Chronicles of Stoicism: Underworld Revolution

Since its conception, the Underworld Royal Academy of Evil was a flawed organization. Originally the thought experiment of the great Evil Philosopher and Philanthropist, Johan Fredrick Collen, at its beginning the private school served as a political tool for the Evil Optimates’ greatest hope for succession for the rulership of one of the various districts of the underworld. Positioned somewhere politically left of the Demonists, the Optimates represented a new school of evil thought in the underworld’s political arena. Democracy was a precarious thing in the underworld, but it had managed roughly 2000 years ago to become the dominant decision-making strategy among the gremlins. After the enormous successes of the species during the Reign of Hades, it wasn’t long before the most of the underworld was democratic.

Johan’s ambitions were to use the school to educate the devils of the Lava Lake district. This would certainly garner the favor of the nobles, and would eventually lead to a landslide victory in his election for control of the district. Sadly, Johan’s dreams were never realized. The Evil Populists had him kidnapped and thrown into the bottomless pit, thwarting any hope the Evil Optimates’ had of becoming a real political contender in the Lava Lake district for the next 35 years.

Now, more than 200 years after the creation of the school, Dipp Sevonn Wryvil sat uncomfortably in his office chair on the 27th floor of the Underworld Royal Academy of Evil. Not a bad office by any measure, the room had a window which faced out toward the Lava Lakes and came equipped with its own washroom. Twenty years of ass-kissing the dean had finally paid off six months ago and Dipp’s career was now well-paying and reliable. He’d been appointed the Deputy Dean of the Philosophy Faculty and now, after all his hard work, wasn’t even sure if he deserved it now despite what his younger self might have thought as a graduate student.

Gazing at his day-timer, Dipp’s expressionless face failed to reveal his intense distain for what he saw. Numbly, he penciled in yet another appointment into his already jammed schedule. “My evilness”, he thought to himself, “Why can’t Reddem handle these bloody Commissioners? I’ve got better things to do than meet with another damn politician.”

The familiar voice came from the corner of his office, “Count yourself lucky it’s not another one of Daorehn’s journalists. You were complaining about them two months ago if I’m not mistaken.” The black glob of ooze in the corner, Margaret, was Dipp’s secretary. The female Blotbling had peered into his mind again, something which Dipp hated. The blob smiled.

“It’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between politicians and journalists,” Dipp shook his head, looked out his window. “It used to be a simple matter of masochists and sadists. Nowadays, everyone’s scrambling to prove how cynical they are.” Dipp swiveled around in his office chair and stood. He put a sweaty hand through his short, dark hair and rubbed his cleanly-shaven face, his brow furrowed.

“You’re on holidays starting tomorrow, Dipp. Why don’t you duck out early and put down that incessant daytimer? Go relax. You’ve earned it,” the blob insisted. “Besides, the commissioners can wait. You work too hard.”

Dipp almost came back with an ethics quip, but passed on the chance. Perhaps the blob was right. He’d been experiencing the long hard strain of stress the past few months, and desperately needed some time off. What really worried him was that it’d taken him this long to notice it. Maybe he would leave work early today.

“I think I’m in the mood to eat out tonight, Margaret,” Dipp offered. “Do you have any plans?”

“Oh honey,” that friendly blob-grin stretched across her face. “I can’t tonight. It’s my night with the kids and I cancelled on them last week to go to the opera with that hunk, Ted, from accounting.”

“Have a good night, Margaret.” Dipp smiled at the blob in the corner, grabbed his coat and briefcase and left work early.

Later…

On the sidewalk of a crowed underworld city street, Dipp stood in front of a street vendor. The dire porcupine behind the cart simultaneously served customers their particular selection of meat-on-a-stick while yelling at random passers-by on the street. Dipp held a thick cut flank of hell giraffe on his stick and was enjoying it immensely. He gazed at the myriad of souls making their way about the busy city. Arguably, no worse a place existed. Dipp wasn’t so sure about that. But still, he wondered how they all went on in a place like this.

Suddenly, Dipp heard a commotion on the other side of the street. What was going on?

Name: Dipp Sevonn Wryvil
Race: Human (Damned)
Age: 62
Sex: Male
Class: Professor
Looks: Distinguished Philosopher
Special Ability: Diplomacy (1 Day Cooldown)

Name: Xazx Eugene Soulmonger
Race: Lightning Lichlord(Damned)
Age: 22
Sex: Male
Class: Miner
Looks: Phases in and out of existance
Special Ability: Rend soul (1 second cooldown)

Miles below Hell’s surface, in the Spirit Mines, Xazx Eugene Soulmonger sat glumly in the small hole that passed for a break room. This was his third double-shift of the week, and the lightning where his bones once rested were beginning to ache. They had all been forced to work such ridiculous hours since the inception of the No Spirit Left Behind Act had been shoved down all their throats and maws by political pencil pushers. An election was nearing, and everyone wanted to appear as “for the people” as possible, which meant more work for John Everydemon.

Xazx was an oddity in the Spirit Mines, for sure. A Lightning Lichlord, a typical figure in the highest rungs of society, pushing rocks and souls for a living. His father had condemned him (more than hell was already a condemnation) for picking such a profession. “The Mines are for the working class, Xazx!” he had screamed at him, “A Soulmonger is a prestigious family and we belong making powerful decisions!”

Crushing the empty styrofoam coffee cup betwixt his mighty gauntlet, Xazx sighed. “I’m where a Soulmonger belongs,” he said aloud, “harvesting souls.” His coworker, Luke ‘Dragonbane’ Skeletomb, looked up at him quizzically.

“What’chu talkin’ ‘bout Xazx??” he said in his stereotypically lower-class accent. “Yous a Lightning BITCHlord, brah, y’hear? Yous ‘n atta be ‘n up durr on duh sur’ace tr’hear? Oong go la, oong go la, batsy boogity bop, ‘n y’hear?”

The very thought of listening to another word of Luke’s practically incomprehensible dialogue made Xazx’s lightning flare. “My break is over… y’hear?” he added, throwing on an ironic twang of the lower-class to his flawless speech. Most of the plebs were half decent folk, but there were a few like Luke that seemed to think that they were all equal and that Xazx wasn’t better than all of them. Which he was. He was a Lichlord, afterall.

Xazx began to make his way back to the most recent soul-node they had unearthed, grabbing a soul-pick and a pair of soul-gloves. The foreman had claimed they were nearing a huge cache of souls in the soul-node, so they were all being forced to wear special protective gloves even though Xazx’s mighty gauntlets could tear apart even the fiercest of soul, if the need were to arise. Rules were rules though, thanks to those pencil pushers. Xazx cursed the government, under his breath less someone hear him and try to start up some inane conversation that he could barely understand let alone bother to waste a single iota of thought power on. His father had been right on at least one topic; the lower-class was politically intolerable.

As he walked toward the newest chamber they had been mining, Xazx caught a glimpse of the exit. He began to wonder if this mediocre life was even remotely fulfilling. Sure, he got to sneak a few of the weaker souls home, devouring them illegally, but that was getting old. The first time he had done it, he had gotten such a high from it but now it barely got him buzzed. He wondered what his father would have thought if he knew his son had been eating souls.

His thought was broken, suddenly, when he heard the foreman yelling in distress. Some commotion was causing the support system holding up the soul-node to fail. Pulleys began to snap, and things began to go to hell. Smaller chunks of the nodes fell, exploding into soul-splosions as they struck the ground. With the way this node was slipping, it would only be a matter of time before this whole place blew hell high.

Xazx booked it in the other direction. This thing would cause a cave-in on the surface with its size. He could live the soul-splosions, but the cave-in would surely end him. He would not let his father have the satisfaction of knowing his son died in these mines. Damned pencil pushers, he thought.

Name: Finneas Grimm
Race: Death Walker
Age: 419
Sex: Male
Class: Reaper
Looks: Robed Skelenoid
Special Ability: Travel through planes of existence (no cooldown)

Solemn Finneas trudged over to his computer and sat down. The first order of the day was always the hardest, and his first client that day only made it harder. He downloaded and printed off the invoice that some pencil pusher had authorised and signed in triplicate. Little Sally White was scheduled to die that morning at the ripe age of 8, and Finneas was to be her usher. He sighed as he started to move out. He held out his arms and phased to the world of the living.

Finneas hated watching how it happened, but he could never manage to look away. Sally was playing with other little girls on the playground during recess. She smiled and laughed as girls are wont to do. Suddenly, and without warning, her skull burst open from a large calibre bullet that was shot through her head. Assassinated, though wrongfully so; the sharpshooter had the wrong mark. His real target was Kenyan president and radical reformist Jomo Asabi. An easy mix-up, but cost the girl her life nonetheless.

The reaper sighed again and walked towards the fallen corpse of Sally White. The playground was vacant now, not that anyone would be able to perceive Finneas even if it weren't. He summoned his spectral scythe and gently glided it across the body, freeing the soul of the lost girl. He would try to make a point of not talking with clients, as emotional attachment could compromise his job performance. But the newly dead are always so vocal.

"Are you death?" the soul once known as Sally White said, looking at the reaper before her, "The grim reaper?" It was always that question that would break him.

"I am a grim reaper. We are many, and we are all death. I am here to usher your soul to the hereafter." Finneas was easily agitated by human misconceptions. One reaper messed up his planar phasing hundreds of years ago and appeared to the living and the humans haven't been able to stop talking about him.

"Are you taking me to heaven? Can I bring my doll?" the soul asked with a sweet, yet sad voice.

"You may bring nothing. You may say no goodbyes. The world of the living is behind you. As to your destination, I cannot say; it is not my decision. Come now. We travel to the Crossroads." Finneas opened the spectral gateway that lead to the Crossroads and ushered his client through.

There before them, at the Crossroads, lay the myriad paths of the afterlife. "Where do I go from here?" asked the lost soul.

It was not Finneas' job to play tour guide, but he felt sorry for the little soul. "Make your way down to the reception area down that way," Finneas pointed down a long corridor. "If you are an old soul, you may regain the memories of past lives. From there you may apply to one or more of the various heavens, though I warn you, they're fairly exclusive. You may also put yourself on the wait list for reincarnation if you so desire." Finneas then slumped his shoulders a bit. "Your last option is to come the the underworld, which, to be honest, your kind makes out to be a lot worse than it really is. What that, I make my leave." Finneas made his leave.

As he phased back into his office, Finneas could still hear the farewell he had been given. "Thank you, kind usher," the soul had said. He was rarely thanked for his services, rarely called kind and rarely referred to as usher. He tried to clear his mind and clicked on his next client's profile. An old man on his deathbed, soon to die of heart failure. Finneas got up and left.

"Leaving so soon, Grimm?" Claire, the wraith secretary said to the passing reaper. "You just got here."

"I'm taking the rest of the day off. It has been too long since I have had a vacation. Redirect my clients to somebody else"

"But the bureaucra-"

"Tell them to take their time. The clients won't be going anywhere. Unlike me."

With that, Finneas left the nondescript office building in which he worked. He walked on down to the bar he typically frequented. The proprietor Horris McGillicutty greeted him as he always did. "Well if it ain't grim Finn Grimm."

"Please stop calling me that," Finneas snapped, "It wasn't funny the first 568 times either."

"But your reaction does it for me every time," Horris smiled. "So what'll it be?"

Before Finneas had a chance to respond, the foundation supporting the building suddenly collapsed.

Name: Harjaxxis Agraksis
Race: Human (Damned)
Age: 55
Sex: Male
Class: Merchant
Looks: (At the end of the day, not as) Sinister (as his name suggests)
Special Ability: Price Gouge (1 Hour Cooldown)

"Oh, the prices you pay for your souls," waxed Harjaxxis Agraksis, "and how happily thou art do so, never questioning unforeseen hikes nor the mystery taxes!"

Harjaxxis was the proprietor of a crooked soul emporium like many others in the land of the damned. The soul trade enjoyed many buyers from all walks of life and death, be they the SoulSnuff yuppie addicts, the builders relying on the structural integrity of SoulBond mortar, the pretentious interior decorators and their SoulBottles containing the most eye-catching and gimmicky spiritual energies, etcetera. Souls were among the most valuable commodities by reason of sheer versatility alone, closely matching dragon’s gland and nearly exceeding cyclops’ smile in Gilder per gram.

Harjaxxis was a man doing a brisk, and morally questionable, business. No one party in Hell had taken it upon themselves to discover exactly what souls were and how many remained, it was a topic that demon philosophers philosophized about gratuitously hoping that it would wound epistemologies and shatter minds. Brain hemorrhages among the thinking class were common. Not only that, but the soul trade was almost totally without any regulation or control, it was an industry about which bureaucrats and legislators salivated and drooled profusely at the simple consideration. Some were known to die of dehydration.

It was then that the shopkeep Agraksis, in the midst of a typical workday, received a call. At that moment he sat at a counter crowded with decorative vials and small, neatly organized boxes, a counter upon which an ancient bone phone rattled ominously. Harjaxxis reached towards it with wiry, soulmangling fingers.

"Ah, Moorgrey! Always a pleasure, friend. Calling to confirm my day's order? ...No? In that case, my dear Moorgrey, wha-"

His ear twitched and Harjaxxis paused, knocked off balance, for just a moment, "Well I don't give a cerberus' curse what happened to the bloody node, a deal's a deal and I'm expecting my shipment! I have a lot riding on today!"

The buzz on the other end of the line caused Harjaxxis' eyes to widen and his rage to sink deeper.

"Moorgrey! Do you remember what I told you would happen should you fail to deliver? ...Unreasonable, I'm anything but! To the death, Moorgrey, I said to the death! ... You died a generation ago? Well, it'll probably be worse this time! ... You've heard the opposite? TO THE DEATH, MOORGREY!"

Harjaxxis violently smashed the bone phone back into its magic cradle, utterly destroying the priceless artifact of telecommunications myth and legend. He instantly regretted doing so the second later in which he realized that to arrange Moorgrey’s seriously well-deserved (and previously warned of) execution he needed to make another call which meant finding another telephone.

He sighed and weighed his laziness against his lust for Moorgrey’s death.

“Perhaps I won’t kill Moorgrey.”

Harjaxxis needed to set himself up with a new supply of souls, and quickly, for reasons that he chose not to reveal to the narrative quite yet.

A sudden explosion of light and sound, and a crowd of bodied souls fled the streets before him. A full block of the underworld was now literally sinking. In a desperate attempt to avoid plummeting to their respective double-dooms, a hoard now approached.

Professor Wryvil suddenly knew why. The district he now stood in was one of the poorest in the Underworld. The soul-plate beneath was old and poorly maintained. The supporting soul-pillars had probably been rotting for ages, neglected. No one really knew how bad it was. A combination of strikes and sell-offs had delayed the routine inspections, and now the price was being paid by innocent souls.

Dodging the oncoming rush of people, Dipp watched as the massive stalagmite market disappeared to the under-levels below. The hellphone in his pocket buzzed; and Dipp knew who it was before he even picked up.

“Dipp…” said the Underworld State Secretary, “did you feel it? “

“Painlord…” Dipp replied, still in shock, “I’m 20 feet away. If I’d walked across the street to buy a fireflower, I’d be in the soul mines by now.”

“The souls will be pardoned. They’ll all avoid double-doom.” Underworld State Secretary, Painlord Mindgut replied.

“We can’t go on like this, Painlord. We can’t expect the redeemers to catch everyone.”

“Enough of your fear-mongering, Dipp. I’m calling the advisors tomorrow. You will be there.” Painlord said harshly. “I need all hands on deck for this one.”

[Dipp Sevonn Wryvil used DIPLOMACY]

He hung up. It seemed he’d gotten out of the meeting, but at a price. Using his special power was becoming increasingly exhausting; and right now Dipp wanted nothing more than to sink his teeth into a ripe government conspiracy.

Xazx Eugine Soulmonger ran as fast as he could down the crumbling mineshaft. His mind was blank, only thinking about escape and of his father. His father... How he'd be smiling right now. 'At least you've got your dignity... Oh wait, no that's gone too,' he would say.

Damned pencil pushers, Xazx thought once more. Rocks were fall all around him as he dived and tumbled his way through the twisting corridor. This soulsplosion would rupture the entire shaft, he knew. Poor maintenance and pencil pushers were to blame. As he ran, Xazx came to a small clearing, where he was greeted by danger.

There, standing in the middle of a clearing, was a particularly ghoulish looking soul. This soul was clearly at least three or four weaker souls amalgamated together... It looked part bear, part tree, part owl. The soulsplosions had clearly woken it from its hypernaptosis of hibersoulnation. It was an Entbeast alright, but Xazx was a Soulmonger. He knew how to handle souls.

Xazx vs. Owlbear Entbeast (Firstclass) --- BEGIN FIGHT !!

Xaxz dodged to the side as the Owlbear shot lasers from its eyes. It opened its mighty beak to let out a roar, causing hundreds of Soulhornets to fly from its mouth. 'Damn,' Xazx thought, 'this thing must be at least Secondclass Forest Type.' He tried to think of all the things he had to prepare for... Soulhornets and lasers were a given, but what of-

A skydolphin appeared. 'No! This this is a FIRSTCLASS!' Xazx thought in a panic. Skydolphins and soulhornets were one thing, but if it summoned a Shimmerbeast, he'd be done for. He had to end this quick.

Sending waves of lightning from his hands, Xazx dispersed the Skydolphin back to the Realm of Thought and Rhythm, where Skydolphins were from. He rolled out of the way of the incoming soulhornet swarm, diving under the Owlbear's legs. Jumping on his back, he readied his Rend Soul ability.

[Xazx Eugine Soulmonger used REND SOUL]

"Owl-fair well," Xazx quipped, slicing the mighty beast into ribbons. He bent over, collecting up the soul shards from the beast's husk. These might come in handy later. Soulshards had a hundred uses.

WINNER Xazx --- END FIGHT !!