Saryrn & Terris-Thule

The Mistress of Torment

Saryrn was born a woman of striking beauty. Now she is the Mistress of Torment and Pain, orderly evil, and she rules the Demi-Plane of Pain like a prison whose warden never sleeps.

Her habit is personal. She spends time among those cursed to live in her realm, seizing them at random and tormenting them in mind and body, and how long it lasts is just as random: a few moments, or months. Everyone in her plane lives knowing she may choose them next as her “partner.”

The black cube

Her plane is a huge black cube floating silently in the ether between the planes, shaped to reflect her cruelty. Its very matter is bound together by the suffering of those inside it, and the more pain it tastes, the stronger it grows.

Within, islands hang above a lake of blood, held up by barbed chains fastened to obsidian pillars and joined by suspension bridges. A fine mist of blood coats everything. Torture implements litter the islands, and the walls echo with moans, screams and rattling chains, and sometimes with Saryrn giggling or singing along to her victims’ pleas. At the centre stands the Citadel of Pain, blood streaming down its sides, its great glass windows giving her a view of the whole plane from her private rooms.

Why she does it

Her motive is almost tragic. The cube is as much a prison for her as for her victims, and she enjoys it, the way someone savours their own pain. Her anger and pain make up the fabric of the plane, and her hate-filled madness keeps her from wanting anything more. The creatures in the cube are manifestations of her pain and rage, and still she hunts for new victims outside it. The pain she gives feeds her own suffering, which drives her to lash out again: the emblem of torment itself.

Tylis and the Plane of Tranquility

Her reach found even the safest place in the Planes of Power. In the sick bay of the Plane of Tranquility, Fahlia Shadyglade tells how she found the young bard Tylis Newleaf moaning beside the reflecting pool, beneath a small black cube that had appeared floating above it. The elders believe the cube is a portal to Torment, and that Saryrn means to breed her suffering even into Quellious’s protected plane. In his agony Tylis keeps crying one name: Maareq.

Climbing Saryrn’s tower

To reach her, a raid first needed the flags of Bertoxxulous and Terris-Thule, then said “I will go” to Fahlia. One key opened the Tower of Saryrn for the whole raid, and each floor had its keeper: Salczek the Fleshgrinder, the Acolyte of Affliction, Ta`Grusch the Abomination, and on the fourth floor Maareq the Prophet.

When Maareq fell, Tylis appeared in a hanging cage. Hail him and he offered to “channel you into my pain,” drawing the raid into his mind to face the Keeper of Sorrows. Then it was up to the fifth floor to kill Saryrn and hail the Planar Projection, with Tylis asking you to “offer the dark wench my best.” Torment admitted those of level 55 without a key on live servers, and was meant for levels 55 to 65.

The Nightmare

Her counterpart rules the hours of sleep. Terris-Thule, the Dream Scorcher, the Nightmare, holds the Demi-Plane of Nightmares and delights in tormenting the innocent as they sleep. She is Cazic-Thule’s daughter, with an equal share of his cruelty, discordant evil. She stands over six feet tall and skeletally thin, her skin tinged with grey and her long black nails matching her slinky gown. Her face is smooth but for two empty black eye sockets, and long black hair flows back from two massive brass horns.

Her father once sent her into the dreams of the captive Mithaniel Marr, first to steal the gift of life from his body, then to fill his sleep with horrors. Her brother Morell-Thule, the King of Dreams, saw what she was doing, and the two have been enemies since.

The Plane of Nightmares

In the west of her domain grows a dense forest of gnarled trees whose bark twists into foul faces. The trees are aware and malevolent, and they spring to life when trespassers come near. A river runs through the forest and the barrows beneath it and falls into a lake. In the northwest stands a ruined cottage with a small graveyard for the realm’s mortal victims, and in the southwest caverns lurk her favourite minions, terrifying goblins that infect every mind and live both in astral space and on the primal world.

In the far east rises a plateau ringed with stones that look like a druid circle but pulse with life and death. Just looking at it has brought brave knights to their knees. That is her lair, and New Tanaan regularly hears of the foolishly brave who go in and never come out.

Thelin and the scattered dagger

The saddest story in her plane is Thelin Poxbourne’s. As a young man he studied the writings on fear that Zebuxoruk had translated for mortals from Cazic-Thule. Cazic-Thule invaded his mind, stripped him of everything, and cursed him to beg in East Freeport, unseen by every traveller. Years later a dwarf woman, in town to trade her family’s armour and weapons, took pity on him and pressed a jewelled dagger into his hand. It was the only gift he received under the curse, and he kept it.

In the Plane of Tranquility, Adroha Jezith tells how Thelin spent all his mana opening a portal to the Plane of Nightmares and went to bed early. Veriok Dreik believes the dagger is the key to saving him, for Terris-Thule broke it apart and scattered the pieces through a maze so he could never use it to escape. In the Plane of Nightmares the scout Kelletia is hunted by Terris-Thule and her henchmen for gathering those pieces, and the path ends with the construct of nightmares at the hedge maze, and with Terris-Thule herself.

Legacy

Terris-Thule returned in House of Thule in 2010. In the Erudin Burning nightmare she watches over the dream in person, and her minions give the trapped Erudites just enough hope to keep them dreaming, but never let them win. Saryrn’s afterlife became a joke: in 2006 Moorgard of the EverQuest II team claimed the vanished gods had become menders, with “Saryn, formerly of Torment” working in Beggar’s Court.