Bug Spray: A Kepheran Tragedy ----------------------------- Kraek Lerit'r was having an unexpectedly frustrating day. He had sold his perfumed sprays in a lot of places with great success (or at least, with reasonable success). He had even managed to convince the orchard tenders in the Clarramore Gardens to buy his special sprays, and they make perfumes for a living! But the lucidian found quickly enough that the Undervault was unlike any other place that he had been in his life as a perfumed spray salesman. After having a particularly hard time navigating the labyrinth of passages and caverns, escaping dangerous cave-fishers and mantekarrs by the cleavage of his cranium, he had finally arrived at the Akhari Hives - and in there, he had found the most challenging, uncooperative customers. While normally his perfumed sprays would sell out within moments like hot cakes, the kephera of the Hives regarded him with bug-eyed, astonished looks that made it seem as though he was trying to sell them pots of peep chili, or something equally heinous. Fruitlessly, he had tried to sell them perfumeries of varying scents: of citrus and strawberries and peaches, of roses and jasmine and lavenders, of vanilla and honey and chocolate. Yet, after two long, unrewarding weeks (and by the end, he had grown tired of living off of a meager diet that mostly consisted of strange saprophytic species, some of which glowed with a suspicious amount of bioluminescence), Kraek was unable to sell even one bottle. "What do these little bugs want?", thought Kraek in exasperation, glancing sidelong at his depressingly full and sweet-smelling briefcase. And indeed, not one of all the exotic and wondrous aromatics of the entire Basin seemed to attract the attention of the insectoids. The lucidian had just about accepted the fact that this strange continent that he had wandered into was just not the right market for his perfumeries, when a particularly pungent smell assaulted his nose. He turned around to look at the source: a cobalt blue banner, scuttling sideways towards one of the kephera warders stationed by the Hive entrance. Wait, that couldn't be it. Kraek rubbed his eyes and looked again. Upon closer inspection, he realized that an exceptionally small faeling was behind the banner. The lucidian watched with curiosity as the faeling hovered upto each kepheran and thrust the banner into each insectoid face. The kephera warders did not mind the scent of the banner, Kraek noticed, even though he could smell its nasty odour even from a few feet away. In fact, although each guard was shaking their head in disappointment at the faeling adventurer, they seemed particularly intrigued by its scent. "Hey, you there!", Kraek called out to the small faeling. "Oh?", the girl turned around, immediately noticing the perfumed wares. "Oh, I would love some perfumes! Do you have vanilla and jasmine?" The lucidian reflexively opened his briefcase and laid out his wares, picking out phials of vanilla and jasmine and mixing them together in his bottle. "So.. what's with that banner you're passing around?", he asked curiously as he handed out a bottle of vanilla and jasmine-scented perfume to the adventurer. "None of the bugs here would deign to even -look- at all the exotic perfumes that I have for sale, but they seemed really interested in the scent of your blue banner.." "Oh, this banner isn't -mine-...", replied the faeling, grinning sheepishly. "I am just helping Hive Queen Akhari find a suitable spouse to be the King!" Kraek leaned forward, clearly intrigued now. "Oh, do tell me more.." And it was then that the lucidian learned about the process of finding a Hive King. How the Hive Queen would rub the banner upon her thorax, imbuing the banner with the scent of her pheromones. How this scent was used to identify her perfect match. And, most important to Kraek, how the aroma of the pheromones was particularly attractive to the kephera race. "Could I take a look at the banner, Miss?", Kraek asked. "Of course! But don't take too long with it - I do have to find a match for the Queen very soon." "Oh, I would only need a moment with it.." Having been a distinguished perfume salesman of good repute for many years, Kraek was adept in the nature of aromas - specifically, which source would produce which sort of scent - and it did not take him an awful lot of time to whiff in the essence of the banner and identify a few possible sources that could replicate its particular odour. The banner smelled musty. Really musty, in fact - it had the particular phenolic odour that was only possessed by items that had been left abandoned in a damp cave and allowed to grow fungus all over. Once the musty undertones wafted away, an unpleasantly pungent smell akin to that of stink bugs came to the forefront. "Fungus, and insects...", Kraek thought to himself. "I could whip something up using the flora and fauna of the Undervault itself..." And thus he set out on a treacherous journey, fighting and fleeing from the dangerous creatures that inhabited the tunnels as he searched for his perfect ingredients. He found three that he surmised would replicate the banner's scent well. The first was a delicate spore that floated on the gentle breezes that occasionally graced the tunnels. Golden and extremly fragile. "Loti spores", a kephera scout had helpfully informed him. The spores possessed a light pungency that the lucidian deduced would help with his new concoction. Kraek found his next next ingredient - a fine source of bug-like aroma - in the strange inferno beetles that scuttled around on the walls of the cave. The striped beetles imparted a dull obsidian hue to the perfume as well as adding an insectoid essence to the brew. The last ingredient - a fungus of sorts - was the most readily available, and yet the hardest to acquire. It was only after pulling upon several mushroom colonies that grew in the labyrinthine tunnels, and fending off hungry mantekarrs that flew at his face, that Kraek was able to pick out a single pale mushroom. He could not identify the mushroom species (he couldn't find any scouts or convoys near him then, and did not have the time or energy to seek them out), but it possessed the exact sort of musty fungal odour that he needed for his special perfume. Kraek quickly and expertly crushed his ingredients together into different phials, then added them in precise measurements to an empty perfume bottle before mixing them vigorously. The concoction was a deep obsidian black, glowing with a soft, unnatural luminescence. He delicately brought the bottle to his nose, wafting in the strangely pungent odour. Perfect. This replicated the scent of the banner nicely. Kraek mixed together several bottles of his newest perfume (lovingly christened "Bug Spray"), and then triumphantly marched towards the Akhari Hives. "Bug Spray! Suited for kepheran tastes!", he called out, waving a small bottle of the concoction at the marching kephera on guard. "Smells just like pheromones!" Kraek Lerit'r had a brief flashback to the time he had triumphantly called out "Smells -just- like lavenders!" at the Clarramore Cloud Gardens. He was immediately swarmed by a glowing crowd of blue-carapaced kephera, and in a dizzying blur of insectoid claws, bottles, and gold sovereigns, all of his bottles of Bug Spray were sold out. When the crowd of guards dispersed, Kraek found himself face to face with a group of kephera nurses, a look of hope welling in their multicoloured, compound eyes. "We heard that your Bug Spray smells like the Queen?", one of the nurses asked hesitantly, nursing a rather large egg in her clawed lower arms. "Do you reckon that your spray will make us smell like Queens?" Being new to the Undervault, Kraek knew little about the rigorous trials that female kephera of the Hives went through to determine which body the Hive Queen's spirit reincarnated into. Most of them would fail the trial, and would resign themselves to the life of a nurse: taking care of the Queen's eggs and watching over the incubators. The perfumier's newest invention had sparked in them a glimmer of hope - that they too could live the luxurious life of a Hive Queen, that they too could be sought after by many suitors, that they would no longer need to spend their days watching over and taking care of eggs and hatchlings. "Of course, Miss!", Kraek flashed a pearlescent, crystalline smile at the nurses, crushing together spare ingredients into a new bottle. "With my newest Bug Spray, you too can smell queenly!" And thus a second batch of Bug Spray sold out, then a third, then a fourth. Soon, Kraek was searching for more ingredients and travelling to new Hives, where he was treated like a Saviour and showered with jewels to adorn himself with, silken robes to wear, and the most decadent of cuisine to feast upon. And of course, gold sovereigns. Thousands upon thousands of them. This was not such a bad place for customers, after all. Maybe he should stick around a while. "Aaaarggghh! What is happening to me?!", a reverberating shriek suddenly sliced through Kraek's mind, psionic waves overwhelming his brain with a piercing pain. The lucidian quickly turned around to find the source of the voice, when suddenly, more voices joined the first, cresting into an agonizing crescendo that forced him to the floor with his palms vainly covering his ears. All around him, kephera were falling on their backs, waving their arms about helplessly as their bodies slowly shriveled up and then went deathly still. "What is happening to us?", more psionic waves stung Kraek's brain like sharp blades and daggers as he turned to look at some of the remaining kephera - still alive - clutching their carapaces with three limbs and pointing accusingly at him with the fourth. "What did you -put- in your wretched perfume, you treacherous crystal?" "I didn't do anything, I swear!", Kraek protested, backing away nervously from the angry insectoids. "My Bug Spray contains nothing nefarious - just loti spores, inferno beetles, and luminous pale mushrooms!" "Luminous pale mushrooms?", shrieking sounds pierced the lucidian's brain. "You fool..", more intruding thoughts came after. "You idiot! Did you really put in a poisonous death's crown mushroom into your perfume?" "Death's crown-", faltered Kraek. The name sure sounded ominous. Not bothering to ask about the species of the strange mushroom he had picked out was coming back to bite him. "The death's crown mushroom is deadly poisonous! The eggs, the hatchlings!", pierced more voices, feminine ones this time. The nurses! They had sprayed it all over themselves, and they were constantly around the newborns! "You will pay for this, you little scoundrel!", the voices of the kephera warders throbbed in his mind in unison as they lunged at him with their tahtos and their shofas. Kraek Lerit'r did not waste a single second as he turned around and bolted for the nearest exit, abandoning his briefcase on the musty floor. The kephera were fast, but fortunately for the lucidian, he could outrun them in their incapacitated state. Indeed, his Bug Spray had been bought by just about all of the kephera of the various Hives, and as he ran, he left trailing behind him a sea of bodies that shriveled up and died as he made his swift escape. "What am I going to do now?", wailed Kraek to himself, as he stood in front of the Illwater Lake, pausing to take a breath. Something of this sort had never happened in all his years of work, nor had he imagined any incident of this magnitude to happen in his particular profession. "My perfumes, my gold! I left them all behind! What am I to do now?" What would happen to his reputation when word reaches of his misdeeds outside of the Hives? How would he ever hope to carry out his business again, when he had committed - oh, Lords, he had committed genocide! He would never have stepped foot in the Undervault if he had foreseen such a kepheran tragedy to befall the Hives due to his ill-fated Bug Spray. "Greetingsssss, Kraek Lerit'r...", a sinuous voice pierced the back of his mind. The lucidian swiveled around to face a well-dressed illithoid standing behind him. "My name isss Cyaratalegur. I am the Overssseer of the Illithoid Resssservoir.", the voice entered his mind again, although the illithoid stood still and motionless before his eyes. "H-hello..", Kraek replied, his voice not betraying a hint of nervousness. "Do not be afraid... We ssseek to hire you. We have heard that you are a ruthless and ssswift killer of kephera.."