Strange Bedfellows

“War makes for strange bedfellows.” That expression is normally used metaphorically, but, in the case of my parents, it turned out to be quite literal. I was not there to see it, of course. What I know comes from Bushi, the master of my dojo, and my mentor.

About thirty years ago, my father, Zilkomer, led a githzerai hunting party on a foray onto the underdark. Their sole purpose was to find and kill illithids in numbers that equaled or exceeded their own. Meeting a fair amount of success at first, Zilkomer suggested that they go to greater depths than had been tried before. The honor, should they be victorious, would have been great, indeed, not to mention the fact that they might have garnered a great amount of much needed intelligence.

Fortune, being fickle as it is, turned against my father’s group, for the early successes they had enjoyed turned out to be the calculated means by which the mind flayers lured the hunting party into a trap. Without notice, my father and his friends found themselves surrounded by a hoard of illithids and their master brain, which prevented the brave githzerai from using their own powers to plane shift away. All, but one of the party members were slaughtered: their brains devoured on the spot.
The lone survivor, my father, was captured, imprisoned and tortured. Over the course of years, the mind flayers sliced into every layer of his brain, painstakingly scouring it for knowledge they hoped to use against the githzerai race. His survival alone was testament to his phenomenal will. Eventually, the illithids came to the conclusion that they had broken him. Always in need of thralls, they decided to turn him into a slave. What better way to feed their own psychosis, then to prolong the suffering they would inflict upon him?

Outfitted with a dimensional shackle, Zilkomer was tossed into the slave pens with the rest of the thralls. “Slave pens” was a phrase that was not quite accurate. Yes, there were slaves numbering in the thousands, but, there were no structures, or quarters for them to occupy. The multitudes inhabited a tremendously large cavern, where they fought one another constantly, over food, water and even for a small piece of ground on which to lay their heads. Most of the slaves organized themselves by race, in order to improve their chances for survival. For those who tried to go it alone, death was usually swift. Those unfortunates who were cast out of their clans were usually cannibalized by their former friends.

Fate did not have this end in mind for Zilkomer. The few githzerai that there were in the pens were aligned with the deep dwarves, rock gnomes and some of the other minor races, making the faction one of the largest.

My father’s servitude continued for years and during that time, he came to quietly realize that the illithid’s arrogance would always be their weakness. Zilkomer eventually earned a significant amount of respect from his people and he was able to attain a minor rank within the hierarchy of his prison clan. The problem, as he saw it, was that as long as the slaves warred with one another, they could never dream of the day when they exploit that weakness and secure their freedom. In fact, most of the slaves had resigned themselves to the idea that they could subsist in the pens until the day they died. The faction leaders in fact, seemed happy with the situation, since they were usually afforded a higher standard of living.

Things did begin to change though, when, one day, another new thrall was consigned to the slave pens. Her face battered, her fingers broken and her tongue swollen to such an extent that she could not talk; it would have been easy to mistake her for another githzerai. The tattered remains of her clothing gave away her true nature though; githyanki, sworn enemy of the githzerai. Several members of my father’s clan instinctively moved in to snuff out what little life remained in the woman. Sensing what was about to happen, Zilkomer placed himself in between the mob and its intended victim. He used the occasion to plead for the woman’s life, citing the teachings of Zerthimon, and vowing to take responsibility for her should she cause the githzerai any trouble. The bloodthirsty members of the clan took pause, but, only for a moment. As they advanced again, Zilkomer cried out, explaining that anyone who tried to hurt the githyanki, would first have to go through him. With this pronouncement, the mob hesitated, but, the clan leader, Karsigol, stepped past the ring of would-be assailants and chastised Zilkomer, ordering him to step away. My father refused. His defiance was a direct challenged to Karsigol: one that would have to be settled on the spot. Now, the crowd moved to encircle both Zilkomer and Karsigol.

Karsigol had been the clan leader of the Githzerai for fifteen years. As clan leader, he was better fed than the rest, and, he was able to choose his own work assignments. Numerous githzerai had withered away, while Karsigol had maintained his strength. Those, whom Karsigol feared might offer a challenge, were always put in charge of teams that were sent out to fight other clans. They seldom came back alive, which was a convenience that Zilkomer suspected was a system contrived by all of the clan leaders, in order to hold on to their privileged positions. This time, however, there was no avoiding the challenge.

Years of training, in the monastery of Zuoken, was a huge advantage to Zilkomer. The disciplines he had mastered in his early years had all been put to use during his long imprisonment. Of perhaps even greater advantage to the soft spoken Zilkomer was the fact that no one but himself was aware of his abilities. Karsigol was the larger of the two combatants, and, he apparently had concluded that this advantage was enough to win the day, because he made the first move. Charging in with both of his hands held high, Karsigol reached in to grab Zilkomer by the neck and strangle him. As he clenched his fingers to grasp his adversary’s neck, they enclosed around nothing but air. Zilkomer had fallen to his backside and kicked a foot into Karsigol’s abdomen, using the force of his momentum to send Karsigol flying up and over. The force of the kick knocked the wind out of the clan leader and he struggled to get to his feet. As he stood, he felt the force of another kick to the back of his leg, which drove his knee into the rocky ground, shattering his kneecap. Zilkomer showed no mercy to the howling Karsigol. He quickly grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back, extending his neck for the killing blow. Summoning his ki, Zilkomer’s hand flashed out from his waist, and in one fluid motion, grabbed Karsogol’s adam’s apple and tore it out from his neck. Karsigol looked up at the face of his conqueror in horror, unable to speak, as the blood splurted-out from his carotid artery and the air gushed from his windpipe. Zilkomer let go of his grip and the gurgling Karsigol dropped, face first, onto the cavern floor.

“Is this what you want!? Is this how you hope to live out the rest of your days, serving at the whim of the hated illithid?” The crowd of Githzerai stood in awe, hesitating to answer for fear of being perceived as a challenger to Zilkomer’s newly ascended position. My father continued, “I know of another way! My way requires courage!: the courage to forget about the perceived slights of the past from the members of the other clans!: the courage to trust the members of the other races! We have a common enemy, and, that enemy uses our mistrust of one another to keep us too weak to fight them! Our enemy uses our despair against us, so that we might not consider a better future for ourselves! For far too long, WE have been our own worst enemy! We have made it easy for the mind flayers! Surely, they laugh at us! Look at how little they respect or fear us! Tell me, when is the last time a mind flayer entered the pens? That’s right. . .NEVER! They have relied on the clan bosses to send up the appropriate number of slaves and workers. They’ve relied on us to kill one another and cannibalize our numbers so much, that I would wager that they have no idea how many of us there are. They have gotten to the point where they simply trust that the work will kill us or we will kill ourselves. I suspect that they have made deals with the clan bosses to make sure that we are tamed!”

The githzerai and deep dwarves that stood around now all started to grunt in agreement. His words were making sense. Kicking the lifeless body at his feet, Zilkomer continued, “Look at the fat on these bones! How do you suppose that in this place, with nothing but the maggot-filled scraps that we get, Karsigol was able to get so bloated? Take a look at the other clan bosses! Do they all look frail and weak to you? Why do you think that every time Karsigol had us run raids against other clans, it was always to kill their underbosses, AND, they were seldom protected? Why do you suppose that the other clans always seemed to know our defenses when they raided us to kill our members?”
At this point, the crowd was energized, realizing the truth of Zilkomer’s words.

“But, how do you think we can change it?”, came the question.

Knowing that he now had command of their loyalty, my father ordered that the githyanki woman’s wounds be tended and that she be hidden from the rest of the clans. As far as anyone should know, the githzerai killed her and ate the flesh from her bones. This was to be the way we handled any knew slaves that came to the pens. All would be welcomed into our clan, but, their fate would be hidden from the mind flayers. They would never know how many of us there were.

As it turns out, Zilkomer’s suspicions about the clan leaders was proven immediately. As the githzerai began to prepare Karsogil’s body for dinner, they stripped off his clothes and found a note in his pocket from one of the other clan leaders. The leader of the drow clan wanted the githzerai faction to send a raid to assassinate the drow second-in-command in two day’s time. My father led the raid, but, he did not kill anyone. Instead, he showed the letter to the intended victim and explained how things had been apparently working in the slave pens for hundreds of years. Later that day, the drow faction had a new leader, and the githzerai had a new alliance.

Over the course of the next two years, faction after faction in the slave pens received new leadership, but, the illithids were kept entirely in the dark. All of the factions continued to operate under the guise that their former leaders were still alive. Communications with the illithids were seldom, but, they were always done via letter, for the slave masters would never deign to come down to the pens. This gave the slave society the chance to establish a set of laws.

My father’s plan progressed in other ways as well. With all the new slaves, materials and tools were fashioned, which allowed the industrious dwarves to tunnel on their own, and, eventually, they found a series of connected caverns, with fresh water, mushrooms and game prey. The dwarves knew how to domestic and raise livestock, as well as to cultivate the fungal vegetation for consumption. In another few years, the slaves were able to sustain themselves. It must have been a site to behold.
I would be remiss at this point, were I not to mention my mother. As I am sure you have probably guessed, the githyanki woman my father saved was my mother, but, it was not all pleasantries between the two of them, let me tell you.

to be continued. . .