Xaos
The Plane of Concordant Opposition at the center of the Great Ring is a large and mostly hospitable place, excepting maybe a few of the gate-towns. Bedlam, at the gate to Pandemonium, used to be a Bleaker sanitarium before the inmates rioted, killed or drove out the staff, and declared themselves an independent nation-state. In Plague-Mort, the gate-town to the Abyss where merchant-adventurers trade with demons, the beggars take care to stay impoverished and miserable and empty-pursed; whenever they get two pennies to rub together the burning armies come and they pillage and burn. Hopeless, where the Outlands meet the Gray Waste of Hel, was conquered by the Dragon of Thorns, Jardiniedeepines, six years ago. Most cutters call it an improvement.
Out Chaos way there’s the town of Xaos, where the Outlands melt into the churning seas of Limbo. Xaos used to be a sort of anarchic artist’s colony, where they sculpted the raw chaos-stuff into beautiful transient things and people and people-things. Late-night dance parties, erotic art, music of the spheres, you know: romantic. A generation back, though, the slaadi came in force from their nests in deep Limbo and before any of the crafters or the loam-tamers knew it the slaadi were in charge. And once slaadi have infested a place, there’s no getting rid of them.
Most of the time the slaad rule is a blessing: they know greatest secrets of chaos-working in the multiverse, enough to spin cobweb palaces and rivers of wine. Birds sing pretty songs, and there’s always music in the air. But it ain’t all smiles and sunshine. Twice a year the Great Gray Maggot rolls over in its bed and declares either a Red Tax Day or a Blue Tax Day. The color may vary, but the tax is unchanging: one percent of the nonslaad population of Xaos is rounded up and caged. The residents know the price of living in Xaos, but surprisingly few are willing to trade luxury for freedom.
The ultimate fate of the caged depends on the color of the Tax Day, but it’s as one to the victims. The word is gruesome. On the Red Tax Day, blue slaadi rip out their gastrointestinal tract and spit syrup into their abdomens, syrup that spreads throughout their bodies and hardens and transforms the poor mortals into larval red slaadi. On the Blue Tax Day, red slaadi inject their eggs into the bellies of the victims, eggs that drain the life from their hosts until they swell up and burst and larval blue slaadi tear out of them.
The Great Gray Maggot, linked as it is to the Shaping Stone in the heart of Limbo, can and does bless the larvae, allowing them to grow into mature slaadi. Every hundredth blue slaad emerges green, not blue — but the Great Gray Maggot doesn’t want competition, and rather than bless the green larvae it eats them.
Most places the slaadi infest go to the dogs sooner or later. Xaos used to be all ramshackle huts, crumbling studios, and rivers of raw magic. Maybe not someplace you’d want to live, but an attractive tourist spot. Now it’s all honeydew and glamour and casual murder. Unseemly, you ask me. Plus, the Tax Days are declared basically randomly, and the townies are always hoping to get visitors ganked instead of their own. The risk is too big for most of the trading companies; trade through there has dwindled down to nothing since the Great Gray Maggot rolled in. It’s damping the whole economy out Chaos way. Someone oughta do something.