@Device(PostScript)
@Make(Report)
@Style(Spacing 1.5, Leftmargin 0.75 inch, Rightmargin 0.75 inch,
       SingleSided, Font = TimesRoman, Size 10)

@comment(Set these values appropriately for each character profile)

@string(name="Hazarnaveth ullo-Elam Gomer ")
@string(realname="Hazarnaveth ullo-Elam Gomer ")
@string(playername="Player Name")
@string(id="873833")

@include (/mit/abstract/Characters/Sheets/cover.mss)



@MajorHeading(@value(realname))

You've lost track by now of how many times you've asked yourself this,
but the question remains:  how in the Six Planes do you keep getting
yourself caught up in messes like this?  The gods know you aren't
@i(seeking) adventure, what have they got against you?  

Perhaps you shouldn't complain all @i(that) much.  At the very least,
you've had the opportunity to catch up on your sleep the last couple
of days, although from what people tell you, you missed out on an
awful lot of excitement.  Thank the gods for that; it was the first
chance you'd gotten to sleep in nearly a week.

By temperment and training, you are a bard, an artist, a performer.
You were introduced to the field of magic long ago, and discovered in
it a quite useful bag of tricks--mostly illusory in nature.  You
met Mahalael Jeremiah when you were both apprentices, longer ago than
you care to think about, and you helped each other out on a number of
the Trials.  You became fast friends, and he has gotten you into more
trouble since then than you ever dreamed possible.

It's not that he means any harm, it's just that the boy is a trifle
overenthusiastic.  Where you would rather curl up by a warm fire and
read a book, Jerry is always seeking adventure, knowledge, glory, and
so on and so forth.  It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't keep bringing
you along on his harebrained schemes, and if he didn't keep getting
into trouble himself.

This latest fiasco is a perfect example.  Jerry got it in his head to
start working on a "secret weapon" in the war against the East, what
he called an "anti-manna bomb."  The idea was simple (Jerry's ideas are
@i(always) simple, at least when @i(he) explains them): the East is
only keeping the war going because of some sort of shield that keeps
Realm magic from penetrating its boundaries.  If they were deprived of
this magic shield, the war would be over, with the Realm as winners.
And Jerry had what was actually a good idea for how to deprive them of
it.

His idea hinged on a fairly obscure theory, based on the idea that all
manna in the other Five Planes comes from the Plane of Nairaphi.  As
the theory goes, the planar interfaces serve to modulate the manna flow
(he referred to the interfaces as "valves.")  By altering the nature
of that interface locally, you could reverse the polarity of the manna
flow, in essence draining a region of all its manna.  Spell-deva would
shrivel and vanish, items and artifacts would become disenchanted, the
amount of psychic energy available to those caught within it would be
drastically reduced.  In short, the perfect weapon to throw against a
magic-shielded enemy.

Of course, there were engineering problems -- lots of them.  Most of
them you solved, after enough hard work, but you were left with a big
one that just wouldn't go away: range.  The artifact you had created
would have its effect for about a 10 foot radius, not nearly enough to
make it effective as a military weapon.  You had but to find some way
to increase that range, and the project would be finished.  At least,
that was how Jerry felt about it.  While you weren't too keen on the
idea of building yet another weapon, it occurred to you that this
"anti-manna bomb" would be really useful to clean up manna-soaked
regions (especially important with the Time of Trials coming up).

Jerry did most of the work, since you had to put a fair amount of time
into your other "job," one he had no knowledge of.  In addition to
being a bard and mage, you have for many years been affiliated with
the Shadow Guard, a band of undercover law-enforcement officials
directly answerable to the Head of Internal Security.  Your latest
assignment has been to bust up the Thieve's Guild's black market
unlicensed narcotics operations.

If someone had told you five years ago you would end up a cop, an
@i(undercover) cop, of all things, you would have laughed in their
face.  While there are those who would die to make a great song, you
would rather live and sing it; that has always been your motto.  But
when your brother Meyer died, well, you felt it your responsibility
to find out who killed him, and why.  And when you discovered he had
been purchasing black market drugs, and that someone had sold him a
poisonous batch ... well, you just @b(had) to get involved.  Meyer's
killer would have to pay.

The Head of Internal Security seemed understanding enough, and after
grilling you for the better part of an hour told you about the Shadow
Guard, and asked if you wanted to become one.  You thought about it
for awhile; it sounded dangerous, but on the other hand your brother's
killer needed to be found, and ... well, to make a long story short,
you accepted.  Insanity, it seemed, ran in your family.

Shortly thereafter, you found yourself hooked up with the Thieves'
Guild, dealing unlicensed drugs.  You've been thinking of it mostly as
a challenge of acting, and you @i(are) serving a useful purpose: in
addition to making sure your stock is untainted, you are also donating
your profits, through the Guard of the Realm, to help victims of
tainted drugs.  The incidence of addictions and poisonings in such
cases is shocking; yet people continue to purchase through the black
market, which supplies "better" drugs cheaper.  Sometimes you have
trouble understanding people, even the characters you play.
"Hazarnaveth Gomer, the drug dealer" is definitely a challenge.

Of course, your real purpose with the Shadow Guard is to keep the
Guard informed of the Thieves Guild's activities.  You keep thinking
that Nimrod should just swoop down and arrest the folks you have
uncovered, but you understand that were he to do that, your cover
would quickly be blown.  So the Guard just keeps an eye out for them,
until they do something they can be tried for.  And you continue
acting.  

You've never been a brave man when there's no need to be; you haven't
tried to sneak information out of the Guild or otherwise break
character.  So it's kind of ironic that when you finally got into
trouble because of your dual role, it wasn't the Guild that caught
you, but the Guard.  Specifically a youngster named llo-Guard Aram,
who spotted you dealing tailchaser moss to a couple of seedy old men,
and put you under arrest.  Talk about an acting challenge!

Of course, Nimrod got you out quickly enough, but the delay proved
nearly devestating.  When you returned home, you tried to contact
Jeremiah to inquire as to his progress: no answer.  You visited his
home, and it had been ransacked.  Jerry was missing.  You went from
there to your workshop, where you had been working on the project, and
he wasn't there, either.  You reported this all to Nimrod, but he
wasn't able to be particularly helpful, as you could give him no
leads.

When it became obvious that Jerry was really @i(gone), you started to
worry.  As far as you knew, the only thing he was up to that anybody
would object to was his project with you, and if they got him while
you were in jail, maybe you were next!

You aren't, and never have been, a fighter.  An artist, yes.  A mage,
yes.  An actor, a bard -- even a Guard and a drug dealer -- your roles
are diverse, but not when your life is at stake.  In this particular
case, you realized you had one chance to stop being a target, namely,
getting the project done and out of your hands, where you no longer
mattered.  

You spent several days working 24 hours on constructing the bomb, as
even with its 10-foot range it would still be enough to impress the
Table of Peers into using it.  But you had to get it to them soon, not
only to get the pressure off of your own back but also to make sure
the Peers weren't tricked into accepting terms in this peace summit
before they knew of the Realm's new secret weapon.

That's when the real oddities started.  You had decided to trigger the
artifact, at low efficiency, as a test run.  You did so, making sure
to stay out of range.  The artifact worked as planned, draining the
energies of your test items, causing your levitating glow-globe to
darken and fall--in those particulars, it worked perfectly.  And then
it vanished, in a shower of blue sparks.  Pretty fireworks they were,
too, but not at all what you expected; the bomb was gone.

You still had all the notes for its creation, but no time and no
materials to build it again.  More to the point, you had to make sure
the notes didn't get into anyone's hands.  Transferring the notes onto
the back of a large canvas, you covered them with a painting -- nobody
would think twice about an artist with a painting, you figured.
You've always had eidetic imagery, incredibly useful both in your
painting and your illusion-casting, so painting the canvas to cover
the notes was practically no effort.  You chose "The Wizard", an
incredibly eerie piece you had seen in the Capital City Art Gallery
some time ago; truth was you had been meaning to do a version of it
for awhile.  @i(That) kind of emotional effect, if you could have
duplicated it, would have been impressive.

But you failed, in a very puzzling manner.  Most of the painting,
you're fairly certain, you reproduced faithfully.  One portion,
though, eluded you completely.  The book lying on the pedestal had
some interesting runes on it, but try as you could, you could remember
nothing but a blur.  So instead you wrote in your own message, signing
the piece in archaic runes.  Your version was technically perfect, but
it simply didn't have the same power.  Oh, well, that's why they pay
the masters the big money.

What's even more puzzling, though, is a report you heard about the
other day, from Nehemiah Abraam, the Gallery's curator.  It seems
there was a break-in recently, and two paintings were stolen:
"The Wizard," artist unknown, and "The Sigil," by Hazarnaveth
Gomer.

You remember when you painted "The Sigil," it was shortly after you
entered the Conclave.  What really impressed you about it was the way
the image came to you, like a bolt out of the blue, and completely
original.  Normally, your technique was to wait until you saw an
impressive scene, memorize it, and paint it ... "The Sigil" was the
first and only time you had painted an original scene.  You were and
are quite proud of it, and you're more than a little upset that
someone stole it.  But you are even more confused than you are upset.
Why those two paintings?  Coincidence, perhaps, but an unusual one.

The mystery became even more entangling when you arrived on the
Castle.  First off, everything magical on the Castle seemed to go
wrong at once, and much of it still is.  Secondly, you spotted
Jeremiah in a courtyard, playing a bizarre game of tag with two
unidentified purple lizards that presumably escaped from the menagerie
-- you called to him, and he ran off.  That's not like him at all;
what could have happened to him?

And just before you came to the Castle, there was some sort of big
shake up in the Thieve's Guild.  You don't know the exact details, but
it has something to do with the bigwigs that run the organization, the
Shadow Cabinet.  The word had come down from on high that the Guild
was going to be running a gambling operation on the Castle, and needed
big prizes to draw big spenders.  They were calling for "donations" of
valuables as the prizes, the only stipulation being that they couldn't
be "hot".  Figuring you needed to do something to make up for being
picked up by the Guard, you offered a second copy of "The Wizard" to
the Guild -- your gift makes it easy for you to reproduce on paper any
scene you've witnessed, you could have made any number of copies,
given time.  You should probably find out why there's this big push
for cash in the Guild; maybe that will get Nimrod to forgive your
being arrested.

Too many mysteries.  They give you a headache.  But you also get the
feeling that somewhere in this insanely tortured chain of cause and
effect is the makings of a really good song.  In any case, if you can
get a chance to talk to the Peers and convince them they've got a
powerful weapon on their hands, you'll be out of that particular
picture, hopefully before someone starts taking shots at you.  And you
should probably corner Jerry and get him to tell you what's going on.
Maybe with his help you could put together another version of the
device before the peace summit.  And in the meantime, there's always
the Thieve's Guild to keep track of -- rumour has it that the
Shadowlord, the Immortal himself (the idea of one man remaining vital
in that line of work for centuries is incredible, but does seem to be
the case...), is on the Castle in response to some kind of power
struggle amidst the upper echelons, the Shadow Cabinet.  While you
generally try to stay out of such things, you somehow keep getting
dragged into them...


@newpage

@section (Items and Abilities)

You have the following abilities:

@begin(itemize)

Weapon Skill, lipip 3

Eidetic Imagery

Artistic Ability

Magical Knowledge, level 2

Bard

Mage
@end(itemize)

You begin the game with the following items:

@begin(itemize)
An enchanted lipip, +2

A reasonably impressive copy of "The Wizard" with equations
hidden behind it

Several doses of hairaku(a hallucinogen), sensen(a
hallucinogen/amphetamine derivative), and tailchaser moss(an
amphetamine), pure.

Your harmonica

A set of leather armor

Your paints and brushes.
@end(itemize)

@newpage