On the outskirts of a town which its settlers call Chiffchaff, but which its occupiers call Al-Duarah, there lay scattered bodies on the dry, red ground. Some are beasts and some are men, or at least look like Man. Broken, bent, frozen and burnt. Some are drained of life, left ashen husks; others have had their life bleed out of them onto the settlement’s streets. Looming over them are slate-grey walls, their gates self-sealing, and atop those walls watch impassive black masks, with eyes that see on behalf of their master: Abdul Saniʿ al-Duruʿ, Abdul Murawwiḍ al-Wuḥūsh, Abdul Alhazred the Reptilian Infiltrator.The scaly, slit-pupilled swarthy Southron son-of-a-skink who killed your best feathered friend-for-life and your shapeshifting hundun friend-with-benefits.You are Zith-Zi, Boss Bitch of the Monstrous Regiment adventuring company, and an ex-goblin ‘nilbog’ made pretty by magic……while You have gone by a few variations on the name CZ but have most recently settled on reclaiming your ill-gotten family legacy as Carazzi Yosef: one-time demigoblin cambion, and now a transcended Pure and Empty Vessel at long last.You came to the Southlands, across the Shieldwall mountain which separates it from the north-western lands of the Paladin Queen of Hawksong. You did so not to participate in their silly civilizational clash—what various shades of humans get up to with gnolls and secret subterranean lizard-men is none of your business. You came here to save your estranged boyfriend, fellow adventurer James Efron, from captivity in a Chiffchaff dungeon...…but in the process of procuring him, you punched through the army of enslaved hyena-men to their demon-wielding human-reptilian centre: Alhazred, the devious demonist and dark wizard who bested you in combat, costing you the lives of others whom you cared for.(To say nothing of Nicolette Testa, fashion-forward illusionist-enchanter who joined your quest and lost a body via bullet-blasted brain, only to be pieced back together with an emergency effort of esoteric expertise!)(Or Denise Lilla, the cleric you liberated, who suffered a similar fate in circumstances which precluded such a happy ending for her.)(…It’s been a long few days, alright?)
…Welcome back to CAMBION QUEST, for our FINAL final (yes, actually this time!) thread. It’s been a wild ride, and a lot longer than the three to nine months I originally expected to spend on this, but it’s also been a very rewarding one to write. Thank you for joining us to send off this story and its cast, and to wrap up a few loose ends. This tale and the others in the same series can be seen at https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=reptoidqm, if you’re just joining us or just want to check back on earlier adventures of CZ, ZZ, and their extended network of friends and less-than-friendly family!And now, without further ado, we pick up with our last vote and enter our epilogue……
You are spoiling for revenge.“We have everyone out who we can safely save,” Enid Carstene, effortlessly-elegant and allegedly part-elven rogue insists. “They aren’t pursuing yet, but they might.”“Agreed,” adds Ayla.“Them and what army?” you counter.“Their ACTUAL army,” Enid says, like you’re stupid. “You really think that was all of them? A couple dozen?”“Actually, I ain’t great at math or nothin’,” CZ chimes in, “but I’m pretty sure, like, I personally killed more’n that, and I see YOU guys did a number on ‘em too, so…”“So what?!” Enid throws up her hands. “That’s only HALF the garrison, IF that… And these are just the forces committed to this one outpost. It isn’t the whole army!”(…Army? Yeah, you guess there must be more than one company of these lizard-aligned, black-skinned Southron sellswords, to be fending off the Paladins of the Holy Order of Hawksong and their—eurgh—gryphons.)“So what?” you say, addressing your own thoughts as much as Enid. “We can’t just let ‘em get away with this shit! With what they did to us… To YOU, too, in case you forgot.”“I didn’t,” says Enid, icily, and then turns to James Efron—YOUR James Efron. “James, talk some sense into your… Into Zith-Zi, will you?”James—your JIMMY—looks down at you. You glare back, jaw set, eyes still stinging from shedding first tears of happiness and then of grief, more than you’ve cried in the whole year and a half since you last saw him.He meets your glare with a slightly-smarmy smirk, which under other circumstances would annoy you, but right now just reminds you how much you missed it. Doubly so when he says:“Get me somewhere to rest and recover my magic, and I’m right there with you… Wherever that takes us.”(By the damnable gods above and below, you love this overconfident caster!)…
…As Zith-Zi is browbeating Enid Carstene into submission, you watch, half-listening. In your arms, you cradle a still-living womb, disembodied and unattached to anything save for a couple rudimentary organs barely supporting the membrane-sealed magical mass and the growing life inside: your child with the now-deceased Naked Emperor, whose dissolving dumpling carcass you extracted the embryonic entity.All around you, you sense the others—the prisoners, and those who came to save them, if only by circumstantial association with Jimmy Efron and his crew. The dwarf that you used to adventure with, Brorfor, is down a leg; Chang Lanseoul, your Regiment’s newest permanent member, is as mangled as if he’d taken a trip through the Hellish Realms. Even those wholly intact are far from fresh…“Hey, ZZ?”…and you’re right there with them.“I think we should, like… Go home, ya know?”You flinch a little as Zith-Zi whirls on you, wild-eyed with outrage at the insubordination—and just as she was winning the argument by her leaderly charisma and roused passion.“Seriously, CZ?!” She stomps towards you, but you don’t step back even as she gets right up in your face. “You SAW what this sand-skinned shithead did up close ‘n personal. YOU, of ALL fuckin’ people, oughtta be on my side!”“I am, ZZ. It’s just—”“Just WHAT?” Zith-Zi growls. “Was it ‘just’ Hershy?! Izzat why you’re here with that lump of hundun instead of savin’ HIM?”
You feel like you’ve been slapped—no, gut-punched, as is more your soul-sister’s style. You push out the urge to cry and apologize, and the urge to lash out and retaliate, and especially to try to win back her favour. Everyone else might see your sis on the warpath, a vindictive and vengeful merc with a mad-on, set on a course that can’t be corrected. Some might even follow her down that road, all the way to wherever it ends……but you have a bad feeling that you KNOW how it ends: in Death’s Domain.…and you, more than anyone else on Earth or anywhere else across the planes and demiplanes of the cosmos, know what’s really in your sister’s heart. After all, you once shared it.You reach out, and hug her.ZZ struggles for only a second, then stops and stays still for a while longer, and then finally—heavily—sinks into your embrace. For years, she was the strength. Now, with your mind and sight clear and your own emotions under control, you can finally return the favour. You don’t wield pheromone-aided mentalism like your sensei might have done to pry open her mind and numb her anger; you take it in. You absorb not her life-force as the succubus who spawned you might have done—as YOU might have done to someone, not so very long ago, under other circumstances—but just the stress, and tension, and outrage, and loss.You take in the sense of relief of the prisoners, and triumph of those who fought and lived, and even the love of James Efron, and channel it into ZZ until, finally, she softly says:“…sorry…”You just give her another squeeze. Then let her go, to turn around and survey the saved and saviours, and the sorceress whose <Dimension Door> can finally free them from this place.“Aight. We’re goin’ home.”
After that, it’s all just a matter of logistics, since Ayla didn’t get involved in the fighting much; the energy she had left in her own body—plus those of the vajra you brought from a certain lich’s emporium you robbed out east—are all available to call her signature teleportation-gateway. The nearly two-dozen people who need to be transported is still a whole hell of a lot, though… But luckily you devise a trick!“<Energy Drain>, again and again,” you half-hum a sing-song spell to yourself as you cast the spell—just a little!—on those with qi to spare, to channel into Ayla and to empower her spell. It only needs to get you all as far as the Plain of Crumbling Remains—the formerly gnoll-owned quicksand quagmire where the rest of your party is parked. There, you both reunited with the rest of your Regiment and other allies. Ayla embraces a visibly-relieved Veigar; Khorine drops her <Sanctuary> spell and, though trembling from the exertion, clumps over to Zith-Zi for a debrief; ZZ ruffles the goat-girl’s hair and thumps her shoulder in appreciation for a job well done.You? First and foremost, you…You? First and foremost, you…>Go break the news of The Naked Emperor’s death to the Unseelie>Ask advice from the Dark Gods about this unborn baby>Sleep, and rest… And dream of what awaits you back home, at Patmo-Shoka>Write-in
>>6356802>Go break the news of The Naked Emperor’s death to the UnseelieThe Dark Gods don’t answer the summons and questions without something in return. I don’t think we have much to trade. And secondly he’s not really… gone. The hundun we know of is dead but this womb is… still operational. It can bring forth the new hundun. Soon.
>>6356817I mean they would be different hunduns though. Unless they have some type of generic memory going on. This new hundun part demon and our old plain hundun are different people.>Write-in: Have Cara-zi ask Veigar for an medical check up, to make sure we didn’t take any lasting internal injuries when we got ripped apart by the imps.
>>6356831[While the write-in is viable, I will clarify that they stopped short of tearing CZ apart. Alhazred left her unconscious, not expecting her to be able to recover from the injuries and Enervation spell so fast, because a spell that should have kept her weakened for hours and hours wore off in less than 30 minutes due to her Pure Self/Void Vessel path.]
>>6356802>Go break the news of The Naked Emperor’s death to the Unseelie
>>6356802>Go break the news of The Naked Emperor’s death to the UnseelieWe made a new one though! Just needs an undetermined amount of time to grow up.>>6356836Is that also why Enervation shrank us? Even though our form is immutable by outside influence, if our energy is drained there's literally less of us and we can occupy less space?
>>6356836Was Cara zi breathing during these ~30 minutes?
>>6357000>Is that also why Enervation shrank us?[Technically not drained, so much as suppressed, which is a key distinction: CZ got temporarily compacted and blocked, without losing soul-stuff or having it fundamentally changed.]>>6357024[Yes. Alhzared took her pregnancy as possibly being an actual divine edict, and meant to keep her alive but imprisoned. If you'd stayed in the Southlands voluntarily or due to capture, a subsequent quest would have seen CZ's successor(s) as Southron, Serpent Priest-affiliated characters.]
>>6357042>>6357000>>6356973>>6356831>>6356817Much of the party requires rest before you can go any further than the Boneyard. Ayla needs to recuperate and accumulate enough energies to transport you all across the continent, while Many others are still ailing from an earlier assault by a certain monstrous and malevolent mosquito. For your part, you are surprisingly fresh for someone who just took such a physical, magical, and emotional beating, but you appreciate the chance to decompress from the day’s events—even if you all must do so while keeping a rotating guard in case of another attack by the still-seated sovereign of occupied Al-Duarah.You’ll just have to hope you give his black army a black bad enough to take some time before he can strike a second time.While you wait, though, you are not idle. You take some time to check on poor Nermal, you tentacle-faced cave-drake, who is still suffering from supernatural poison. Full of bittersweet emotion, you stroke the mutant’s slimy side; it isn’t as pleasant nor as warm as Hershy’s feathery exterior, but Nermal’s quiet crackles of appreciation are similar enough to bring you some comfort. You pay a visit to Testa—the reincarnated one, clad in her <Clone> body with her hyena-spotted hair, not the corpse deep in the bog. She can’t spare magic to <Mend> your dress right now, for all the casters must conserve their qi for the ritual which will carry you all from the Southlands and back to Patmo-Shoka… But you do have a request, nevertheless, and it’s one nobody can really bring themselves you refuse you, nor even sharp-tongued Sensei Ayla.And then, having borrowed this bravery from your familiar and some material magic from Testa to bundle up a certain pulsating remnant of the Naked Emperor, you pay a visit to the hundun’s court.Most of the dearly departed’s falcon-fairy friends are back at your hidden base, but a few—John, Jason, and Sally, or something like that?—are all gathered to together, chattering in their sing-song dialect of the ancestral True Fey tongue. They stop when they see you, turning head and rotating their floating bodies in the air to regard you with their big, black eyes in their hawkish grey faces. The one you THINK was named something like Jason still looks green around the gills, for even the unaging and aethereal form of a fairy can be poisoned by the noxious essence of an infernal being……Which brings you to why you’re standing there before them, holding a swaddled oblong organ.“Uh, so… Hey.” You start a little lamely. “Y’all can, like… Understand me, right? Sorta kinda?”The gyrfalcon fairies of the deceased hundun’s ‘imperial court’ have only even spoken their own language, but you HAVE managed to communicate with them, from time to time, and after a fashion. Now, they nod, which you take at face value, even as their replies register to you as so much musical nonsense.
>>6357272“I jus’ wanted ta tell ya that… Well, you can see that, like… Empy, or the Emperor, I mean… Didn’t make it back.”The gyrfairies might not understand your every word, but they can’t have failed to notice the absence of a certain big old blob. They bow their head and sing a sad-sounding song, a keening cry that draws the eye of others in the Regiment to your little aside. Khorine in particular looks over with concern, but you wave to the faun reassuringly, and she returns to her discussion with Ayla and Veigar.“But look!” You force a smile and hold aloft your bundled-up baby... thing, wrapped in fabric and in the living tissue which is all that now remains of The Naked Emperor. “Empy’s not REALLY gone! Or, well, not entirely? Maybe?”It’s a question you’ve been dwelling on, and one you are hoping that these, the closest associates of the hundun, can answer: is Empy really dead? Or just recovering? Is this thing you’re holding your child, or your friend and former lover, regenerating in its own odd way? How much guilt should you feel, and how much responsibility?What, EXACTLY, have you brought about?The gyrfalcon fairies peer down with their queer eyes, big and black as the night sky, with their fine fingers with their too-many joints, they gently pry back the cloth and touch at the somewhat-sticky external membrane around the womb and its attendant organelles. They whisper and chirp to each other, sometimes softly and sometimes sharply. Eventually, the one whose named was John—or Jhaan, or something like that—folds back the fabric and pats it down, then looks to you… And shakes his head.No, this is not their Emperor.You sigh, and nod. It’s what you expected, really, even if you’d hoped to hear something other than this. Aside from wanting Empy to still be alive, you’d sort of been holding out hope that… Well, it sounds awful even in your head, but you’d sort of hopes that this thing was NOT your child.
>>6357273In truth, you’ve given only fleeting thought to the prospect of being a parent. The life growing inside your OWN womb was implanted there by magical means, and is not truly your own responsibility, nor exactly your direct descendant: you’re just playing surrogate for Ayla and Veigar, as a favour for the help they gave you in shedding your old and imperfect self. Some day, MAYBE, you might want to be a mom… But you haven’t found the right person yet, and you’re only just discovering who exactly you want to be, as Carazzi Yosef!And this? This big old lump of living tissue, and the growing life housed within? Well, it’s like a remnant of that which you left behind you: your old infernal ectoplasm and its attendant urges, delivered via your demon dick, impregnating an entity characterized by chaos so profound that good old Empy could hardly hold a single shape or coherent conversation for any length of time. You LIKED The Naked Emperor—it’s not that you didn’t LIKE Empy, obviously!—but of all the rebound fucks that could have resulted in the creation of a brand new cambion…Well, you can’t help but remember your conversation with Ayla, before the attack on Al-Duarah. About your origins, and the source of your shared suffering… The passing on of an ancestral pain. The mage who made you a separate being once cautioned you not to have sex at ALL, for fear that you could harm someone and spread your demonic taint… And here you are, holding the truly monstrous admixture of your own impulsive act with the product of a Dark God’s failed experiment.What have you done? What will become of it? This child… Whatever it is, will it ever be happy? And can you truly do as you wished, and join polite society, while caring for a helltouched hundun?>You will leave your hundun child in the care of the gyrfalcon fairies of the Emperor’s Unseelie Court>You will forgo your plans to live among humanity, to care for this child—your own wants can wait>You will use the forge to try to change the child’s nature—to stabilize it, as you did yourself>You will pray to the Dark Goddess, whose descendant this also is, for a solution>You think it would be best, sad as it is to say, to terminate this unborn hundun-demon and end the cambion cycle here>Write-in
>>6357275>Write-inLive among humanity and also care for the child. It'll work out!
>>6357275We did offer up our potential second child to the forces of darkness in a deal with the Nothic. https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2025/6297401/#p6310228And the beholder had spells capable of stabilizating a beings mind (He healed the greendragonborn's metal disability.)So perhaps we can clear two objectives by summoning the Nothic. We clear our second child debt and we hopefully make so this Demon/Fey/dark isn't insane like his pops was.>Write-in: Call the Nothic to discuss your second half hundun child.
>>6357355Oh! +1Don't wanna round things out breaking deals.
