Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:45 pm  
50 Shades of Greyhawk

Here's one...

"Within the frigid wasteland known as the Land of Black Ice, the tale of Zander the Toymaker begins.

The sole survivor of an arctic expedition, Zander sought the council of Oron the Effigy Master to learn the magics which brought constructs to life. The tinker learned instead that within the ebon realm dwelt the demon lord Kostchtchie and his heirs, the succubus Ariss and annis hag known simply as Ice. Daughter to the night hag Xaetra, Ariss sought to further her father’s bloodline by birthing a child of her own. Zander was helpless against her bewitching charms. 

When Ariss had tired of her human plaything, she commanded Xaetra to transform Zander into a loathsome larva, basest of all demonic creatures. Imprisoned by Kostchtchie, she had no choice but to obey. Drained of his vital essence, the larval remains of Zander were abandoned to the whims of the land of Hades.

For years he remained in Hades, growing steadily more powerful as evil tainted his soul. From the lowest of larvae he transformed into a cunning quasit. Though he rose to the ranks of the hezrou demons he earned the displeasure of his masters, who reduced him to the ranks of an amorphous manes. In time, he welcomed darkness into his heart and metamorphosed into a shadow demon.

During this time, the spawn of Ariss grew and flourished. The demoness Anasta, daughter of Ariss and Zander, sought to bring her father back. To this end, she acquired a magical artifact known as the Shadow Lanthorn. Pulled back to the Land of Black Ice from whence he had vanished, the shadow demon was purged of his demonic energies with a mortal blow from a mystic weapon known as the Sunblade. The hag Xaetra returned his vital essence, which she had secreted in an ampule tucked within her apothecary. Zander found he now walked the shadows between the living and the dead. He had become a mysterious creature, a master of shadows known as a shade.

The toymaker turned effigy master joined a handful of beings chosen by Xaetra to aid her during her journeys. Though he had sired the night hag’s grandchildren, he was filled with admiration and respect for the ways of the hag. That admiration turned to love.

Returning to his studies, the shade embraced the path of lichdom. Shortly thereafter, Xaetra was murdered by the sea hag Tempest, her granddaughter from her daughter Meir’s dalliance with a merrow. The shellycoat Meir was also slain, later to be reanimated as a tsantsa, an unliving shrunken head.

Using all of his knowledge and skills, Zander toiled. Using bits from scarab-shaped creatures known as clockwork horrors and the armor of a quarut, a temporal being who, along with his brethren known simply as the inevitables, hailed from the land of Mechanus, he fashioned the iron hag. The lich Zander knew that while Xaetra had returned as a spectral hag, her time upon Oerth was limited. He fashioned the construct, which Xaetra would come to call Grandmother Clock, to protect his beloved.

What neither Zander nor Xaetra could have ever predicted came to pass. The iron hag was with child. They welcomed the birth of the mechanatrix Jaenan, daughter of skin, steel, and sorcery.

Their joy was short-lived, for the treachery of Tempest returned with a vengeance. Though slain by Meir, the sea hag had returned to life through the rites of the blood magus. Together with the salt hag Salkt and elemental crone Muckmyre, the covey of hags joined with three others to defeat Grandmother Clock at the bequest of the hag lich Syliah.

Xaetra was torn from the construct and weakened. She became a spirit hag, doomed to walk within the dreams of those she knew in life. In pursuit of the mechanatrix Jaenan, who fled with the lifeless remains of the iron hag, Tempest and Salkt braved the undersea cavern know as the Underflow. In their possession were the remains of Xaetra and the corpse of the shellycoat Meir, for Syliah had commanded them to remove the remains from the Dramidj Ocean. 

His paramour plucked from his grasp, Zander was beset with grief. In his moment of weakness the inevitables returned, withering his undead form in retribution for the quarut he had desecrated. His body reduced to ash and a blackened skull, the demi-lich drifted aimlessly within the Underflow until he emerged thousands of miles to the east, upon Turucambi Reef within the Oljatt Sea.

Within the reef, the demi-lich discovered the secret of the wanderers, flattened sea urchins bearing a star design upon their shell. From them he extracted Oerthblood, a metal rich in untamed magics.

For a time, Zander stayed upon an artificial island on the outskirts of the reef. Fashioned of discarded conch shells, each etched with unique symbols, the islet was home to an outcast yuan ti, a wizard in his own right. The snake-man was known as Husspa.

One night, when the moons Luna and Celene shone full, Husspa showed his friend Zander the secret of the conch shell islet. The spirits within the shells were restless. Together, the troubled spirits awakened the magics etched within their shells. Different phases of the moon would reveal unique sets of symbols. The islet was, in essence, a repository for magical spells.

His skull freshly gilded in Oerthblood, Zander sought to decipher the riddle of the spells. Yet he was not the only one to seek the secrets of the conch shells. In the skies above, a covey of storm hags laired upon a magical cloud island. They dispatched Husspa and entrapped Zander within a staff forged of orichalcum. The hags sought the whereabouts of the cloud pearl, for without it Cloudsea would remain trapped over Turucambi Reef forever.

Now trapped within the Stormfire Staff, Zander obeyed his mistresses while waiting for his chance at freedom."

from Squidieval.com