The Conferences of Victor Gagné IV

A netzine article in Quoth the Raven Issue 27. The Conferences of Victor Gagné Part the Fourth; Out of the One, Many is a collaborative effort between series creator Benjamin Bauml and M.H. Bartels. The story details the further misadventures of protagonist Victor Gagné after his escape from the Shadow Rift.

Prequels and Sequels

This article is preceded by the Conferences of Victor Gagné III, and followed by the Conferences of Victor Gagné V.

Summary

Victor arrives at the Retreat, an expansive yet also claustrophobic estate owned by the mysterious Schlosser family. As promised to him by Charissa Schlosser in the previous issue, Priestess Lillian Schlosser is on hand to restore his life with the power of Brightwell, the 'Enemy of Ezra'. After his revival, the Schlosser sisters offer Victor their hospitality while he recovers from his ordeal.

Things take a twisted turn, however, when it transpires that Victor has not been restored to full life, but half-life. Existing now as a Dhampir, Victor suffers from repeated nightmares of a Demon assaulting him, and his memory and sanity suffer as a result. He receives some assistance from Genevieve, the youngest Schlosser sister, as well as a mysterious woman who appears in his dreams and guides him to the Retreat's lower levels.

Victor encounters Ivar Skytte and the Dread Doppelganger Paloma in what turns out to be the Retreat's dungeons, makes the acquaintance of the irritable World Engine, and discovers he is the guest of not a family of eccentric scholars, but rather of the Red Haunt. Worse, the World Engine reveals to Victor the existence of the Centurions of the Night and their vile intention of unleashing war throughout the Core and rebuilding the whole Demiplane of Dread from the foundations upward...

Once again, Victor has to struggle to escape from the claws of utter Evil.

Introduced in this Article

• A more in-depth, 3.5-compliant introduction of the goddess Brightwell, and the icons present in some of her temples.
• The Devoratrix, a variant Succubus Tanar'ri.
• The Red Haunt, a Devoratrix who placed a curse on herself to avoid having her memory rewritten, and has turned an unusual form of multiple personality disorder to a unique advantage, making herself "a qabal in one person".
• The World Engine; a technomagic computer with the power to twist time and space to a terrifying extent.
• The Dread Doppelganger Paloma.
• The Divinity in All-philosophy.