Strange Choirs

Editor's Note: "With Xanxost away eating its way through the Inner Planes, I've enlisted a red slaad of my acquaintance, Qatmos. Qatmos isn't as helpful as Xanxost, but it's very hard to find slaadi willing to write books at all. Of course, what you get is a book filled with doodles, crumpled paper, parts of various meals, and remnant illusion magic. Fortunately, some hired Xaositects were actually able to make sense of it. There's such a delicious feeling of contrast from trying to force slaadi writings into a standard format, don't you think?" - The Editor

Hello mortals! This is Qatmos, who is very hungry. Who is very hungry? Qatmos, that's who! Sometimes Qatmos calls itself Xanxost, because Xanxost is famous and Qatmos hungers for glory. Qatmos tires of this game! Bring me your finest elves and sneezes! That was a slaadi impression, mortals! Do you know who it was of? Neither does Qatmos! It must have been of someone.

Maybe it was Xanxost!

Maybe it was an eladrin. Eladrin laugh with slaadi, not against them. They laugh at slaadi jokes. Not like those archons.

Hated, mewling, boring, sycophantic, despicable, meddling archons...

Look, mortal! Qatmos is pretending its foot is an archon! It is going poo!

Lots of slaadi pretend to be Xanxost. Sometimes Qatmos wonders if the real Xanxost is still alive.

The eladrin are still alive! It is easy to kill a coure. They melt in Qatmos' mouth, just like a Limbic hydrogen snow cone. Qatmos is so hungry! Tulani are hard to kill! Instead, Qatmos brings them headless mice and drops them on their porch. Sometimes, Qatmos plays with their hair. Sometimes Qatmos brings them headless hares.

Qatmos loves eladrin hair! It is like solid whispers, or a still stream disappearing into a land of flame. Do you like those, mortal? Too bad: they are Qatmos'. You cannot have them, unless you best Qatmos in a drinking contest.

Or a smoking contest.

Or a skiing contest.

Or a beauty contest! Qatmos would win that hands down! Flippers down? Qatmos loves songsharks. They are almost as pretty as Qatmos. Eladrin are pretty, too! In their wide eyes and beneath their flesh glimmers the shimmering weirdlight of chaos, just like in Limbo! Qatmos put a smiley face on the "o," mortal, because Limbo makes Qatmos hungry!

Qatmos and Xanxost are twins. We were born from the same host. Or maybe they were different ones. Maybe we did not come from hosts at all. Qatmos does not know! Who is this Xanxost we are talking about? Qatmos is too hungry to know. Qatmos also needs a smoke. A smoke mephit would be very tasty! Are coure related to mephits?

Wait, do not answer. Eladrin questions are Qatmos' specialty! Coure are not related to mephits, although Qatmos once cut a coure and a mephit in half, switch their tops, and sewed them back together. They looked so funny!

The coure did not think it was funny, so Qatmos left those lovers alone. Xanxost and Qatmos are lovers. All red slaadi and blue slaadi love each other. Slaadi so horny! Wait, no. Red and blue slaadi hate each other! Except on godsday, when we all find a green slaad and smell it.

Green slaadi smell pine fresh!

Eladrin smell like cloves, and poppies, and beer.

Eladrin smell like ginger, and Queen Anne's lace, and woodsmoke. Xanxost needs a smoke!

Editor's Note: Xanxost is away, eating its way through the Inner Planes. In the meantime, we bring you Qatmos, a red slaad. Qatmos isn't as helpful as Xanxost, but it's very hard to find slaadi willing to write at all...

Qatmos has put the editor's note in the wrong place! Aho! Qatmos has kindled the fires of Chaos in this book!

Coure aren't as chaotic as Qatmos. This is because they always try to help, not harm. They don't help Qatmos eat them! This is also because coure still remember being petitioners. Wait, no. Some coure were whimsical thoughts rising from the Astral Plane like steam from a hot corpse. Some coure were the children of two or three or sixteen other coure. Once Qatmos saw a rilmani explode, hatching dozens of little coure the eladrin had infected her with!

That was so entertaining! It was like getting candy from a piñata!

That is how red slaadi make blue slaadi. Only sometimes we get bored and do it another way. It does not always work! Sometimes we make green slaadi.

Green slaadi are minty fresh!

Eladrin are fresh, too. They always want to pinch Qatmos. Qatmos wants to pinch them! We have such good times together.

Sometimes eladrin change, like chaos beasts and slaadi. If an eladrin spends a lot of time in the water it will grow gills. If it spends a lot of time in the dust and snow of Pelion it will grow tough and quick. If it takes to the sky it will grow wings. If it takes to the swamps it will grow flippers, like Qatmos. Eladrin draw strength from stone. They draw quickness from wind. They draw passion from flame. They draw endurance from trees.

Not like slaadi. Slaadi grow better from change and flux and creation and destruction, from randomness and disorganization.

When an eladrin has experienced enough chaos and liberty and benevolence and fire and trees and mountains and water and fire and alcohol and smoke and food, it is ready to purge itself of contaminants and become more of a part of the plane. Then, it finds Arborean spirits who cover it a cocoon woven of airless bubbles, waterless currents, and monkey philosophy. They are woven of the charity of clouds, the love of worms, and the joy of shadow. The Arborean nature spirits: the dryads and the oreads and satyrs and sylphs and tritons and sunbirds and lunar shades and monsters-under-the-bed and beastlords and might-have-beens and salamanders and Jack Frosts and hero-hoods. The Arborean nature spirits take the cocoons to secret places while they absorb the essence of the plane like a psychic battery, or like our Spawning Stone. When they emerge, the eladrin are purer and stronger, and capable of new roles. A firre becomes a ghaele firre. A noviere shiere becomes a firre noviere shiere. A tulani bralani becomes a ghaele tulani bralani.

Did you like that, mortals? Xanxost is a hack compared to Qatmos. A hack!

Qatmos was once hacked at by eladrin. We made a game of it. No, Qatmos did not win. To win, you need rules. Rules are for modrons.

Sometimes, Qatmos feels like going to Mechanus and killing modrons.

Sometimes Qatmos gets as far as Tradegate or the Tower of the Arcanoloths or the City of Brass before Qatmos gets hungry or sexy or sleepy or jiggy or stupid or scary or ginger or quantum or undead and does something else.

Qatmos isn't sure where Mechanus is, anyway.

The modrons know where Mechanus is! And the eladrin know where petitioners are.

The petitioners are everywhere. The eladrin look for the ones who wonder about more than what goes on in their little realms, the artists and philosophers and children and dreamers and liars. They hunt for them in Arborea and Ysgard and Beast Country, and they steal them from the gods and the guardinals and the slaadi. The slaadi do not mind. When they find petitioners they want, they kidnap them and replace them with witch-logs and puppets and cattle and shapeshifted eladrin so the powers won't know they're gone. Then they take them to the eladrin lands and give them to the spirits. Later, they come back and unwrap the cocoons. Sometimes there is just a petitioner, and the eladrin eat it.
Wait, no. They let it go, sending it home forever changed by the experience. Sometimes the pet accepts the spirits' gift and it emerges as a coure. It is so funny! It makes Qatmos hungry.

Eladrin art sometimes makes me hungry. Sometimes it makes me gasp or cry or sing or scream or shout or laugh or play or dance or sneeze or begin to understand what "teamwork" is. Qatmos was talking with an eladrin and an archon at an exhibition held by the rilmani. When Qatmos circles the "A" in RILMANI it means anarchy. When Qatmos circles the "A"s in SLAAD it means double anarchy. When Qatmos circles the "A"s in ANARCHY it means quadruple anarchy.

Wait, Qatmos takes that back. It only means triple anarchy. Qatmos thinks. You count the word ANARCHY itself, and the one "A," and the other "A" ... yes.

Anyway, the archon (stupid, arrogant archons ... hated, anemic archons ... dancing, biting archons ... screaming, dying archons...)

Anyway, the archon was critiquing the eladrin's work. He said, "That's not art! A lantern could do that!"

The eladrin said, "That was the point. I intended it to be the expression of a young celestial bathing in the River Oceanus during a storm brought on by a gate town being siphoned into the Outlands."

Pretty good, eh, Mortal? Qatmos sounded just like them.

The archon thought that was ridiculous. "That is ridiculous," he said. "It's nothing of the sort! You just made a blobby lot of scribbles! It's not even properly framed! And that isn't paint!"

"Fight," Qatmos told them. Sometimes eladrin and archons fight. "Eat each other!"

They glared at Qatmos. Qatmos glared back, then saw a pretty spire butterfly and tried to smoke it.

It was so pretty! It danced with the shining, draining light of law and chaos and good and evil and youth and age and full and empty and rich and poor and paper and plastic. It shivered before Qatmos' questing flame and drank of Qatmos' magic.

The eladrin continued. "It's not just the storm-marks. You have to dance in it, and sing to it, and drink from it. That's the art." The eladrin was still talking about the art. Only Qatmos was looking at the butterfly. The archon got very angry. How can you judge something like that? Anyone can do that!

Qatmos doesn't know how or if or who or when the conversation ended. Qatmos was off cow tipping. Qatmos hopes it did not miss them fighting. Eladrin are the only ones who understand slaad art. The lillendi are the other only ones. Other people can't tell it from the rest of LNmbo's soup. Qatmos put a skull and crossbones above the "i" in Limbo because it loves skulls and crossbows. Bones. Qatmos is hungry.

Good-bye, mortals.

(Qatmos would like to thank Galen Musbach for reminding it of the link between children and coure. Galen Musbach is the most clever of all the musbachi. Do you like Qatmos' plural form, mortals?)

(And Heregul would like to thank Rasgon for allowing him to post this wonderfully funny piece on his website.)