D&D - Origins

The Maddening of Martoz

An unremarkable goblin save for an exceptionally deft hand, Martoz led an unremarkable life, living day to day on whatever he could scavenge or steal. Unremarkable until the day that he stepped foot into the wrong house.

The location was a mansion on the estate of some minor lord – rich enough to be worth something, but not so much that the defenses would pose a problem. Such a manor often had trinkets lying about in the open ready for the taking, an ideal target for multiple visits. A few days study revealed a small number of guards moving at fixed intervals like clockwork. Under the guise of nightfall, Martoz slipped over the wall, sneaking behind the hedges and statues decorating the courtyard. Once he had made it to the side of the building, he scrambled up the wall and over the parapet, avoiding the guards patrolling the ground floor.

Stepping foot inside the home, he could not help but notice the extravagant wealth displayed on its walls – bejeweled swords, gilded shields, oil paintings of tasteful nudes. All items of extraordinary value, and any single one able to provide a comfortable life for a man and his family for some years. However, what caught his eye was a soft, faint glow emanating from the end of one alabaster hallway. The dull oranges blurred and seemed inviting, beckoning him with its warmth. Mesmerized, he found his feet moving on its own and into a small study, relatively spartan with only a small mahogany table on which sat several candles and a leather-bound tome encased in a glass case atop a sheet of violet silk. A golden eye was embossed on the greasy black leather cover, without a doubt, the tome was of immeasurable value – even a fool goblin could see that. An arcane tome such as this would easily find a buyer among the numerous fences of Skullport and Waterdeep.

As he approached the desk, Martoz carefully removed the glass case and set it on the ground. It always puzzled him how the pink skins prized these piles of paper, what power could a book hold that Maglubiyet could not bestow upon a chosen? Most of those scratches meant little to him and tasted awful to boot. He blinked. Had the eye on the cover looked at him? It could not have. Either way, a feeling of uneasiness took him, and he decided to turn the book over. As he turned the book over, the pages cascaded open and unleashed a blinding light.

He staggered about, grasping at something, anything, to steady himself. Finding nothing, he slowly lowered himself to stop his head from spinning. As his vision gradually returned, he realized he was standing in the midst of a lavender-coloured haze. The mist hung heavily in the air, obscuring his vision beyond a few feet. As he walked forward, large glossy bubbles hovered in the air around him, in brilliant shades of pastel blues and greens, and streaks of light arcing through the air constantly shifting colours. The colours he was experiencing were not of this world and his brain was incapable of comprehending them, and yet the sensation was euphoric, akin to, yet surpassing, the feeling violet madcaps imparted on him.

Those feelings of ecstasy crashed through his body as he stumbled forward in a drunken stupid. Grinning he looked up to see the amber eye looking back at him. The joy and euphoria slowly drained from his body and, in turn, were replaced by feelings of dread and anxiety. Suddenly sober, only one thought consumed him. Escape.

Spinning around, Martoz sprinted back from whence he came, stumbling through clouds of pale pink and purple. Images suddenly tore through his mind – a helmet with cold eyes, a gauntlet wielding a sharpened sword, a look of iron-wrought keys, and a hand grasping a candle. The montage of images settled on a pair of leather boots walking down an ornately decorated hallway, turning a corner to another elaborate hall, a warm haze coming from a door at the end. The eye appeared again in front of Martoz focusing intensely on him, and just as abruptly as the visions began, they ended.

Back in the room, Martoz could hear the distant footsteps grow louder with each step, the dull clanking of the guard’s metal armour ringing each time the plates struck one another. With little time left, Martoz tied the corners of the silk cloth into a makeshift sack and slung it over his shoulder. At that same moment, the guard stepped into the doorway shocked at the scene of theft taking place before his eyes. Before he could react, Martoz swings the sack containing the eldritch tome with the fury of the small, sending the guard sprawling back into the hallway dropping both his sword and candle, extinguishing it in the process and engulfing the hallway in darkness, creating an opening for escape.

Seizing the opportunity, Martoz soon leaves the estate and the alarms being sounded behind, opting to dive into the thicket for added cover from the pale moonlight. Even hours after he did not stop, unable to shake the feeling of an ominous presence following him. Hours soon turn to days, and eventually the exhausted goblin slumped against the trunk of a great oak tree. However, the pause offered no respite from the paranoia. It all started with this wretched stack of papers, he thought, too tired to feel anything. No amount of gold was worth the agony he suffered, the sleepless nights, the ever-present feeling of being watched, followed, hunted.

The autumn winds chilled the air as Martoz gathered sticks and yellow grasses for use as kindling. As he fanned the flames gently, he pulled the violet silk cloth tighter around himself as his teeth chattered; soon, he would not only be warm, but free of this accursed situation. When the flames grew strong enough, Martoz tossed the black tome atop. The flames roared a vivid green-blue hue and released an ear-piercing screech as the leather curled and its contents turned to ash releasing thin plumes of lavender smoke. A wave of relief crashed down on the diminutive greenskin and along with the warm, crackling fire sent him into a deep slumber.

There was a tranquility in the silence Martoz felt as he lay amid the pink haze and blue and green bubbles, a relaxing quality he had not experienced in what seemed like forever. The peaceful feeling was short lived as the lilac clouds parted and He stared at Martoz intensely. The fool goblin had destroyed decades of notes and research of the surface, and for what? Had He not given him a vision to help him avert his impending doom? And this was his thanks? Such impudence would not go unpunished.

Martoz gazed back at Him in silence, not a single word had been uttered, and yet he understood Him entirely. The feelings of nausea and paranoia began to rise again. Who or what was He, anyway?

He was known by many names forgotten in ages long gone from those who worshipped Him or those who feared His wrath: He Who Watches, The Unblinking Eye, and The Eternal Nightmare to name a few. But he would refer to Him as The Observer. He had seen the rise and fall of countless empires from the beginning of time itself, the wars fought in their names and the destruction laid to the surface. Such was the folly of the soft sun-worshipping surface dwellers. But so too they intrigued Him, with their curious inventions, both magical and mechanical. After all, their soft, fleshy bodies often failed them. It was a shame that the last one to read His tome in centuries was nothing but a green monkey. A stupid, green monkey with no desire in life beyond feeding itself, procuring glittering objects, and creating more of its ill begotten ilk. A line appeared below the eye, its ends pulling downward into a scowl.

Martoz trembled before the golden eye as the line parted, revealing a horrifying maw full of large razor-sharp teeth.

He sniggered. There were still uses for a green monkey. He had often seen the way the pink-skins underestimated them, and how many empires had fallen to them as well. This arrogance could be used to His advantage, a new eye for the surface, one that would not be seen nor attract any unwanted attention. With a little psychic surgery, He could modify the monkey into something more useful, like a green ape.

Laughter resounded within Martoz’s head as he felt his own mind begin to warp as new synaptic connections were formed and a myriad of arcane and eldritch images burned into his psyche. His mind about to burst, Martoz begins to fade from consciousness but the last words echoes through his mind, “Serve me well, Martoz, for there are fates far worse than death. And forget not that I will always be watching.”

The rest of the night is a dreamless one and Martoz wakes to the remains of the fire. Amid the glowing embers and ashes lays the golden eye, untouched by the otherworldly flames of the night before and seemingly staring back at him. Some innate knowledge, not his own, compels him to pocket the golden symbol to assist channeling his latent powers. Tying the silk cloth around his shoulders, Martoz sets out to sate his patron’s thirst for knowledge and his own salvation.