Items · Art and Music · Magical

The Voice Of Blissful Enlightenment

The gathered crowd watches with a highly palpable combination of of nervousness and awe, as the Quarsooth steps into the great stone cavern. They had been summoned here by the dictate of their new overlords to heed their sermon, the vision that the newly arrived saviours of mankind had brough with them from their lengthy, astral passage from the great heavens that formed the very roof of the Heavens. But in their hearts, the people are afraid. The Quarsooth for all the benovalence they have displayed, are still creatures too dangerously akin to the demons or angels of their ancient myths or stories. And all dealings with being of supernatural provenance are fraught with peril, as the old tales warn. But even as they continue to stare at the Quarsooth, their minds in turmoil, the radiant being reaches into the folds of his robes and withdraws a strange metal rod. Putting this to his lips, he begins to play a tune. Soon, all fear and suspicion and fear is erased from the minds of the gathered folk, as the haunting and poignant song regals them with tales of the lost glories of Zor-Tanis, all the while reminding them how by particpating in the attempts of the Quarsooth to resuract it on this world, they can bring an end to their own endemic sufering and enjoy absolute power over great stores of knowledge that will enable them to ascend to a position of riches and enlightenment that is rivalled only by Zor-Tanis. And thus is the conquest of humanity being achieved...

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Full Item Description As stated earlier, it is merely a slender rod cast from a metal smelted by the Quarsooth. No longer than eleven inches in total length, it is extremely light, and has an elongated, tapering mouth piece at one end, which seems to be able to accomadate the mouth of any humanoid being, regardless of how large their mouths might intially be in proportion to the mouthpiece.

History When the Quarsooth first begun the evolutionary process of infesting the inhabitants of the advanced cultures that dwelled on the planets located close to their home-world, they discovered that unlike the brutish reptilians that they had been the first to have their primitve brains seized and hijacked by these sentient microbes, fairly intelligent races were often capable of mounting a succssseful campaign of resistance when escapess from the Quarsooth would exploit their advanced verbal skills to warn their kindred of what the Quarsooth had in store for those that they captured alive. Horrified and appalled by the idea of their free-will being seized entirely by intrusive alien parasites in their very minds, these cultures soon developed a ferocious determination to die in battle, rather than suffer the dreadful fate of becoming a slave of the Quarsooth, with some of them even adopting violent sucide assaults on Quarsooth military targets as their main means of waging resistance. Of course the introduction of the Ahoi worm equipped weapon alleviated this problem to a large extent, but despite that, there were stil some captives that proved immune to the worm's toxins, or even worse violently allergic, resulting in painful convulsive deaths that subjected the Quarsooth to witnessing the gruesome spectacle of seeing perfectly healthy hosts die in front of their eyes. Now aware that purely physical means would not suffice for the enslavement of every sentient race that they'd encounter, the Quarsooth embarked on a more subtle method of rendering their captives easy victims for infestation.

Avid researchers of the rich and vibrant cultures they subjugated, the Quarsooth soon came to understand that many audially enbaled races enjoyed indulging in something called ''music'', a collection of various sounds that they evoked a joyous response from those that listened to them. Eager to exploit this new phenomenen their best researchers channled their ample resources into inventing a tool that would employ the aid of pleasing auditary gratifications, to pummel a sentient creature's free-wil into submission. The result of this was an instrument that when played to captive audiences, soon had them transformed into beaming creatures ready to subject themselves to the fate of infestation.

Magic/Cursed Properties When played, the Voice Of Blissful Enlightenment creates a hallucigenic effect in the minds of the audience. Surprised? Don't be. The moment the player blows his breath into the mouth piece, the spores of a certain fungus are released from a hidden compartment in the instrument and are widely dispered on the air. Endowed with the ability to induce a state of mind when unwittingly inhaled , the individual actually begins to have astonishingly vivid visions that are given shape by whatever auditory stimulus that his mind is currently recieving. Hence, shortly after the musical performence begins, he begins to have imposed but powerful fantasies of all the great blessings that the Quarsooth will bring their new subjects. And desperate to partake of them, he allows himself to recline into a state of content passivity, making himself an easy target for infestation.

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3 comments

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  1. MoonHunter

    Can you link all of these together? or give them all the same free-text listing? Out of context, this item loses some of its impact.

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  2. Maggot

    Updated: http://www.strolen.com/content.php?node=2279

    This is the URL for the original post that has inspired all the Quarsooth offshoots.

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  3. Murometz

    Love the properties of the item and the intricacies of the background information! I need to read more Quarsooth-related posts.

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