Drifter's Last Words

Hello, darlings. If you’re reading this, it means that you’ve bested me in combat - well done!
Before you celebrate my failure, I must tell the lot of you something. Whether you choose to believe my words is your prerogative, but I do rather hope you will take me seriously.
I was born long before the puppetmaster of your adventures - campaign, if you will - came into The Multiverse. A mere servant of the seductress Lilith, I was wasting away in the bowels of Maladomini where nothing interesting ever happened.
It was in my sixth century of being. My form in the Hells could never be replicated in a way that was satisfying to me here, but if I were to describe it to you, it would have been that of a cat that stands upon two legs? I digress.
That sixth century was when the whispers began. Whispers that the Multiverse’s vapid centerpiece was on the brink of a second extinction, lacking even the meager protections the First Calamity held. This, of course, piqued my interest in a way nothing down here had in centuries! However, I found no way to the Prime Material, until the words of a young woman - I believe you know her as your Goddess of Arcana - rang in my ears, myself a receiver of her desperate communion with reality.
She asked me if there was a way out. Of course, I did not know the answer. She mentioned a device called a “Gate Cube”, of which a mere six exist in the Multiverse.
Evidently, none existed on the Prime Material at that moment (and if any did, their wielders had long since fled the plane), and the now-defunct Divine Gate was preventing arcane travel by other means. It stirred a very particular memory in me... one of my Mistress’ many treasures was referred to by that very name.
I thanked the young woman who had contacted me and told her that if she ever needed some ‘extra firepower’ to reach out to me again. I wasn’t exactly the most tactful in my pre-Genesis years, and she intelligently refused my offer. There’s a reason that, of the new Pantheon, I’ve always held quite a soft spot for Sibyll (in spite of her many flaws).
If we were at a bar or restaurant, I might have regaled you of the tale in which I acquired my Gate Cube. Should I manage to re-form (or forgive you for stealing what’s rightfully mine), I might do so - but for a long story short, I managed to con an Archdevil out of one of her trove of artifacts.
My point? The Velvet Room - containing a creature within that has plagued all six of you extensively throughout your short lives - is the heart of the greatest prison in the Multiverse. Buried beneath the ice of Carceri's deepest layer is the Panopticon of the Velvet Room, Saklas regarding reality with piqued interest.
When I first met your little congregation in the theater back in Garland Moon, I knew that your power would one day exceed my own. If you ignore the slander Loki might have led you to believe about my character, I understood my role. I thus left my treasured Gate Cube - the last barrier between you and defeating that pretentious demiurge - with the last Ancient Master who chose to remain in the Material.
Of course, you can always try your hand at finding another way to Carceri! That unrefined Achlýssian magic may grant you access to the first rim of the Spheres, but I somehow doubt that you will survive the trip to the core.
I bring you one final message, as I’m nearly out of parchment. The phrase ‘as above, so below’ is a mistranslation from Exandrian Celestial. Invert it, and only in the Velvet Room shall you realize your folly.
In spirit or in flesh, may we meet again,
Drifter

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