in front of Cratch and the others.  It fell open and
several dozen large gold coins rolled from the sack.

The octet dived for the spilled coins and struggled with one another
to snatch them up.

"Of course, this sum is just a trifle compared to what I keep at
home."

The novitiate robbers looked up with various states of doubt,
incomprehension, and greed.  This had been the plan, but somehow it
was far too easy.  The smart thing to do would be to grab the gold and
flee.  But these were not particularly smart men, less so when blinded
by the fortunes of gold held in their hands.

"Take us there."

"As you wish..."  The rest of Orryn's sing-song sentence danced in the
wind to distant places and forgotten ages.  The eight bullies found
their thoughts taken far away as the strange music lifted them up and
carried them upon a journey.  The true names of places are powerful
things, most strange and unpronounceable, most lost to time immortal.
But the bard's magic remembered them.  His words were not an
incantation as much as a call-and-response.  His voice echoed through
the world, and the world responded.

Orryn and the eight were suddenly elsewhere.  A very far away
elsewhere.  Snow billowed through the air and covered the icy ground
in heaps.

Orryn's captives reeled and screamed in terror.

"Where are we?? Curse you wizard!"

"Fear not.  Everything is under control.  We are in the middle of a
northern glacier, where a small expedition settlement once existed.  I
hadn't planned on the blizzard, but I suppose you're familiar with the
adage 'we take what we are given.'"

Cratch lunged at the diminutive bard, but Orryn was already in the
midst of another spell.  He spoke words that felt like rushing air and
drifted lazily into the sky, just out of reach of the huddled mob.  He
extended his arms, recited the lightly tingly words that covered his
body with bright red faerie fire, and then spoke with a voice that
boomed through the icy plain.

"Hear me well, I am Orryn Maye Sylvester Miles Felix Hectacre Notin
Jiles Bulron Sysil-Sisler Klif-Wistler Anasto'tofande Sonoviches
Overton Sennison Johnnyson Raulnor the Third, Bard of Faerun, Walker
of Worlds, Smiter of Evildoers and Annoying Backwater Pricks, and
I. AM. NOT. A. WIZARD."

The group cowered and shivered before a spectacle of magical prowess
unlike any they had ever seen or were ever likely to see again.

"And if you would give me back my coin, I would appreciate it."

A few hours later, the eight would-be robbers staggered into a
tavern, each holding a single gold piece and a story.

None of them would ever rob again.


* Prestidigitation

** Magic Initiate Feat - Wizard - ft. Harvey Hoban Harpell
"Whadd'ya mean cutof?"

"I mean, cut off.  You, Mr. Harpell, are cut off.  No more drinks
tonight.  Sit, enjoy the fire, rest.  Do nothing to rouse the ire of
my other patrons.  Especially none of that odoriferous weed of yours!"

"Whadd'ya mean rows the ira!"  Here, turning to a hooded man nursing a
half-pint of dark liquor beside him.  "Do I rows ya ira?!"  The man
turned to face him, grim faced, and in a motion dumped the glass'
contents over the young man's dirty matted head of hair and set the
empty glass upon the counter before the frowning bartender.

"That's a waste of good liquor, Malcom."

"Just wanted to give'im one last drink is all.  I'll pay."

The bartender sighed and reluctantly poured the man another glass.

"How come 'e gets some!?"

"Go. Sit...  Now."

The dripping cleric, robes which had successfully avoided the downpour
now dripping with a darker rain, wobbled over to the fire and landed
upon a cushion with some measure of practiced grace, or luck.

"Oh, Mal-com gets another drink.  Sure."  He looked to give the man an
evil-eye but noticed for the first time that he was not alone.  "Oh,
ladies, my apprologries."  He attempted to stand but finding
extracting himself from his seat more difficult than anticipated,
simply half-bowed to the pair of dripping maids.  Straining for words,
he offered, "I see you're wet! I can help you with that!"

As he struggled with gaining control of his faculties to remember the
blasted name of that cantrip, the sound of broken glass from across
the room cut through the lively atmosphere.

The Selune's Smile was rather crowded with weary travelers looking for
rest or for revel.  Twin fireplaces bookended the common area, giving
a warm glow to the ancient decor.  Gristly trophies bequeathed to the
tavern adorned the walls: dragon scales, naga fangs, and owlbear heads
among them.  A few quiet tapestries hang from the rafters, heralding
the ancient Lords of Waterdeep who frequented the tavern in times long
since past.

It is said that every adventurer of the Sword Coast eventually finds
her way to the City of Splendors, but rarely do so many of them come
to a particular tavern all at once.

Seated across from the most recent blackfish of the Harpell family,
sat a pair of ladies wearing drenched leathers and scowls. 

Harvey seemed not to notice the latter as he inventoried his magical
repertoire.

/Prefeguritat?/

/Pregnanitato?/

/Presdogranado?/

/No. That'd jus worse./

The room grew instantly silent at the spilling glass and subsequent
trading of blows.

/No, youse keep talkin, gotta thing./ he silently berated the floor.

/Prestangerition?/

One of the combatants fell to the floor and then laboriously dragged
himself back up and slumped into a nearby chair.  Harvey thought he
heard one of the two women, the shorter one, say something, "Need
some... mumble mumble Moose?"

/Moose?/

/His mind joined his liver, slowly churning through the facts of the day./

/Animal.  Forest.  Green.  She's kinda greenish.  I wonder if she's
from a forest?  Ew, she's probaly dirty if she came from a forest. Eh,
nothin a little Prestidigitation couldn't fix./

/.../

"Prestidigitation!" He shouted over the now-returned din.  Magic leapt
from his fingers, but not exactly with the effect he had originally
intended.  Reminded of the magical pranks from his childhood, his most
common retaliatory strike was that of the "foul wind."  This came
unbidden to him now, and the magic unleashed the foul smelling breeze
from his fingertips.


* Cure Wounds

** Bard
** Cleric - ft. Harvey Hoban Harpell

The minor scuffle in the tavern had turned to outright chaos.  Harvey
struggled to look unassuming beside the fireplace.  The two furious
women had stomped off for some reason and then suddenly returned,
except... one of them had a thick moose pelt thrown up over her arm
like a shield and had grappled away a sword from an unfortunate fellow
behind her, and...

Oh no, now there were three of them.  The wet woman, the moose woman,
and a new woman... who could probably lift a moose.  And despite his
best efforts, his "gusts" had spread to even the outer tables.  People
were taking notice.  Through it all, came the deep contralto of what
he could only assume was a giantess, standing now, teeth clenched and
nearly trembling with rage.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Even drunk, even stupid, there was no mistaking that tone.

Stumbling with words, with mental images, and especially the literal
stumbling involved when attempting to slink backwards from fear of a
large angry Goliath woman, at first Harvey could do little more than
whimper.

Stopping just short of the fire, it's tongues licking the edges of his
trailing sleeves, he composed himself as well as he could in the face
of possible crushing death, closed his eyes, and sputtered "Excuse my
casting m'lady.  My name is Harvey Hoban Harpell, 'eric'a Eldath.  I
only meant to help."  Then peeking carefully from one eye he added,
"Please don' crush me."

He was inadvertently saved by another man. The drunken merchant lost
his footing as he approached the bar for another bottle of stsass and
stumbled into the goliath maid's firm buttocks.  He might as well have
walked into a wall for all the good it did him.  Actually, he most
certainly would have preferred to walk into a wall, as walls don't
seize you by the collar, hoist you over their heads and fling you at
their true sources of rage.

Layers of fat flapped in the wind, terrified by their unnatural
acceleration.  Equally terrified, the eye Harvey had dared to open
flinched shut.  He could hear the sounds of the fireplace mantle above
him abruptly stopping the man-boulder's flight.  And a moment later he
could feel the crushing weight of the man-boulder's fall, the hard
coolness of the wooden floor against his face, and the uncomfortable
warmth and wetness of a terrified unconscious man letting go after a
long night of drinking.

In that moment, he felt that the only proper thing to do was to join
him.

Minutes passed and Harvey was more than satisfied with resting
stupidly beneath his boulderous brother, surrounded by the incontinent
smells and the tumultuous clatter of battle... wait.  Battle?

/Oh no. What have I done?/

Harvey tried to stand, to lift his face from the hard pearwood
floorboards, to see what was going on.  Red blood splattered down
beside his cheek.  It was warm and fresh.  He managed to lift his
shoulders and turn.  A bloody maw lolled above him, the jaw obviously
broken, tongue bit, nearly severed.  Bruising was already beginning to
settle in between the voluminous folds of fat around the face and neck
-- black and blue and red.

Suddenly what was the proper thing moments ago seemed foolish.  This
whole night seemed foolish.  Eldath, what have I done?  This man is
hurt because of me.  I started a brawl.  I'm not worthy of serving
you.

In Harvey's frantic heart, beside the furious pounding and self-pity,
came a shiver.  It raced along his chest, along his limbs, his spine a
roadway, his bumbling extremities the destination.  A familiar sense
of peace, contentment, and quiet perfection, washed over him like a
gentle flowing stream.  The sensation reached his head, starting from
the base of the skull and rushing forward to envelop him, to hold him,
to wrap him tightly in a warm stillness.  All was silent.

And yet from in that perfect silence, Harvey could almost hear a quiet
voice, a whisper of a whisper upon the wind breathe to him.

/I know.../

The silence abated and the bustling lights and sounds of the taverns
returned.

Thank you, m'Lady.  Harvey mouthed deferentially.  Then squeezing a
hand beneath his torso and the floor and taking up his holy symbol
from around his neck, he gently turned his body into a sitting
position against the wall, the large man laying across his lap, and
allowed the Peace of Eldath to flow through him and into the man.

He spoke words, though he knew them not, and the symbol of the rushing
waterfall and the still pool gleamed with a quiet silver and blue
light.  The unconscious man's wounds were bathed in the light, and his
clotting blood staunched, his bruises soothed, his avulsed tongue knit
together, and jaw gently returned to place.  He opened his eyes,
wonderstruck, then promptly grimaced at the smell in the air and in
his trousers.

"Oh, right!"  Harvey waved away the effect of the cantrip and helped
the man to his feet.

** Druid
** Paladin - ft. 
** Ranger

   
* Power Word Kill

** Wizard
** Warlock


* The Fugue

The orcs pulled you down.

They beat you.  You could feel the blood in your mouth, and leaking
beneath your skin.  You could feel their clubs break you.  You felt
your spine snap, one, two, three places.  Frantic, try to focus on the
spells your patron left you. But you know there is nothing there.  So
you flex the fingers on your right hand, where your brand is--the
deep, red burn which you know will never heal.  You feel the bitter
the connection to Nine Hells, in some ways it feels like a fishing
line pulling you back there, and in other it just feels like a part of
your body, like a gland.  Pulling on the connection feels like crying,
but tears of sulfur and of smoke.  Soon hot, sticky, bruised-looking
energy responds to your call and leaks from the brand like pus.  An
orc stands over you, a battleaxe held high above his head, and you
fling it at him with a roar of defiance.  He takes it full in the face
and his brain explodes out the back of his head.

But he wasn't the only orc, and the hits keep coming, You know that
you are going to die.

Soon the blows stop hurting.  The world stops spinning and everything
is very very quiet.

...

You don't open your eyes.  There's no moment of focusing, blurred
vision, bright light.  You just see.  You just are.

You're standing on a desolate plain.  The sky is a dull shade of dark
gray, the same color as the thick dirt which covers the ground like
dusty snow.  You can see ahead for hundreds of miles, but it doesn't
seem to strike you as odd.

You aren't alone.

Others, mostly humans, but a half-orc here, a half-elf there, move
through the dirt, knocking up clouds of dust in their wakes.  They
move so slowly.

You are standing.

You look down at your hand, there is no brand.  You flex the fingers,
but there is no burning sensation.  In fact, there's barely any
sensation at all.  It doesn't seem to strike you as odd.

As you turn the hand over to put it back at your side, you notice that
where the brand was, on the back is a small red patch of dried ink.
Perhaps some rune or letter?  It doesn't seem important.

You drop the arm to your side, slowly, quietly, and begin to walk.

Nearby is a small hill.  Several men and women are gathered on it.
They seem to be singing.

A light opens above them and a creature with wings of fire and a
shield emblazoned with the symbol of an upright gauntlet appears.
With a circular motion of his arm and a smile, the light becomes a
whirlwind and the faithful are lifted up into the shining gateway and
disappear in an anti-climactic non-flash of light.  For as suddenly as
the herald appeared, he is gone and the plain is returned to stoic
grayness.  You notice that even the hill is gone.  But it doesn't seem
important.

You spot a woman along your path, old, wrinkled, dirty, as grey as the
dust and sky.  She is sobbing softly, clutching at her knees.  She
wears the low-cut rags of a Luskan whore.  Her eyes grow wide with
fear as you approach.  But you hear a voice call out "do not be
afraid."  Your eyes follow the voice, to a woman standing nearby.  She
radiates beauty.  Calling her beautiful is like calling the sky
overcast.  It is like calling the air stale or the dirt dirty.  She
reaches out a hand to the woman, her long red hair flowing in a wind
that isn't there.  The old woman bounds to her feet.  She falls, but
stands and tries again, every step growing stronger until she grasps
the hand of her goddess and is clothed in the beauty and vitality of
her youth.  She cries with joy, collapsing into the breast of the
goddess, and the pair step through the planes together leaving behind
the scent of strawberries and freshly cut grass.

The scent dissipates quickly and you continue walking.

You see others wandering aimlessly like yourself.

You all seem to be walking in the same direction.

In the distance is a circle of lights around an impossibly thin silver
line disappearing into the sky.

Your approach takes many hours, perhaps days or months or years, but
eventually the lights become a city.  A huge city.  The walls rise
over a mile high, and moan softly, though you can't tell how or why.

From a large gate, hooded figures approach the aimless walkers,
including yourself.  One stops before you and removes her hood with a
look of vague, forced, curiosity.  She isn't exactly human, she has
scales across her face and bright yellow eyes which are difficult to
follow.

She speaks, but the words are distant, muffled, "Guarded Faithless or
Bargained Soul?"

A deep, resonating, but scratchy voice answers from somewhere behind
and above you.

"The first.  Perhaps next time... the second."

After a moment of consideration she nods deferentially, raises her
hood, and turns towards the city, ushering you forward.

The walls continue to grow as you get closer.  They must be ten miles
high.  This city must house millions.  Around you is a crowd, closely
packed among each other, though most give you a wide berth.  Now
devils mingle among the humans, whispering, promising.  They lead away
many.

As you approach the wall, the whimpering grows louder.  The wall has
faces.  Bodies are stuck together with rotting mortar, which dissolves
them like a giant stomach.

Suddenly jagged rifts open beside and before you, along the wall.
Creatures with the faces and tusks of pigs, but the bodies of great
apes rush through, crushing or tossing aside both wandering Faithless
and cloaked guides.

Horns blare clearly through the otherwise muted scene of violence.

The guides throw aside their cloaks and brandish sickles and shields.
Devils howl war cries and abandon their bargaining to do battle with
their hated foes.

The demons flow through the rifts in a great horde and begin to tear
at the wall, dragging huge chunks back through with them into the
Abyss.  Some moaning souls cry out as many are ripped asunder, torn
from a slow non-existence of centuries to one of instants.  The rest
disappear into the Abyss, their forms already being twisted into those
of the demons that abducted them.

A giant six-armed demon with fangs like a viper rushes at you.  You
raise your hand to call down fire upon it, but you have no power on
which to call.

A bony whip-like barbed tail shoots out from behind you, striking the
creature and sending it writhing to the ground.  A massive bone devil
steps over you, it's skeletal spider-like limbs moving to propel it
impossibly fast through the slow-motion battlefield.  It hefts a
greatclub that was probably once the femurs of one of those huge
pig-ape-devils and smashes the six-armed serpent into a blackish
pulp.  The blood splashes up into your face, leaving a line of acidic
muck running down your nose, between your eyes.

Then the fighting stops as suddenly as it started.  An angel, clad in
flames the color of the sky shuts the portals with a pointed word and
outstretched finger and surveys the damage to the wall before flying
off towards the great spire of Kelemvor, the god of the dead.

The bone devil turns and looks you over.  "It is time.  The vessel has
arrived."  He then leaves you and cuts a thin line in the air with his
tail.  He steps through it and disappears, leaving behind the familiar
scent of sulfur and brimstone.  You hear the distant sound of a faint
chime.  It's probably not important.

--

You open your eyes.  There's a moment of focusing, blurred vision, and
bright light.  You take a breath and feel the cold morning air fill
your lungs.  A horned tiefling with a pitch black bell and a scroll is
standing over you.  Your whole body burns, but especially your hand
and a strip running from your forehead down between your eyes.

Everything is blurry, especially your memory.  Standing around you are
your adventuring companions.  It feels like you just saw them moments
ago?  Was there a battle?  What's going on?  You can't remember
anything... it's all just indistinct and gray.

Faust and the Fugue Plane
-Andrew Murrell