Phoodle
Part of a Series on the Barmies who reside in the Gatehouse of the Bleak Cabal
(Planar human [he/him] / alignment unknown)
Some of the cases we got here are real sad ones. Don’t spread the word, but there are some barmies that even we’re in the dark as to how to deal with them. Usually in these cases, we bring in an expert high-up psionicist, who has experience in mind-fixing. They weren’t able to fix Phoodle. That poor sod just stares at you, and then wanders off.
Phoodle was found in Mechanus, where a group of Guvners found him wandering without purpose or a mind — a dangerous thing in the Plane of Perfect Law. He was lucky he wasn’t scragged by the modrons! Well. They brought him with them back to Sigil, and charitably handed him over to us. We tried helping him, but he don’t sodding react to anything we’ve tried! Phoodle sits, stands or wanders where he is. Slightly crouched, and with a stare looking beyond anything we can see. After a week of trials with different forms of therapy, we decided to give him a cell in the Criminally and Irretrievably Insane Wing of the Gatehouse. It was two weeks later when we realised the major problem with Phoodle: This cutter walks the planes. Every month he reaches a different plane. No. He doesn’t teleport, nor does he exactly plane-shift. Wherever he is at the time, that place shifts with him and becomes part of the plane he reaches!
On the first day of the month, when one of the wardens looked in on Phoodle he was surprised to find that his cell door opened up not to Phoodle’s cell but to onto a glorious Arcadian vista. Since the poor barmy has no mind, we had to send a party in to find him (and to find out how the heavens he managed to do that — in addition to making sure the other factions don’t discover out our inmates running free range through the planes). Well, we got him back, but he was just the same. Staring, mindless, drooling a bit — nothing out of the ordinary for the Gatehouse. The only thing was, that now we had a cell door that opened into Arcadia. And the Arcadians didn’t like having a doorway stood in the middle of nowhere upsetting the view! Trouble is, he did the same to the next cell, and again we found him wandering in Arcadia (although the first cell did return to normal when the second cell shifted). The following month we had a couple of archons return him from Mount Celestia (boy did we apologise to them on that one!). I’m sure you get the picture by now.
Over the next few months he visited Bytopia, Elysium, the Beastlands, Arborea and is now in Ysgard. After Bytopia we found that if we set up a stone pillar and chain him to it, the pillar shifts with him, and that way we didn’t have to go looking for him each time. For Ysgard however, we had to rustle up an armed group of custodians as it seems that the locals didn’t like him staring around like that and challenged him to battle.Â
According to his track so far, he should be arriving in Limbo next, and then start off through the lower side of the ring. This part should already be hard, as the inhabitants of these planes aren’t as friendly as the ones he’s already been to.
Our mages are now preparing a special kind of cage or cell, to prevent his planeshifting, or to protect him in the different planes he’ll be reaching. It depends who you ask. But is he planeshifting? That shouldn’t be possible in Sigil. Is he somehow attracting portals to himself? Or were they always there? Or is his imagination doing it?
I better check up on them. We’re nearing the end of the month, and Factol Lhar will be angry with me if I let a troop of slaadi tromp through the Gatehouse entering through Phoodle’s cell.
Oh! Phoodle? Why Phoodle? Well. We didn’t really have a name for him, but when we brought him down the long hall to his cell, one of the other barmies started yelling some barmy screed, and then kept shouting “Phoodle Phoodle Phoodle!”, so the name stuck.
Source: Dave (Draegarius)
