Editing Circle of Eight (section)

==Rary the Traitor==

But they all forgot about Rary.  Sitting in his tower, he turned edgelord and got feels about how Mordenkainen was, in truth, a gigantic asshole with few (if any) moral or ethical boundaries.  The way Rary probably saw it, Mordy had been using everyone since the start: his old buddies in the Citadel of Eight, the new band, and pretty much the whole world.

Rary calls up Robilar to compare notes and ask his opinion.  What he doesn't know is that Robilar got fucked on his last delve into Castle Greyhawk: he was swapped with an alternate version of himself called Bilarro (get it?), and Bilarro is quietly, very, thoroughly evil.  Rary, not thinking to run a ''detect evil'' spell on anyone and everyone he hasn't seen in a while - which makes it pretty standard protocol these days since DMs are evil bastards who do that kind of shit - doesn't know Robilar is literally not himself, and they hatch a plan. (Detect Evil would not have worked anyway. Robilar was always evil. He was just a good friend and an affable dude. His eviler duplicate was largely the same, but not a good friend.) 

The plan is that Mordy doesn't get to have his way anymore.  Rary goes to Greyhawk and basically sets up some kind of a magical trap that will destroy the normies trying to work out a peace plan.  He almost succeeded, but Bigby, Otiluke, and Tenser catch him in the act of the setup.  They are surprised at the face-heel turn, and Rary pulls out all the stops in trying to destroy them... and does so, killing Otiluke and Tenser and wounding Bigby.

Now, any decent D&D nerd will wonder, how the fuck a single wizard beat three others of similar power level.  It's not that hard to imagine.  First off, Rary refused to help the Greyhawk Wars any.  The others probably spent all their magic items, especially wands and staves and potions, trying to fight things like Iuz. Second, all three of the loyal Circle guys probably had already used some of their spells that day, laying out alarms and other magic security stuff so they could be sure if something went wrong elsewhere (let's not forget, some of those nations were still nursing grudges or other issues, so there was some tension in the room dealing with them). But the last thing to remember is that Rary was already prepared to destroy the Circle in his mind. He didn't hold back; he was going for a TPK again. The other guys probably wanted to at least restrain Rary and ask him what was up, find out if he had been cursed or otherwise tampered with magically, whatever it was that was making him murder his former companions. They might not want to fireball him to death, whereas Rary was fully committed to destroying the whole thing.

Mordy, smug as the asshole he is, thinks, "Well... fuck it, let's just clone more dudes!"  Unknown to him, Rary wasn't about to let that happen again: he sent out "Robilar" to ALL of the Circle's little hideouts, strongholds, and other places, and destroyed their backup clones, and anything else that could help bring them back to life.  "Robilar's" betrayal was the real shocker; he had never really cared for politics, but he had always been a very loyal and honorable man.  But whatever the reason, that treachery did the job.  Otiluke was more or less dead forever.  Tenser ended up surviving only because he literally had a place on one of the two moons around Oerth that NOBODY ever found out about, and had a backup clone there.

With that, the damage was done, and Rary and Robilar/Bilarro retreated to the Bright Desert (a dusty shithole that was once an ancient kingdom).