And so it ended (IC)

[Fable Wright]

Dreams. Dreams never change. Though aeons may pass and change the world, and though time may change all, dreams all come from the same source- demiplanes of dreams, created where the Astral planes meet the Far Realms. Come even the destruction of the Prime Material Plane, dreams will endure...

As you wander around your dreamscape, experiencing the result of your unconscious mind and the Far Realms meeting in neutral ground, connected somehow to each and every other dream, yet kept separate, you feel something... new. Something here that you've never felt before. A presence imposing itself on your dream, something not really seen, but felt. As you turn your attention to it, it takes shape. What lies before you is... horrible. Scraps of twisted metal just out from the demiplane, swaying to and fro as they carry the presence through your mind. Wood, stone, metal all form the twisted mass, and in the core, a dark presence on your mind. As you stare into the Abyss that is the plane, you feel it... stare back. An ancient presence, countless thousands of years old, gazes through the darkness back at you, before it-

Snap! Your eyes shoot open as the Rouse trap in your room goes off, probably due to sunlight or something outside. With it, a simple Light spell trap illuminates the monolithic Stone Wall that comprises your ceiling, bathing your room in its eerie light. Wiping the sleep from your eyes, you take in the room before you, in all of its unimpressive glory. The spartan room before you is more or less a 20' by 20' box with a couple of basic amenities in it- an Unseen Servant trap, to take care of basic cleaning and to fetch your daily gruel from the public traps through the service window, a basic Prestidigitation trap to cover everything else, from making your gruel edible, to adding basic decorations, to acting as a fan or heater the next time the Experiment ward starts messing around with the weather again. Then there's the chute to the public Dimension Door trap. Every day, to get into the main parts of the city, you have to slide down that chute, running into whoever else was Roused at the same time you were, as you slide down that claustrophobic tube into the trap that brings you to the city at large. Though, you can't really complain too much. The room was free, as a courtesy for the Adventurers staying in the city. There was always the option of taking permanent residence, and paying for more space and/or better traps available to you, but... you're going to be gone in a couple of days, possibly to never come back to the city. It would be a huge waste, and the room is certainly more comfortable than living out in the Wilds. With a sigh, you walk out towards the chute to try to find another job, hopefully with a decent group this time, and maybe somewhere other than the swamps of- Hello, what's this? At the top of the chute, you find a letter addressed to you, handwritten, with barely anything on it. And it was high quality paper, too- no untrained Fabricate machine made this. This was actually decent stationary. Written on it is only a time, an address, and the cryptic message- "Services wanted. Just show up- no delving required. Bring your equipment." Well. This was an oddity. A job within the city, that didn't require loitering in the Adventurer's quarter for days on end. This certainly makes life a lot easier. Grinning to yourself, you gather your equipment as you set out down the chute to the Dimension Door tile. Perhaps, for once, you could actually have an easy job. There was no chance of it, of course, but a fool can dream, can't he?

[Cardea]

Elias


Breath in, two three four. Breath out, two three four. In, two three four. Out, two three four. Elias sat on the side of his bed, inhaling slowly and calmly. He could feel the heat in his mouth. It was a stale one, and he needed to clean it out. Two three four. These rooms always felt so much like the epitome of this world. This room shouldn't even exist. But as much as he hated the room, it was simpler indeed to simply deal with the few short days he'd need to stay in it, before going out for work again.

He put on his clothes with practiced ease, for once able to take his time doing so. Vest, shirt. Pants, boots. Sash. Rings, the one causing a spark around his body for an instant. He rubbed the pricks on his neck and wrists. He could already feel the spikes setting in before he put them in. Two three four. The pain would be brief, though the scars would last a lifetime at this rate. He put on his bag, a slight thing of black cloth that formed to his back, which also served to give him a hood. He stuck his wands in his sash, and picked up his quarterstaff. The smooth roughness of it brought him some comfort in this world.

Picking up the letter, he smiles, and puts it in with the wands, before descending down the chute, and into the city. As much as he liked the temporary safety of the cities, he liked the wilderness far more. Hopefully with this letter, he'd be able to, once again, get out.

Two three four.

[RCgothic]

Emkay

I'm woken immediately by the rouse trap, and rise quickly, springing out of bed to begin my usual morning routine. Leaving the bed unmade, I cross - naked - to the prestidigitation trap and use it to fastidiously scrub myself of the night's accumulated ordure, before repeating the process with yesterday's clothes - stowing them neatly in my pack.

Dressing in a different set of clothes for variety - white supportive bra, matching knickers, pale yellow crop top and tight black shorts - I accept a bowl of gruel from the unseen servant trap and flavour it with bananas. Afterwards, I polish my teeth with the prestidigitation trap, indulging myself with a hint of minty freshness.

It's only now, with my routine complete that I turn my attention to the letter I'd noticed the moment I woke. I pick it up and inspect both sides of the envelope before slitting the seal with my thumb.

Interesting.

Shouldering my meagre kitbag, I venture forth, resolved to give the proffered job a try.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora took a moment to gather her thoughts in the quiet of the morning; it was the only time of the day that she was able to, the only time when her thoughts were alone. That, above all, was the greatest sacrifice she had made to gain power; the loss of solitude, the loss of the final sanctuary of rational beings, the mind. The beings to which she shared her soul were mad, endlessly mad, so deeply insane that they began to seem rational and calm if one did not keep their own mind ironclad and fortified against the tides of incomprehension.

She took a deep breath, and then she clothed herself, drawing on the now-clean garments that she had been wearing for a month and a half before. They felt odd, now that they were unsullied; lighter, flimsier, less real. It was a slight feeling, but in Lora's world little was real, and so she felt for the loss of the earthen solidity of her simple shirt and breeches. Her underclothes felt nicer now that the prestidigitation had done its work, though, and she was mollified by that; in some ways, it was good to feel like a woman again.

She took her time strapping on her fine mithral breastplate, a true work of art that she had managed to make with her own hands, though it had taken the help of long-forgotten spirits and the advice of many partially-drunken dwarves to see the project to completion. The armor was light enough to let her run and move freely, and though a wizard or mage would have deemed it restrictive her own powers had no such limitations; another small benefit, another little thing that made the sacrifice of the sanctity of her mind worthwhile.

For while Lora would love to spend the day unbound and unbidden to the vestiges, to do so would be an act of foolishness, something as rash and mad as a warrior leaving his blade behind, or a cleric not bothering to pray for power. She knelt to the floor of her room, and with a bit of chalk she inscribed a large seal, a twisting and complicated symbol that matched the one she wore on the chest piece of her armor. She spent the next minute or so arguing with her patron, her forebears, and one of the most dangerous vestiges; Dantalion, King of the Stars, a gestalt entity of minds that had been banned from the multiverse due to ruling an empire greater than the heavens and the hells. Not ones to be surpassed, the gods had punished her line with a lack of afterlife, but not even the gods could completely undo souls; they were instead transported to the Void, to That Which Was Not.

Lora did a poor job binding Dantalion, but it mattered little; in many ways, she was Dantalion, or at least a piece of him, for Dantalion contained all of her line, past and future; time meant nothing in The Place Beyond. She felt his madness and power settle down over her, and her mind expanded to fill the room around her, a tension like an unplucked lute string filling her thoughts. She felt knowledge, pure unadulterated information, flow into her thoughts, shoring up the weakness of her mind and giving her access to incredible reservoirs of information. If she only had the time to study more, she could have done incredible things with that knowledge; but there would be time to study after she had succeeded with her goal, and broken the god's hold over her family line. Over her own soul, and its ultimate destination.

She wiped away the chalk with her own hand, forgoing the use of magic to do so; soul binding was a very personal act, and she disliked involving others in it, even indirectly. This next bond, especially, was delicate; Zceryll was no being to be trifled with. She contemplated, for a moment, selecting a less powerful and more sociable vestige, but the letter ruined the thought of that; if she was to be put back on the job today, there was little purpose in stunting her power. Besides, meeting an employer would be made much easier and more comfortable with the mental power Zceryll provided.

After drawing the symbol, and ugly and tricky one, she called for to the Void; calling much harder than she had needed to for Dantalion, her patron vestige. There was a moment's pause, and then a thousand small mirrors appeared, each reflecting part of a beautiful young woman. There was something off about her, however, and after another moment the mirrors shattered, sending a wave of pain through Lora and driving the thoughts from her mind for a moment. She looked back up, enraged; being thrown by the appearance of Zceryll was a poor sign when pactmaking, and she was unlikely to salvage it. She made eye contact with the being that now stood before her, but the night in a soft bed had weakened her resolve; the vestige would bind with her, of course, but it forced its way into a much more prominent position in her mind, settling down to live and observe the world once more, and imposing its own feeling on her.

She sighed, slow and calm, bringing her rage under control. The telepathy and mindsight of Zceryll were immensely useful sixth and seventh senses, and they complimented the thought reading of Dantalion perfectly. The other changes, rippling through her now, were less savory, but they were useful nonetheless. She felt her body change, change at the most basic level; she suspected that the very essence of her matter was now otherworldly, though she had no way of testing it. She felt, slightly disgusted, the slim and slender muscles of her arms and legs bunch and twist, become more like tentacles wrapped around bones than true human musculature. She felt her vision change, even as the sense of her mind expanded out until it was blocked by the stone of her room.

She also felt the hatred of Zceryll enter her, despite her wishes to the contrary. She could resist or ignore the feelings, and rather easily, but the distraction would cost her, and there was little purpose to doing so. She would feel overbold, more powerful than normal, cocksure, and arrogant; but the fact that she knew that would help her moderate the effects. She might not make many friends today, but she didn't need friends to be paid to kill things or handle riots.

Lora took another steadying breath, become accustomed once more to the alien thoughts filling her now-alien mind. She nodded to herself, satisfied, and then she slid down into the chute, preparing her mind for the overwhelming psychic noise of the city.

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

It is peace that One finds, drifting in the aether of his unconcious mind. One often imagines the reactions of others should they be exposed to the chaotic maelstrom that infuses his soul, the very place where the patchwork of living essences clash eternally for dominance, magical creature against magical creature, all vying for the foreground of the tapestry that makes up his living being. Dreaming is not necessary for his mind, and sleep has no hold on his body, but he hungers for new experiences, new knowledge and new goals. Dreaming is a new past time and a somewhat pleasurable way to spend the late hours when little activities take place and most of the mortals are asleep.

One does not like the intrustion into his dreamscape. He feels ... anxiety and a hollow sensation as his gaze moves over the structure. One feels a fascination but it is tempered by the irrational revulsion that originates from the depths of his soul. With one voice, all the essences within his being rear back and roar in defiance and challenge ---

One returns to his conciousness and feels mildly disoriented. He can still feel the anxiety from his dreamscape and the essences within his soul continue to grumble as they start to settle down into the familiar background murmur. When One felt steadied, he rose from the floor, standing fully erect and began to inspect his body, as was his usual ritual, to ensure all parts moved as designed. When One was satisfied with his motor functions, he arched his spine and stooped slightly, assuming an almost quadraped stature, knees somewhat bent and knuckles nearly touching the floor. This was his preferred method of travel, giving him almost unmatched ability to react to all manner of sudden dangers, a habit he picked up during his many travels into the wilds.

One spends a few brief moments poking at the gruel offered but passed it up. One has no need for mortal nourishment and was not inclined to make a mess in the attempt at comsuption. One did make use of the prestidigitation trap, if only dimmish the accumulated buildup of the ancient moss that coats the majority of the petrified wood on his body. One never noticed the smell, but had heard comments that the scent of moss he carried with him could be overpowering if not kept in check.

One eyes the chute that leads to the local portal to the outside world. A sigh escapes from his mouth and One's eyes dim slightly as his focus turns inwards. Blue engery crackles along the length of his body as the incarnum energies seep out from within, shaping itself into the many souldmelds that One is most familiar with. One's body takes on a blue-ish tint and his form buldges slightly as it reshapes and reinforces his natural defenses.

One is ready. He pauses briefly before tumbling down the chute, just long enough to read the note. Just his luck, a path already opens up before him to persue for the day. Onwards! Adventure awaits!

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

The land is covered in pockmarks and boils. Some burst and spurt forth in grotesque displays of raw power, while others feebly implode and create craters. A woman laughs, and the craters all burst forth once more. However, rather than being full of fluid, they pop open with the vibrant colors of spring. Flora and fauna spring from the depths within each, spreading over the land like a beautiful virus.

Bonu awakes peacefully, surprised that he allowed himself such a good night's sleep in such terrifying clime. He rubs the sleep away from his eyes, and is unsurprised to see thick scabs that fall away from his face along with it. He mumbles his prayers to Mama Urf, more out of force of habit than actual faith. The dreams were nice, but he was beginning to think that they were nothing more; his waking hours had been consumed with trying to find a way to sustain his miserable, painful existence.

"Mama Urf, it be me, ya Papa Bonu.
Give me da wisdom ta know what ta do.
Lead me in life or lead me ta death,
Fill up my lungs wit' each blessed breath."

The little man scrambles down from the bed and fetches his ceremonial garb, rank with the filth of infection and the wilderness. As he crosses in front of it, the prestidigitation trap begins to activate, but he raps on it with his rod. The trap feebly sputters out. He clicks his tongue and shakes his finger at the contraption--there would be no sterilizing his existence, thank you very much. He comes to the Unseen Servant trap and looks for a button to push. However, he gives up his search in a matter of moments and begins shaking it vigorously instead. It activates repeatedly, until he has a swarm of invisible hands trying to tidy him up and fetching bowl after bowl of gruel. He swats at the air around him--these servants were much more annoying than the monstrous mosquitos he was used to.

Bonu waddles to the door in an attempt to flee the automated room as soon as possible and finds the envelope sitting at the door. He picks it up, gnaws off the corner with his teeth and pulls out the letter within. He squints and blinks as he tries to make head or tails of the letter, but the medicine man had never bothered himself with the frivolity of literacy. With a chuckle, he tells nobody:

"Bonu done seen it, but can't crack da code.
So I gon take the letter, blink out to da road.
See who can't make da letters 'come live,
But first t'ings first, down da chute I gon dive."

He tucks the letter into the waistband of his armor and slides down the chute. The old medicine man braces his muscles for an impact that never comes, as the next thing he knows he is standing on the pedestrian walkway that connects the shops. He knows that the magical traps here are just as abundant as they were back in the room, but chooses to ignore their existence as much as he can. He tunes out the Magic Mouths and Ghost Harps hawking various wares around him and focuses his eyes as well as he can. They've almost walked by before Bonu recognizes Lora, Elias, Emkay, and One. He scampers up to them and pulls the letter from his waistband, waving it madly in the air like it was on fire. He calls out to them in a voice much more suited to ghost stories than casual conversation:

"Listen now, puppies, to Papa Bonu!
I gon need you ta tell me what ta do.
Got here dis paper, but don't know what it say--
Is it a way to leave this madhouse today?!"

As he finishes his miniature rant, his eyes dart from side to side. He flinches as passersby whiz past him and tries to stay close to the legs of those he is familiar with. He cranes his neck to look up at the tallers buildings, eyeing them with a leery glare. He lets his eyes wander back to the group for just a moment before they snap back to the buildings, as if he was expecting them to suddenly lunge towards him.

[Cardea]

Elias


Movement made his blood flow faster, the feeling of muscles swaying and tendons pulsing that got his mind back to its full swing. And the movement brought back his blood's gifts; at least, the memory of them. Those rooms were so damn stifling. Kind of like this damn crowd.

He hears a familiar voice, and he turns his head slightly, seeing Papa Bonu. The sorcerer halts, bending down in front of the wise-man. "Good morning, Papa Bonu. Rooms here are still stifling as always, yes? So lets see this paper."

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

Crouching in the middle of all the turmoil of activity, One seems oblivious in the chaos. His ability to perceive things in his immediate vicinity, especially surrounded by so many people, has been severely diminished since his reconstruction. This goes a long way towards explaining why the small figure of Papa Bonu nearly startles him into a leap. Luckily for One, and his pride, he merely twitches and tries to hide the movement as an acknowledgement of Bonu's arrival.

One tilts his head towards the diminuitive figure of Bonu, his mouth slightly agape in amusement at seeing the way Bonu moves to and fro in such an excitable manner. One thinks that Bonu would draw an unwelcome amount of attention by himself in the wilds. Many hunters are drawn to twitchy and crunchy little creatures.

One focuses his gaze on the paper being waved madly back and forth. Seeing that it is the same as the one he received, One says, "The papyrus appears identical to that which One discovered within his lodging. It offered hints to adventure and specified to bring only One's usual gear. One has little need of much gear."

One breaks his gaze away from the paper and turns it to the others. As was usual, a warm feeling passes through his being. He has come to understand it as something similar to companionship. While he would not consider them kin, One does think he has grown somewhat attached to their presence. They do serve rather useful roles and have, on several occasions, saved him from destruction.

"One wonders whether the remainder of the group has had the same experience?"

[RaggedAngel]

Lora was still taking her time adjusting to the blazing, screaming telepathic noise of the city. She did her best to ignore and tune out the actual words and thoughts of the assorted folk around her, but their emotions, intelligences, and mental signatures were still constantly filtering through her thoughts. She closed her eyes as the other mercenaries that she had become loosely associated with assembled, and as she did she calmly, cleanly divided her mind into two neat sections; her own-thoughts and others-thoughts. It was something she had to do on occasion, to remain sane and focused under a deluge of stimulus, and the utterly alien presence of Zceryll allowed her to accomplish the strange feat.

She took a moment to brush over the minds of the others, not seeking anything in particular, but comforted by the familiarity and regularity of their thoughts. Papa Bonu was protected, as usual, by the Ghostly Visage that he had bound to himself, and the rest of them had mental defenses of some calibur or another; but it took impressive defenses indeed to keep her out, and she got a good sense of their feelings and moods, enough to ensure that none of them felt any malice towards the others or herself, and enough to ensure that none of them had been killed and replaced with a doppelganger.

I received the letter as well. She mentally 'mutters', sending the quiet thought out to the others like a gossamer thread. She remembers, after a moment, that the necromancer would not be able to hear her, and she repeats herself aloud. "I also received a letter, and it looks like we have found work without needing to seek it out. I don't see much use in standing around waiting, either, unless any of you have anything special you need before we go meet our potential employer." She frowns as she speaks, and she looks off into the middle-distance, her perfectly reflective mirror-eyes and creased forehead indicating that she is not in the best of moods.

[RCgothic]

Emily

Frightful though his visage may be, I'm quite amused by Papa Bonu's caperings as he waves his letter around, and I briefly fight a losing battle with a wry grin. Lora and One soon confirm that most or all of us have indeed received it.

"It seems we all got the letter. I was just on my way to investigate right now! Perhaps we should all go together, as we're all here?"

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

One studies the others during the silence that has suddenly descended, his head tilted somewhat to the side in curiousity. Finally understanding that no further progress would be made without a discreet (or not-so-discreet) push, One fluidly ambles off towards his destination, calling back towards the others as he moves.

One does not intend to wait around this chaos for time to pass him by. If willing, keep pace and hustle. One will attempt to limit his swift stride to allow mortal limbs a chance to match.

One settles into a somewhat quadraped lope, his natural arms rotating smoothly and a pair of ghostly luminescent arms darting out every now and then to adjust his course whenever a quick movement is necessary to prevent a collision with another pedestrian.

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

The tiny medicine man hands Elias his copy of the letter--he didn't have much use for it in its current state, and it tasted bitter when he had gnawed on the corner of it so he highly doubted it would be of any use to him as food, either. He watches each of his companions with rapt attention as they speak. Sometimes he nods with understanding that it's unclear if he truly possesses, other times he subtly imitates the non-verbal communication of the others, and the rest of the time his watchful eye is still upon the buildings, making sure that they don't get any funny ideas about falling on him. As Vortex starts to move with purpose, Bonu incants once more:

"Down the river of bodies, thick wit city filth
We float toward a dark cavern dreamin' of biggie wealth.
Some callin' us crazy, others say 'dey be brave,'
But we might not find nothin' but a gold-plated grave.

Bonu thinks, like old fishguts, this stinks and it reeks
Ain't no reward for da ones dat don't seek.
Still we float down da river to the mouth of da cave;
We might float on into legends...or dat gold-plated grave."

The witch doctor shakes his head, causing a bevy of ceremonial bells on his facemask to jingle loudly. The sound offers him the opportunity to cover the sound of a hacking cough that wracks his body. As the others follow Vortex, the little man waddles as fast as he can to catch up, stopping only for a moment to lift the bottom of his mask and spit a bit of blood on the sidewalk.

[Fable Wright]

As you make your way to the city at large, the sights and sounds of it begin to engulf you. It starts with the small stuff- the discount stores selling magic items of questionable properties (Stealthy Dagger of Danging Lights and Occasional Explosions- 50 75 90% off!) and second-hand, occasionally damaged magic items (No, no, this Prestidigitizer is fine! No moods, no hassle, no sass! *Notices the word 'loser' being shaved into his hair*) and other random miscellany.

As you approach the central hub of the city, the shops grow more and more intricate- shops filled with Permanent and Programmed Images of various levels of artistry, illusionary wonderlands filled with all the joys one can imagine, illusions of idyllic scenes of the wild and Celestia, Paradise Birds singing marvellous tunes from perfectly curved branches, occasionally flying off into the other marvelous features, and frightening depictions of the kinds of monsters you knew far too well in the wilds, and a few scenes so strange you couldn't really understand, even while staring at the scene (probably inspired by Far-Realms gazing, an interesting, if rather expensive, pastime), some Academies, often lead by headmasters of Wee Jas or Boccob's faith, classes in session even at this time of the morning.

Just a few blocks out from the entrance to the Hub, you can see the chipped markings in stone blocks denoting portals, probably to private residences rather than extravagant stores for something outside of the Hub, though you by no means understand how to activate them. And then you enter the Hub of the city, the giant natural cavern around which the city was born, miles tall and wide, with stores filling each available surface, and quite a few ignoring gravity altogether, either operating from the ceiling in Reversed Gravitational zones, floating in midair, or occasionally both. Carts roll across the sky, with mechants hawking their wares from the center of the mobile platforms, teleporting over to any interested customer to conduct business. From here, you can see all forms of stores- gyms, for those who wish to have the fighting experience of an adventurer without the risks and adventures, to fine item artificers, to stores selling the services of outsiders and elementals, most likely against their wills. And, floating in the air, or outside of some stores, you see floating lights in ghostly shapes, indicating where an extradimensional store might be kept, secure from the predations of the common (and most uncommon) thieves.

You file down to a Redirectory hub, your minds scanned by the intelligent machines for your destinations, before being promptly teleported to the next Redirectory. Except for poor Papa Bonu, walking unsteadily behind everyone else; the machine, failing to recognize him, didn't send him off, and he went crashing into the stall behind the teleportation tiles. The rest of you wait bemusedly while poor Bonu stumbles across the unfamiliar ground, until he finally wanders onto a Flight trap and stumbles upwards into the sky, raining rotting flesh down onto the rather unhappy patrons down below, until he finally wobbles his way towards the redirectory with everyone else, as the flight spell times out and he crashes unceremoniously to the platform. Bemusedly, you decide to take flight instead of the more convenient teleporation venues to help keep Bonu from running into another unfortunate Citizen or cabbage stall. (You aren't sure why there's a cabbage stall in the city; people have the food they need already. Nevertheless, the store owner's cry of "Not my Cabbages!" clearly reached your ears as Bonu accidentally upturned the poor man's produce.)

After an hour of flying and having to ask for directions many, many times (Who needs to know how the city's laid out? Just go to a Hub and know where you want to go!), you finally get to the spoke where your destination was supposed to be. It's on an upper floor flat, one of the nicer properties in the city. And yet... all there is is a small teleportation tile, with certainly no more than a first level spell's worth of teleportation within it, to go on. You shrug, and step on the tile, and feel yourself go on a short hop through the Astral- until you feel a yanking sensation, and you feel a force trying to fling your body in an entirely different direction.
Everyone, roll a will save.

[Eldonauran]

Curses! My weak save!

[roll0]
Vortex

One steps on the teleportation tile, somewhat hesitantly as his experience with such devices leave a lot to be desired, eager to complete the first trip of their journey. Flying wasn't his favorite method of travel but it was preferrable to being whisked through an unseen dimension and deposited in a completely unknowable destination.

One attempts to stick close to Papa Bonu in a sort of protective gesture, somewhat sympathetic towards his companion and the chaos that seemed to plague him on the first leg of their journey.

When One feels the tugging during the teleportation, his mind instantly reacts, attempting to marshal the full force of his combined will against an the unwanted sensation. Many of the essences within his being rise to the call and, as a unified force, pushes back with an inaudible roar of defiance.

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

As the party alights around the teleportation tile, Bonu exhales heavily. The little man is finally glad to be back on his feet. He straightens his ceremonial garb, reaches into his cloak, and retrieves a chunk of cabbage. The witch doctor begins nonchalantly chewing it until he draws sideways glances from his traveling companions. In response, Bonu shrugs and grins sheepishly, his cabbage-filled teeth barely showing behind the mouth hole of his mask.

With his mouth half-full, he begins to share another rhyme, but doesn't even make it past one garbled syllable. Suddenly, the cabbage flies from his hand and falls to the ground as the entire party is whisked to the Astral Plane. It is a feeling to which Bonu has yet to accustom himself, and he responds by vomiting up cabbage, paper, and a good bit of other things best left undescribed. Since Vortex has drawn closest to the sickly man, he finds himself unwittingly in the splash zone. As Bonu heaves, his ghostly visage makes an appearance as well. The face of a much older man emerges from the mask, wizened and scarred from years of battle. The contortions of his face match Bonu's, as the stowaway spirit attempts to protect its host from the magic coursing through his brain.

[roll0], +2 if it is a save to resist sleep, stunning,
paralysis, poison, or disease. It bears repeating that, if this is a mind-affecting ability, Bonu is immune to it.

[RCgothic]

Emily

As I step on the tile, the sudden force takes me somewhat by surprise! I struggle against it, but I fear my response may have been somewhat sluggish...

WILL Save:14
(rolled OOC)

[RaggedAngel]

Lora bites her tongue frequently throughout the trip through the city, and only mostly metaphorically. The people with her are, for the most part, everything that Zceryll despises; spontaneous casters and young women, though the men and noncasters among them helped mollify the vestige slightly. Lora had to work to not give Papa Bonu some biting comments, especially when the necromancer bumbled about; he was a good person and a great combatant, and she couldn't afford to offend him in a fit of vestige-drawn ire. So she remained quiet, chafing slightly at the influence.

Will: [roll0]

Note that she is Immune to confusion and Insanity effects, and that she has a Spell Resistance of 21.

[Fable Wright]

@Cardea:
You successfully break free of the bonds attempting to divert your path through the Aether, and successfully land in what appears to be... an empty room. The walls are all made of bleached white stone, reflecting the light that appears to be emanating out of nowhere. Most likely a Permanent Daylight spell, then. There are no pictures adorning the walls or diagrams anywhere; it's just plain unmarked stone. You look behind you, checking for an exit, and a Teleportation tile, just like the one outside, is set into the floor, its grey, matted surface seamlessly blending into the plain, unmarked floor. As you look back towards the end of the room, you see something that had somehow escaped your notice before- a plain mahogany desk sits before you, burnished to a nice finish, and conspicuously empty of any paperwork or any signs of habitation, save from a tented piece of the same kind of paper that your letter was written on. Dead set in the middle of the card were the words, "The Professor is out right now. Please try again later." And then you realize something. You're currently the only one standing in the room...

@Everyone Else:
As the teleportation spell comes to a halt, you find yourselves thrown into what appears to be... a laboratory. It's not a particularly big one; 30' by 40' at the most, with a door in the far corridor that seems to be hinting at a larger establishment. However, it feels... claustrophopic somehow, as if everything was pressing in on you. A sturdy oak table stands dead in the middle of the room, cluttered with papers bearing diagrams that you don't really understand, what appear to be pieces of an odd sort of stone, beakers, test tubes, all other forms of alchemical apparatuses, all filled with multicolored fluids- some of which are apparently magical, given that some are hovering and buzzing, some are whizzing and bouncing around in their containers, and one particularly odd one appears to be a clear glass jar with a heated rock on the bottom, causing one strange fluid to circulate in a slow, rather hypnotizing pattern where it the red fluid would drift up the middle of the translucent suspending fluid in slowly moving blobs, reach the top and break apart, and then flow back down the edges of the container. Some sorcery, no doubt.

Around the edges of the room are wall to floor bookshelves filled to bursting with spare papers, binders, folders, and some books scattered here and there, usually with odd patterns on the back that look unfamiliar to most of you. At the back wall of the room stands a well-burnished mahogany desk, groanng slightly under the weight of the huge stacks of papers and paperweights that cover it, ranging from 2ft to 5ft stacks scattered across the area. All of the same kind of paper that the letters in your room were made out of.

Standing just in front of the desk, a man furiously scribbles a few notes in a journal, before looking up to give you a quick smile, finishes up whatever he was scribbling, and puts it in one of the bookshelves, before he turns to address you. Ah, you must be the adventurers I contacted this morning! Yes, come in, come in. There are one, two three, four- he frowns for a moment, puzzled. Wait, where's the last one? The... He glances down at a piece of paper on top of the mess that was his table, before looking back up- Sorcerer, yes? He looks at your shocked faces. Oh, he's upstairs? Hopefully he'll be back in a moment, and then we can discuss the the job I have for you.

@RaggedAngel:
He's a humanoid with Intelligence 24, standing 20ft across the room from you. There is no one else within the room with you- and no one upstairs, as far as you can tell. In fact, you can't sense anything aside from your companions and the person in front of you.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora smiles her most polite smile, and the she very impolitely assails the man's mind with all the supernatural power she has at her disposal. Nothing unusual, of course; she can't remember the last time she trusted anyone enough to not attempt to forcibly wrest the most private and personal workings of their mind from them and then watch them like a puppet show. She couldn't touch anything, not without hurting him and revealing herself, but with an intellect like that...

She needed to be careful, or she could be killed. Or worse, he might weasel out of paying them.


Read Thoughts (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/detectThoughts.htm), DC 26. She gets to hear his surface thoughts on the first turn of concentrating thanks to her Improved Read Thoughts ability.

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

Feeling a foreign power wrest you from a pre-determined path is one thing. One is used to summoning his will and forcing back whatever power that tried to lay claim to him. It is entirely another thing to feel that power wrap around you, coat your very soul with terrible strength and force your will into submission. One instantly feels his mind go blank with shock as it realizes it lost the battle of wills but before his mind could break free and send a thunderous attack back, One feels the force withdraw and he is left blinking in confusion in the tiny, closed in office.

A low, rumbling growl resounds from his chest and his gaze burns across the room, only to diminish into a soft groan of irritation. One appears to relax as he realizes everyone appears to be nearby, well, except for the sorcerer. That one always had a strong will and mostly assuredly won that battle.

One is not overly pleased with the method of arrival. One wonders why there is such need for secrecy that necessitated tampering with teleporation magic. Disasterous if even the slightest error were to be made." One gives his body a once over to be sure he is still intact. When One is assured his limbs are in their proper place, he turns his stern gaze to the professor.

[Cardea]

Elias


Elias' mind filled with power as he felt himself resist this new pull. And with the power, came the anger. He held a spell in his mind, one so sacred, as he felt his feet touch the floor in this new room. But as he saw no one else in it, he let go of it, letting the power remain, rather than be released. He walked over to the desk, dragging his fingers across the mahogany top. He knocked on the hard surface once while reading the paper. Untrusting of the tile, he sat on the desk, whistling a small tune until an idea came across his mind.

[Fable Wright]

@Cardea:
Minutes pass, and nothing seems to happen. The white walls stare back at you. The sanitized scent of the room remains relatively constant. You feel that if there was some sort of constant ticking noise, you'd slowly go mad from it, but as it is, you're just going mad from boredom. After what seems like hours, you hear something in the room. Isthisthingon? Hello? You hear an audible click, and a small, hazy, silvery sphere suddenly hangs in the air in the center of the room. You have the familiar feeling of someone trying to read your mind, and then the sphere grows sharper and sharper in resolution, until with a small "pop," you can't see it anymore. Instead, you see what looks like a laboratory with everyone else inside, and an odd-looking professor-type person standing before you.

The laboratory is not a particularly big one; 30' by 40' at the most, with a door in the far corridor that seems to be hinting at a larger establishment. However, it feels... claustrophopic somehow, as if everything was pressing in on you. A sturdy oak table stands dead in the middle of the room, cluttered with papers bearing diagrams that you don't really understand, what appear to be pieces of an odd sort of stone, beakers, test tubes, all other forms of alchemical apparatuses, all filled with multicolored fluids- some of which are apparently magical, given that some are hovering and buzzing, some are whizzing and bouncing around in their containers, and one particularly odd one appears to be a clear glass jar with a heated rock on the bottom, causing one strange fluid to circulate in a slow, rather hypnotizing pattern where it the red fluid would drift up the middle of the translucent suspending fluid in slowly moving blobs, reach the top and break apart, and then flow back down the edges of the container. Some sorcery, no doubt.

Around the edges of the room are wall to floor bookshelves filled to bursting with spare papers, binders, folders, and some books scattered here and there, usually with odd patterns on the back that look unfamiliar to most of you. At the back wall of the room stands a well-burnished mahogany desk, groanng slightly under the weight of the huge stacks of papers and paperweights that cover it, ranging from 2ft to 5ft stacks scattered across the area. All of the same kind of paper that the letters in your room were made out of.

@RaggedAngel:
You reach out with your mind, and sense... nothing. No surface thoughts, no presence of minds in front of you, absolutely nothing. It's as if his mind was just blank space, erased from existence. And yet... you can still feel him with your mindsight.

@Everyone But Cardea:
The professor looks around at you distractedly, as if something else was on his mind. After a few moments, he shakes his head. No, your friend doesn't seem to want to really come down here right now. We may have to contact him via other means... He wanders around behind his desk, completely oblivious to your questions, and then starts opening drawers. He opens the one that appears to be on the upper left corner of the table, reaches into it, pulls another drawer vertically out of that, draws another one out to the right, horizontally towards him, to the left again... you begin to lose track of the nested drawers. As your eyes wander around, you notice a small logo on the back of the drawers- a small image of a neverending staircase, with the words Extradimensional Storage Co.-- All of the storage of Euclidean space, with none of the volume! rolling down the staircase.

After a few minutes of these shenanigans, he pulls a small, silver sphere out of one of the drawers. At this time, he finally acknowledges your questions.Sorry, all, I just want to explain this once- and I think your friend upstairs wants to know some of the answers here. With that, he turns back around and starts fiddling with the sphere. Is this thing on? Hello? The sphere floats to the center of the room, above the central table, stacked high with papers, and then fades in and out of fuzziness. After a few moments, it makes a small popping noise, and you see a well-lit, perfectly white room, save one anomaly- a Mahogany wooden desk, with Elias sitting on top of it.

@RaggedAngel:
Through the sphere, you can feel Elias's mind- the same one as you always feel around him. He looks to be the same person.

@Everyone:
The professor stands up, and addresses everyone. Sorry for bringing you here so abruptly, and through... nonstandard channels. It's a necessity I've been working with for the last several months, and I'll admit, it's been a while since we've had a mix-up of groups being split up. However, now that it's all settled, I'd like to explain why you're here. He turns around, and then takes a grey, metallic-looking... thing off the desk. It has a roughly chitinous appearance, and it's curved very slightly across its length. This, he begins, is a small piece of an Ohm shell. He frowns, and says, Elias, do you mind joining us down here? Just let me redirect you from the doormat. It's rather hard for you to see this up close from up there.

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu's eyes widen at the mention of Ohms. He had long eluded the gigantic insects when traveling in the wastes, and for a brief time had aspirations of animating one of his own. There was just the pesky matter of finding one and staying alive long enough to kill it. He speaks with a childlike sense of wonder in his voice:

"The king of the wastes, the mighty Ohm
Travels freely where man fears to roam.
But have you slain one, that ya captured its shell?
By what force of heaven (or what powers of hell)?"

[RCgothic]

Emily

"What's an Ohm?" I ask, directing my attention first to the professor before casting a sidelong glance at Lora. Apart from Elias, I expect she knows most about such things. In fact, she's been unusually quiet on our trip here, even for her. Are you OK?, I think, combined with a reasonably subtle expression of concern.

[Cardea]

Elias


Elias squeezes onto his sleeves, preparing for a sort of impact. It doesn't come, instead, finding himself unharmed, but now in a different room. He looks around, from his associates, to the strange... third party, to the items. He mouth betrays his expression, opening in surprise. His voice finds itself, though, and rather than his usual tone, out comes something slicker and warmer in tone. "...Ickrak'ey Arcaniss..." His eyes become bloodshot, as if with strain and fatigue.

Casting Detect Magic.

[Fable Wright]

Thank you. The professor says to Elias, carrying on. Though you may wish to cease concentrating on that spell before you hurt yourself. When he hears Emily's question, he frowns. Surely you've heard of them. Huge insectile beings? Travel around the waste? Godlike stamina and strength? Size of small mountains? Terror of all villages in the wastes, one of the reasons people were driven to create Cities? Been around for what appears to be the span of human history? He frowns for a second. At least, that was the presumption, before I started researching them. I was fascinated with Ohms, see. They've been around as long as anyone can remember, and there are no stories of them ever being small, except for mentions of children. These beings have been growing for thousands of years, and the earliest reports of them have them at the size of small hills. I looked into their history, and I found something odd. There have been no mentions of them in any aspect of history before 10,000 years ago. Nothing. After that time frame, of course, mentions of them are everywhere. They were like gods to the cavemen. But before 10,000 years ago... nothing. And that led me to discover that the Ohms didn't originally come from this world... or at least, from this iteration of it.

@Cardea:
As you concentrate on the spell, the characteristic red haze of the Detect Magic spell begins to cloud your vision, but this time, the haze looks... deeper. You get an ominous feeling in your gut. Perhaps you should heed the professor's warning.

[RCgothic]

Emily
I'm embarrassed by my lack of knowledge, and I hug my arms about myself tightly as a rather pathetic emotional shield. "I've never actually been outside the cities. I mean, apart from these guys who has? We just 'port from one to the next..."

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

The tiny medicine man huffs, puffs, and shakes his head before lurching into another chant:

"Clogged up wit peoples, and rife wit disease,
Dey be too high on buildings and too low on trees.
While da merchants may love 'em and da nobles be pleased,
Cities t'aint all dat they're cracked up ta be."

[Cardea]

Elias


Elias closes his eyes, covering them up with his hand. With his free one, he motions for the stranger to continue speaking.

[Fable Wright]

As it turns out, the man continues, staring fixatedly on the piece of shell in his hand, They came from what appears to be our world; the oldest of them have traces of soil in them dating back over 20,000 years. From what we know of Ohms, it would take them hundreds of thousands of years to grow to the size that they're at. Many more times longer than our world existed. As I investigated, I found this.

He suddenly thrusts the piece of Ohm shell at you, speaking excitedly, pointing at the edges of the carapace. Here, along the fracture marks, I found a pattern. Lora probably recognizes it, Daughter of Dantalion as she is; the star-lord's house has been searching for something similar for aeons. This curve, here, and these fractures, he says, tracing out a smooth line that remains constant around the jagged edge of the piece, and the mixed designs radiating out from it, forming, on close inspection, complicated designs, of swirls and lines, almost like a... seal, of some kind. These form what appears to be a Binder's seal, but inverted slightly. Rather than call a foreign body into reality, it seems to summon itself back into reality. In other words, these Ohm have somehow traveled from this world to the Void- and back.

@Cardea:
As the spell takes form, the bloody sigils representing auras begin to coalesce behind your eyelids, giving you a clear picture of the auras in the Laboratory, and...

That's odd. They're running... together? As the runes begin to form together in your vision, they begin to run together as they pile up before you, runes stacking on runes flowing into many other runes, the complicated weave forming behind the backs of your eyelids, strands twisting and merging and...

In the middle of them all, one single black sigil forms, simple and complicated at the same time, and radiating terrible, Overwhelming power. There are too many auras to count within your field of vision, many seeming to be Medium or strong. All, however, are drowned out by the great pulsating waves of power coming off of the black sigil in your vision. Overwhelming magic is coming off of it.

Artifact level.

In this lab.

Your eyes begin to burn.

[RCgothic]

Emily

I'm only slightly sure that I followed all of that, and my brow ceases in concentration. I ask the obvious next question:

"So what does all that have to do with us?"

[Cardea]

Elias


Elias winces in pain, even with his eyes closed, the magics burned away at him. He shakes off the spell, sighing in relief when the pain disappears. He rapidly blinks, then keeps them closed. "Specifically, why are you contacting us, given the kind of magic you carry?"

[RaggedAngel]

Lora seems to freeze up a bit as the Ohm are discussed in greater detail, and though she is almost always caught up in thoughts (often the thoughts of others), she seems very distracted. As the wizard holds out the piece of shell, she seems to come to the same conclusion as he before he can voice it; the shell uses her peculiar brand of magic, with a single massive inversion.

She looks to the man passively, as if she is not at all surprised that he knows the specifics of her power or lineage, not that either of those things are common knowledge; indeed, many of her longterm companions know less about her powers and their source than this wizard does.

"You do indeed have impressive magical power, and knowledge, and resources. Even still, I suspect you need us because knowledge does not always translate into the ability to kill things, or whatever else it may be that you need us for. I can understand why you may need help, at the least." She keeps her expression very neutral, barely bothering to make eye contact with the man.

Knowledge (The Planes), general knowledge about the Ohm's planar origins: [roll0]

Reroll if lower than a 20: [roll1]

Bluff to seem like she is not at all trying to read the wizard's mind (not sure if this is necessary, but his Sense Motive should be low enough that it doesn't matter): [roll2]

She continues to attempt to read the wizard's thoughts. She's looking for his name, specifically, which he hasn't given her yet; she wants to unnerve him, if at all possible.

[Fable Wright]

@RaggedAngel:
His mind remains a blank void in the space in front of you.

The professor's theories sound ludicrous. Everyone knows that Ohms are native to the material plane; they definitely originated here on this planet. They've always been in the world.

You do remember, though, that some professor years ago came out with a theory remarkably like this one, though. He claimed that he found proof that the oldest Ohms had existed longer than the planet itself had been. He was ostricized by the academic community, the report disappeared a few days later, and no one had heard from him since. Probably a target of one of the Church's purgings.

You are correct, of course. The professor paces around the room. I need proof that the Ohms come from outside of reality to prove my theories. No one will accept them otherwise. Definitive proof, from the other side. I have sent probes into the void and back. However, they come back with nothing recorded, and nothing in hand. Such proves have been proven to work in Dead Magic zones and Antimagic Fields. However, they have all had some form of dust or mud on them when they returned. There's something out there, and I can't record it. He stops pacing, and turns to face you. That's where you come in. I need you to go into the void, and tell me what's out there, and if possible, bring back proof that the Ohms come from the Void. He turns grave. Your group has the best chance, out of all the adventuring parties in the City, to succeed in actually recovering something. I've researched you and your past. I know you can do this. I understand if you don't want to go, but think of what you gain from this. You will be the first people in history to have ever gone into the Void between the worlds, and returned. So, I ask you: Will you accept this job?

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

The tiny witch doctor listens in stoic silence. As the professor concludes, he allows the silence to fall over the entire group for a moment before drawing a sharp breath in through his nostrils. He pulls the ceremonial mask from his face to show his true form, complete with oozing pustules. His eyes are wide, and it's unclear whether that is caused by fear or excitment; of course, for Bonu the two aren't mutually exclusive.

"Ya don got magic much stronger den wands,
But it don't bring back news from da beyond.
So ya'd rather send us, gon send living souls?
Even if we come back, we won't come back whole.

Goin' yonder and back gon leave our hearts stretched,
Last time I don gone there, 'twas like the gods retched.
Goin' dere's easy...it's comin' back dat's hard.
Leaves a man changed, and his destiny scarred.

I can't but speak for none but me
I gon come on this journey.
Papa Bonu gon' see what he can see...
But whoever comes back, he ain't gon be me."

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

Vortex, having been silent and withdrawn since the professor started speaking, begins to contemplate the professor's offer. Slightly audible clicks and whirs are heard while the luminescent orbs that make up his eyes pulsate in a slow and steady rhythm. The sounds sputter out as he turns his gaze to Papa Bonu...

There is no need for fear, Papa Bonu. One will be there to stop whatever seeks to taste of your sanity." Vortex reaches out and pats the small one on the shoulder.

Turning his gaze back to the professor, Vortex continues, "One thinks that you have somewhat eccentric interests but those interests are worth investigating. This 'Void' that you mention ... One has no knowledge of it but neither does One have any fear of it. One will help you with your research.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora's impassive and distracted facade shatters, and she finds herself laughing as the wizard finishes his speech. "You are asking me- me- a binder of vestiges, Scion of Dantalion, who is both empowered by the Void and doomed to fall into it upon my death. You are asking me if I wish to have an opportunity to go into the Void itself, to see that which no sentient being has ever seen, and to be paid for the honor?"

She calms herself, slightly, and continues. "I dislike that I cannot see your thoughts, and I am worried about the extent we can trust you. I am also worried about your sanity, and the chance that you are a fool and that we will simply die in horrible and irrevocable ways. But I cannot pass up an opportunity like this when it comes pounding on my door."

[RCgothic]

Emily

The job doesn't sound like the worst I've ever had, but I feel we're still missing a key component. I fold my arms. Time to negotiate!

"It'll depend on how much you're offering. If no one else has returned, then it must be highly dangerous. I always ask for an advance payment when there's an element of risk; redefining the realm of the possible is going to cost you!"

[Cardea]

Elias


"Supplies. And payment." Elias says, opening his reddened, watery eyes. "What do we get regarding either one?"

[Fable Wright]

The professor breathes a sigh of relief. Excellent. My research was not in vain. As to what I have to offer you, in terms of supplies, is minimal; I run a very small operation here. What I have, though, is something essential to the mission. He walks off to a corner of the room to a cupboard that you didn't notice before, and draws out five... well, you don't know what they are. The best thing to describe them as would be large pizza boxes with a blue and red Yin-Yang where the store's logo would be, and scribbles that make your eyes hurt just by looking at them where all of the rest of the text would be, with backpack straps attached to them. These are your way back, after I send you to the other side. Wear them on your back, like a backpack, and you'll be snapped back to whenever there's a disturbance in the timeline, one of which I will schedule in the near future. To go to the disturbance, all you need to do is trace the symbol on the packs over your heart. Otherwise, you'll be over there indefinitely. As for your payment, I believe that the best way to handle it would be to pay you on your return, based on what you can give me. If you can give me proof you've been to the other side, and nothing else, I will give you each two thousand. If you can remember your surroundings, and give me a proper magi-res image of it, I will up that to five thousand. If you bring me proof that Ohms came from the Void, I will up that to ten thousand each. He drops the packs on the table in front of you, knocking over number of vials and apparatuses on the desk, spilling green-pink liquid all over the... ceiling? He disappears into a back room.As for how to get to the other side in the first place... He comes out carting a large (8' or so) pitch black obelisk above what appears to be a Tensercorp's Gravity Manipulating Disk. Touching this trap, originally found in the tomb of Acerak III, will... how should I put this... Unname you. As in, remove your true name from the universe. You would have no more place here in the universe, and so would be shunted Outside, with none of the hassle of mythic legends. He dismisses the spell, and the Obelisk falls to the ground heavily, but oddly enough, it doesn't make a sound- and you notice, around it, that the rock comprising the floor beneath it is beginning to bubble, despite the Boccob-knows-how-many enchantments weaved over it to make it nigh indestructible. The professor looks at you expectantly from behind it. When you're ready.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora

Lora's eye twitches as she stares at the wizard with a combination of disbelief, frustration, and anger on her fact. "It Unnames us? You twit, do you have any idea how final of a death that is? Here I thought you actually knew what you were talking about, here I thought I was going to get to see the other side, and you give me a literal death-trap and call it a portal?"

She holds up her hand. "No, don't say anything. Let me tell you something, you-" she stops talking, freezing in place. You suddenly feel a horrible chill, and you watch as her visage become something unreal, and terrible. She doesn't change physically, but her face seems to fit incorrectly, as if her skin was trying to contain something that was more than her, in a metaphysical sense.

It makes your head hurt to look at her, and then she starts speaking again. Not in any one voice, but in thousands of voices, tens of thousands, each a faint whisper, but together a horrible roar. "Do This. Free Us. This Is Your Chance, Scion. Do Not Fail Us."

With a horrible snapping sound the presence vanishes, and Lora crumples to the floor in a heap, breathing heavily, her features returned to normal. Her eyes are wide, and her hands are trembling.

She's a binder. It would be way too boring to just have her say "sure, let's do it."

The odd look and voice are mechanical representations of her Alternate Form ability. This little display was the result of a Knowledge check about everything the wizard said. Hurray, Crunch.

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

The medicine man had seen similar displays before, and knew precisely what to do. As Lora picks herself up off the floor, Bonu dances in a small circle around her. The bones woven into his robe scratch out a rhythm that syncopates with the jingling of the bells on his ankles as he reaches his hands to the sky, chanting all the while:

"You all once had your bodes, but now dey be in da ground.
Ain't nobody want you spirits around;
Take leave of 'dis child now, get back to da grave.
Da dirt be your chains now, an' you be death's slave."

[roll0] at least he thinks it's healing.

Satisfied that he had some hand in Lora's episode passing, he crouches slightly to bring his face to eye level with hers and extends a hand to help her up. The man's dark skin is littered with ashy gray pockmarks and blisters; some ooze liquid and others have long ago dried. He smiles from behind his mask and attempts to console her:

"Dere be sometimes the dead don't quite stay so dead.
Sneakin' in through our noses to scream in your head.
Back home at da village, Bonu done helped da possessed.
Bonu done cleared out your spirits now; no need to be impressed."

[RCgothic]

Emily

I listen to the professor's explanation stoicly, though with a gradual pursing of lips. Hearing Lora's tirade does little to assuage my fears.


'Un-naming? That sounds insanely dangerous! We coold be written out of history entirely! What are our expected chances of survival, 1 in 50? Even that? And no down payment. What part of this deal makes sense to you? To any of you?" I address my companions with a sweeping gesture.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora

Lora accepts Papa Bonu's graciously, and if it's less than wholesome appearance bothers her she makes no sign. "You're a fool, Bonu, but you mean well. Just remember, as I've told you, I ask my spirits to aid me, and they grant me many gifts of power. They've just never... spoken for me before. I did not know that they could do that, and if you asked any other binder they would tell you that it is impossible."

She looks to the obelisk with apprehension, and then resolve. "Dantalion Knows. That fact is absolute. If my collective ancestors say that I should travel to the void, to nothingness, then there is reason to do so. They are not omniscient, but I have never encountered a being closer. I am still in, though your monetary reward means little compared to the knowledge I will gain."

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

The medicine man furrows his brow at Lora's explanation. Of course, all anyone else can see is that his mask raises slightly. He had long studied the spirits, and had learned that keeing them happy meant keeping them quiet. If the spirits were speaking like Lora's were, that could only mean that they were unhappy. Perhaps she hadn't offered suitable sacrifices the last time around? Or maybe her recent actions called for a more sizable sacrifice? He shakes his head and whispers:

"A spirit that speaks be one of two things:
Hungry or angry at human beings."

Bonu diverts his attention from his theological questions in order to digest the mysterious professor's words. The possibility of unnaming meant that Bonu might never be able to return to his people with the cure they needed. Of course, if he was unable to find the cure, it also meant that nobody would remember him as the man who infected the whole village. To Bonu, it seemed like a wash. He shrugs and waddles toward the obelisk, chanting in a sing-song voice:

"A man with nothing to lose got the world to gain,
So think of the treasures if ya give up yer name.
We gon to the beyond, and Bonu done been dere before
But dis time he goes, he be Bonu no more.
Whoever go with him, dey don't go alone
We gots nothing to lose but flesh and bone."

As he nears the obelisk the tiny man removes his fearsome mask, revealing a diseased and disfigured face behind it. He tucks the mask under one arm, and his sunken eyes seem to shine with renewed vigor as he reaches out with his other arm to touch the obelisk.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora is so distracted by Papa Bonu's singsong chant that she barely notices how close the man has become to the obelisk. She manages to grab him before he touches it, and she draws him back, glaring at the necromancer. "You are often more trouble than you're worth, which is what I would say if you weren't so adept at killing. Give me a moment to test this before you touch it, and for the love of Dantalion wear on of those packs if you do."

She takes one of the packs off of the table, giving it to Bonu, before looking back at the obelisk. "Now then, time for a little scientific inquiry, not that any of you will care." She holds out a hand, concentrating for a moment, and with a uncomfortable rush of pressure there is a congealing pulse of ectoplasm and energy right in front of her. After a half-second the material congeals into a humanoid form with a canine head; a Hound Archon.

It shakes itself slightly, before turning sharply to look at the wizard with intense eyes. After a moment or so, it looks back to Lora, who remains unmoving. It nods slightly, still silent, before walking to the obelisk, and touching it with an outstretched hand.

She uses her Summon Monster V ability to summon a Pseudonatural Hound Archon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/archon.htm#houndArchon). It uses Detect Evil on the wizard, then touches the Obelisk. If the wizard has anything that would prevent any of this, please let me know. Her Summon Monster ability is Supernatural.

[Fable Wright]

As the Archon's hand approaches the obelisk, sparks begin to fly up about its hand, and a faint blue aura appears around the creature. As the hand gets closer, the aura gets more distinct and larger- you instinctively know that it's the magic holding the Archon to the plane. As the aura touches the obelisk, it vanishes all at once, sucked through the obelisk as if by a vacuum. Wherever the blue aura leaves the Archon, its body soon crumbles to dust. It never gets close enough to touch the obelisk.

The professor gives you an odd look. You do realize that if the magic calling the Archon here hadn't failed, it would be unnamed? The safeguards for the creature's safety created by the spell wouldn't have saved it.

He turns to look at Emily. I realize exactly how dangerous it is. That's why I called dangerous mercenaries that could very well be breaches of my security into the lab I want no one to know about and offered them outrageous sums to do something that would take only seconds in real time. To be honest, your chances are fairly good; I've been able to bring inanimate objects back reliably, and there's no reason why a living being couldn't come back. And, he turns to Lora, For your information, scion, there is no other easily accessible way to the other side. There's a reason that each tale of a vestige is unique: It's very, very hard to get over there. This is the only reliable way, unless you want me to drag you to the birthplace of souls to kill you, or you offend every single god at the same time.

He steps back, and pulls something out of his pocket. If you are so nervous about this, which, I'll admit, is justified, I'll give you a demonstration. This, he holds up a small sphere with the markings on the pizza box backpacks on it, is an awakened construct that I've sent over several times now in my tests. He's been unable to give me data, but he's gone over and back. Watch. He tosses it at the obelisk, and it disintegrates with a small *fzzst*. A few seconds later, it returns, slightly scorched. The professor looks like he has a headache. Bending the timestream is not, in fact, as easy as you'd think it is. It takes a bit out of me each time, so I'd appreciate it if that were the only demonstration that I need make?

The sphere on the floor beeps at you affably.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora watches the Hound Archon become unsummoned with relative dispassion, simply observing the magic at hand with a trained eye, gaining a measure of the wizard's power and better knowledge of the weaknesses of her own summoning power. She passes the information along to Dantalion, for the Lord Who Is Many desired nothing more than more knowledge.

Zceryll, on the other hand, merely conveyed a wave of smug contempt at Lora's efforts, noting how much more powerful the intelligent, prepared caster was. Lora did not make any argument with the vestige, except to note that the wizard required her aid to complete his task. Zceryll's thoughts were difficult to read and insane beyond mortal comprehension, but Lora was granted her power by the vestige, and was able to interpret:

"Just because you are his thug does not mean you have more power than he; indeed, it merely suggests that his power is of a refined and sophisticated sort, a scalpel to your club. And you may be but a rat to him, to be picked apart and tested.

But do come to BEYOND, little rat. Come and find me, see me, meet me. Let me shred your mind and eat your flesh, let me do to you things that the mad have no words for, things that the most insane mortals could never begin to grasp. Let me do this for you, because I wish to repay you for your services rendered."

Biting back the wave of nausea that came with the vestige's words, Lora knelt down, holding her hand above the little construct sphere, as if afraid to quite touch it. "Hello there, little one. You are rather fascinating, you know. I wish I could know what you've seen, and what you're experienced. I wish I could know where you have been, and how it felt to be there."

She stands up, and looks to the wizard and her allies. "I have a few final remarks. I understand the Outside very little, but my understanding is still great. Planar cosmology is a very interesting, complicated topic, and I know some of you know much about it. You can ignore that knowledge, because it will not aid you. The Void does not intersect with our cosmology in any way. It is distinct, a reality of its own, and it does not play by our rules. Time, space, and physics are worthless. Will is everything. If you lose your will, if your mind becomes insolvent, you will cease to exist. The only thing that will keep you 'alive' is your belief that it should be so. Remember that."

She takes up a pack, and looks to the others expectantly.

That may be a load of bull, but as far as a Binder knows it's true.

I'm really enjoying this, by the way. :smallsmile:

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu grabs one of the backpacks, sighing as he does so as if he resented the fact that anybody was concerned for his safety. He also resented that Lora had slapped his hand; for a woman so concerned with knowing things, she didn't seem aware of the fact that she could have just contracted a mysterious disease with no known cure.

"Watch what you touch, dear, and what touches you
There are things out there more unkind than the flu.
You care 'bout the Without but child, mind da Within
Much more den spirits try to get under your skin."

He shakes his head and chuckles as he scolds the binder, his gnappy dreadlocks dancing around his face. He listens to her explanation of the void, chuckling even more as it sails over his head both literally and figuratively. He had glimpsed the void and dipped his toes into the waters of its madness. Bonu had felt nothing at all, which was precisely the point. He knew that to explain the void was to assign meaning--to label the nothingness as "something"--and that any exposition would fall short. With no rhymes and one last laugh, he reaches out again to touch the obelisk.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora shoulders a pack as Bonu does, fitting it over her haversack as best she could; the haversack, as always, effortlessly compensated by slightly altering its own dimensions to better fit the protective pack. She calls for the knowledge and power of Dantalion, the protective madness and sorcerous might of Zceryll, and her own indomitable will, and she steps forward to the obelisk, reaching for it moments after the little necromancer vanishes.

She mutters as she walks, something from an oft-quoted and ancient tome. "To the undiscovered country, from who's born no traveler returns, which puzzles the will..." And then she is gone.

[RCgothic]

Emily

Exasperation doesn't quite cover what I feel about two of my companions willingly disintegrating themselves, even if that construct did return. It hasn't escaped my notice that it came back scorched! I hug my midriff with one hand and use the other to massage the bridge of my nose whilst I attempt to work up the courage - no; the insanity! - to follow.

Their actions were reckless and stupid and may just have got themselves killed, - if they survived I will certainly be giving them an earful - but they're my friends and if they have made it to the other side of the void, I know I can't let them go alone.

I look around at my remaining companions. Vortex has stated his intent to follow, and I scowl at him. If he's so confident why is he waiting? Elias seems as reluctant as I do.

"We can't let them go alone." I can't. Damn it I hate that decision. My voice sounds quiet and frail even to me - in danger of breaking and quite lacking my earlier bluster. I fix my gaze unwavering on the strange boxes on the table - my only chance of survival. I take a step towards them and nearly fall as my strength deserts me. I support myself against the table as I struggle with the straps. My hands are shaking, and I just can't seem to get my arms through the loops. I'm scared now - really scared - and my body is fighting me. With the backpack securely on my back, I turn to face the obelisk.

I feel drunk, barely in control of my actions, as I approach it. My breathing has become shallow and rapid. I really really don't want to do this. My cheeks are tingling - I suspect all the blood has drained from my face. My arm feels like it weighs a hundred pounds as I raise it towards the obsidian surface. I withdraw it sharply and clutch it to my chest as the sparks and aura begin to manifest.

You're going to die! my subconscious prompts, unhelpfully. I turn my head towards Elias and Vortex. "Guys... I..." Words fail me. My resolve is fading fast as well. If I'm going, it has to be now!

With eyes closed, I reach out and touch the obelisk.

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

For all of his bravado, Vortex hesitates. When the Obelisk is mentioned, and the Unnaming is revealed, his hesitation developes into full blown fear. His Name is what gives him form, what forces all his competeing essences to co-exist and not devour one another. Vortex seems to retreat internally for time, the soft whirring noise that accompanies his thoughts fades to an inaudible hum. He settles into a crouched position, weight balanced on his heels and knuckles.

It isn't until the Archon dissapaites that Vortex seems to react. His jeweled eyes glisten as the lens within align and begin to process what happened. When the small construct disappears and reappears, Vortex feels a bit of the fear leave him. He shifts his weight forward and slinks over to the small construct, ignoring Lora's presence as his gaze sweeps over the creature, looking for signs that it was ... different. As Lora begins to speak, Vortex's gaze settles on hers and his eyes widen as he listens...


"... The Void does not intersect with our cosmology in any way. It is distinct, a reality of its own, and it does not play by our rules. Time, space, and physics are worthless. Will is everything. If you lose your will, if your mind becomes insolvent, you will cease to exist. The only thing that will keep you 'alive' is your belief that it should be so. Remember that."

Vortex finds himself nodding ever-so-slightly to her words, his eyes shifting between her eyes and her mouth, as he takes in her words. The last dredges of his fear are consumed by the maelstorm of his inner essences. One knows Madness... One found One in Madness... No magic can take One's Name from One! One will carry One's Name into Madness with One! Let this place forget One's Name and One will make it remember!

Vortex meets Emily's gaze and tilts his head when she scowls at him. She must have sensed his fear. She is perceptive but is also worried. Vortex sees how she moves forward, fighting herself the entire way.


"We can't let them go alone."

This is what triggers Vortex's movement. It is fluid and without hesitation. He flows to his feet and grips one of the packs. It slips over his arms and nestles easily on his back, for he carries little to no equipment. Vortex moves forward without a sound and is beside Emily as she closes her eyes and reaches for the Obelisk. One reaches out with his left hand and rests it upon her right shoulder while his right hand joins her's reaching for the Obelisk.


"Guys... I..."

"... Are not in this alone. One is here with you." Vortex manages to say as his fingers near the surface of the Obelisk.

[Cardea]

Elias


Elias looks from his disappearing comrades, to the professor, and back again. As Emily disappears, he walks forward to reach out, then pulls his hand back. He looks to the professor, his expression turning to something cold. "I don't fully trust you. I don't believe everything you are saying, and I doubt your good intent. When someone presents an opportunity for something better, they always have something to use to hurt you in case you say no. And given what you have access to? I don't really have any other choice but yes.

"But I would have preferred to say no." He taps the obelisk, chasing his team.

[Fable Wright]

And so it ended.

Five ambitious adventurers were lured by the promises of easy wealth into a madman's hand, and were led to oblivion, unnamed. No one remembers their existence, their passing, the small marks made on the world. The experiments that led to Vortex's creation were all failures, the project terminated. Papa Bonu was never born, and his village never cursed, his unborn soul devoured by the Mother as the cure for his people. Lora's fateful expedition went unfunded, as no nobleman dared risk the expenditure. Emily's stepfather never had a child to abuse, and eventually cleaned up his act, becoming an adventurer. The bloodline that spawned Elias never reached quite far enough down; the dragon blood dried up entirely generations ago. They never existed. There were no people in that room with the professor. Five pieces of history that never were.

Just because it never happened doesn't mean it wasn't real.

Five souls drifted through oblivion, straddling between the Far Realms and the Prime Material. They didn't exist, but they weren't entirely opposed to the idea. They were lost souls, in the vacuum.

Thu-spl-skr-squ-crunc-ud.

You feel, underfoot, burning sand, frigid tundra, solid earth, deep seawater, and loamy marsh under your feet. Before you, the wastelands of fire and ice, lush valleys, and deep swamps. You can feel the worms slowly eating their way through the skies above, the wyrms floating around in the primordial muck around you, and the wurms lying contentedly on the searingly lukewarm solid marshbed under your feet.

Is this really what was beyond?

As you take of your surroundings, they begin to slowly fade away. The searing lukewarm ground begins to just be lukewarm, the marsh beneath your feet begins to dry. The skyworms in the sky are replaced, and the crushing deeps turn to humidity. Only one image remains, though the others are there, just beyond the edge of consciousness; glimpses of tundra are hidden behind trees, oases forming around the springs burbling in the woods around you. But they're not real. They're not there. You know this, and yet they remain, off the edge of consciousness, beckoning your arrival. Aside from the overlay of 8 planes at once, the void outside the world feels suspiciously like... home?

But, it's different. It's humid outside, and you're in a deciduous forest, with moist soil, and actual, growing trees. Even in the Wilderness, scenes like this never happened; they were always a monster's lair, the surrounding wildlife terrified or dead. And yet... you see deer leaping through the forest, wild rabbits and squirrels. You can see, not 10 yards from you, a trail leading through the woods. But, it wasn't some magical pathway levitating above the ground, perfectly parallel to the center of the earth and an even surface all the way across. It was... cobblestone? Some bizarre pattern out of history books. Rocks making an uneven surface that people would walk on. This was no savage tribe village, either. You can feel abjurations in the air around you, the intense thrum of magical activity that always pervaded Cities and the surrounding environs for miles around. No savages would live in that area.

And yet, the place feels strangely familiar, like you've been here before. Everything about the location feels new, and yet, the area you're in seems familiar...

As you look around, you see your companions, in a similar state to the one you're in. But something's different. The packs on your back are... gone. As you glance around, you notice something on Vortex's back. Rather than the box strapped to him, there's just the blue and red yin-yang tattooed on his back.

RaggedAngel
You feel... somehow, in tune with the natural landscape. Despite it being foreign Wilderness, your soul feels some sort of affinity for it, as if they had worked together before.

And then you notice something; a void in your mind, exactly where that comfort is coming from: Dantalion, Zceryll, both gone. For the first tie in a long while, you feel alone inside your head. And, oddly enough, it feels... comforting.

Cardea
You can still feel your blood pumping through your veins, but somehow it feels... less intense? The whispers it often hinted at were gone, and the magic that surged through it feels... dissipated, somehow. You can feel it, but it's no longer running through your veins.

Eldonaurn
You can't feel the tug of the well-known shapes of essentia you're used to, here. In fact, you can't feel essentia at all. The only life force that you feel pumping around yourself is that which hovers around you ad your companions, and, for some reason, it seems to be concentrated, not in a chakra, but in the center of your back...

OMG_Ponies
You reach to scratch for your face out of habit, but this time... skin doesn't fall off. You look down at your hands, and they don't seem to be covered in blisters and boils. It's almost as if you were cured...

If it wasn't for the sack of mangled, undead tissue in your stomach. The first stage of the infection, but... it doesn't seem to pulse with the sickness that wracked your body before. You feel... somehow, better now.

[Cardea]

Elias


Elias' mind goes blank, not feeling the power that coursed in his body not a moment ago. The sensations he felt in that instant... and now this. He tries to remember words that came with his blood. He thinks, then speaks. First to see if there was magic... and second, to see if he still had his blood. "Ickrak'ey Arcaniss. Ickrak'ey Darastrixethe."

First one is Detect Magic. Second one is Detect Dragonblood. If they work, anyways.

[RCgothic]

Emily

It takes me a moment to get my bearings. My emotions are still in turmoil - my system flooded with stress and anxiety hormones that won't stop just because the madman didn't manage to kill us after all! My breathing is still rapid and shallow, and my legs still feel weak, so I sink to hands and knees.

Relief. Relief to be alive starts to fight for space with my other emotions, and I feel a warm tear roll down my cheek. I wipe it away quickly with the back of my hand so that the others don't see. I reassess my earlier judgement - that was definitely the most dangerous thing I'd ever done!

Ok, that's enough indulgence. Pull yourself together!

I pull myself up on Vortex, strong and upright as ever. I give him a grateful smile - it was a nice thing he did and I mean to let him know I appreciate it, briefly placing a friendly hand on his shoulder.

I'm irritated that it was necessary though - such a display of weakness! My mouth presses into a tight line as I turn to Bonu and Lora. At least they didn't see how difficult I found it to follow them. I suppose I can't be too mad at Bonu - acts of idiocy seem to be his stock trade in life, but Lora... such an act of recklessness was well out of character - and only moments after emphatically declaring what idiots we'd be to go through with it! I fix my friend with my number one glare while I try to work out how I'm going to reprimand her.

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

The feel of the ground under his feet goes unnoticed by Vortex as his eyes try to focus and refocus on the changing landscape. His arm slowly lowers from its raised position until it is at his side and he becomes very silent. Silent. Silent. Why is it so silent!?! Vortex thinks to himself, the words bouncing around inside his mind. No answering rumble of voices respond to his query...

It takes a few moments for Vortex to emerge from his internal dialogue... One sided as it was. He reacts to Emily's weight by providing support when she pulls herself to her feet and nods slowly in response to her show of gratitude. Aside from a slight pulse of warmer light from his eyes, Vortex appears to be showing no signs of emotion. His attention is torn in several directions at once. He senses no life energies from this place, save for that of the group. He is unable to sense his resevoir of essentia, the borrowed life energies that fuel his power, and worries that his powers have disappeared. There is also something on his back that seems to serve as a focal point to the life energies he senses from the group.

Vortex gives himself a careful look, attempting to verify if his soulmelds are still active and if the few magical items he wears constantly are still in place. Afterwards, he looks to the group and his eyes pulse with his words, "This place ... is not natural." He gestures to the animals they spot moving about, "One senses no life energy in this place, aside from our own."

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

The tiny medicine man reaches under his mask to scratch his sores, but pauses for a long moment. Instead, he reaches behind him and unlatches his ceremonial mask. The face that you see is young, clean, and vibrant--none of these adjectives you'd ascribe to Bonu in real life. He winks at the group before placing his mask back on...force of habit, you suppose. He clucks his tongue and chuckles as Vortex speaks, responding in a singsong voice that is very much like his own, but also entirely different.

"But what defines the natural world to us?
Could this be real, and our world mad? Discuss."

[RaggedAngel]

Lora stands quietly, her eyes closing for a long moment as she searches her thoughts. Her strangely, impossibly quiet thoughts. They were gone. There was no power in the world beyond the will of the Binder that called them that could banish a vestige, and Lora had never picked up the trick for doing so.

And yet they were gone, gone as if she had never called them. At least, they were quiet, their constant whispers inaudible to her thoughts. Zceryll no longer screamed hatred at every spontaneous spellcaster around her, nor vicious jealous remarks at every beautiful young woman. Dantalion did not give her imperious commands, or sagely wisdom, or scornful advice. She was alone.

But what of the power the vestiges offered her? She never once paused to consider what being in the Void herself would do to the power given to her by beings that were themselves denizens of the Void. Perhaps she had no power here, and she would die, as helpless as a warrior stripped of his armor and weapons.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, her will was made to shape the Void. Perhaps she had all the power here.

Lora closes her eyes, and she attempts to look at the minds of her allies, just as she has done a thousand times through the power of Zceryll. Then she raises her hand, calling forth the power of the Far Realms, and she attempts to summon forth a psuedonatural griffon.

[Eldonauran]

Vortex


Papa Bonu

"But what defines the natural world to us?
Could this be real, and our world mad? Discuss."

Vortex gives the little man his full attention as these words are said. A slight whirring sound can be heard, almost below the audible levels as Vortex begins to process this ... puzzle. One has always reacted to the world and through that, learned to understand how it works. Could the little man be correct? Is our world nothing more than the collective reinforcement of a reality that is of our own making? Or the making of those infinitely more powerful and aware than ourselves?

Vortex tilts his head and a deep, almost gutteral chuckle escapes his mouth. "You speak in riddles, Papa Bonu. But in those riddles, One senses truth thinly veiled. What do we know of the realms so far out past our own? Perhaps we are the ignorant ones with our heads collectively buried in the sands while a greater mystery lies outside of our narrow vision."

Vortex turns his gaze away from Papa Bonu and seems to gaze out unfocused into the aether. One intends to find out...

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

The little man nods fervently in response to Vortex's query.

"And thus machines speak words that man cannot!
Illusions live by ignorance begot.
We know far less of this world than we ought,
But as for now, we're working--we've been bought.
Indeed the questions asked deserve more thought,
Perhaps once deadly Ohms are found and caught?"

Seemingly satisfied with himself, Bonu looks around to the others and beckons them to join him before turning and running at a full sprint toward the vibrant madness unfolding before them. Mother Earth and all her artists had never captured anything so beautiful.

[Fable Wright]

Elias


Elias' mind goes blank, not feeling the power that coursed in his body not a moment ago. The sensations he felt in that instant... and now this. He tries to remember words that came with his blood. He thinks, then speaks. First to see if there was magic... and second, to see if he still had his blood. "Ickrak'ey Arcaniss. Ickrak'ey Darastrixethe."

First one is Detect Magic. Second one is Detect Dragonblood. If they work, anyways.

As Elias releases the magic for his first spell, he feels a wind blowing from him out towards the world. As it passes, it seems to... peel off the cover of the air before him, in bits and pieces in the cone of vision. He can still see the red haze from the spell, and still sense the magic before him; faint abjuration magic, as it would be, this far from a City. Only after he dismisses it does he realize that the red cone wasn't just his perception of reality-- as he backs up, he sees that the cone leaves a trail around it of the red haze that somehow clearly means Abjuration magic. But...

He then casts his second spell. As he does, he feels the wind blowing from him like before, but there is no red cone that follows his eyes this time. Before him, he cannot see any dragonblooded creatures. As he looks down at his hand, though...

It's being blown away.

Bits and pieces of skin fall off in the small gust, blown away like leaves on a lawn in a strong wind, small patches of human skin in the breeze, leaving behind a patchwork of skin and... something else. In a matter of moments, the rest of the skin he can see is gone, and something else remains instead. Where his hand used to be is something else. Shiny black rock, like obsidian, takes the place of flesh and bone. On the underside of his forearm, it is flat and scaled in pattern much like the underbelly of a snake, stretched hexagons crossing from one side of the arm to the other. On the other side, the scales are rough and oval, though they point outwards slightly at the edge of them, shrinking as they go down his arm to his hand, whose fingers end in pointed claws. Underneath the shiny black exterior is something even more disturbing. Inside of the black skin and rock that replaced his hand, Elias can see something moving. It's dull at first, but...

It's his blood.

Through the lump of rock that is now his hand, Elias can see his blood moving through his veins and arteries, like fast-moving magma. Each beat of his heart sends a white pulse throughout it, and as he stares at it, the blood shows brighter and brighter through the obsidian skin, pumping warmer and warmer through his veins. As he looks at it, the rest of his forearm enters his peripheral vision, and he can see it too, out of the corner of his eye, begin to blow away...


Lora closes her eyes, and she attempts to look at the minds of her allies, just as she has done a thousand times through the power of Zceryll. Then she raises her hand, calling forth the power of the Far Realms, and she attempts to summon forth a psuedonatural griffon.

As Lora summons up the concentration to read their minds, she feels... odd. It's like her mind doesn't expand outside of her own skull anymore. It's oddly confining, in its own way, being cut off from a sense that she never used until a few years ago, but was such a part of her now. Though, as she tries, she sees... a seal? The more she concentrates on trying to reactivate the locked portion of her brain, the brighter it looks in her mind. It looks like one of the squiggles drawn in the seals she's so used to drawing, but... there's nothing around it. No circle, no other marks, just... a sigil for a seal.

As she concentrates on trying to bring forth the griffon, she feels the same restriction, and a sigil begins forming in her head, just like the other one. She just... can't... quite... make... it... out...
Roll Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (The Planes), and Decipher Script.

[RaggedAngel]

Knowledge (Arcana): [roll0]
Knowledge (The Planes): [roll1]
Decipher Script: [roll2]

If she does not have access to her Knowledge of Dantalion ability, reduce the knowledge rolls by 8.

If she gets below a 20 on either Knowledge roll, she will reroll it with her Scholarship of Dantalion class feature. [roll3]

[RCgothic]

Emily

The shock of seeing Bonu's unblemished face is nearly enough to make me forget that I'm angry with him! Not quite.

"Just because the madman's magic cured you doesn't mean you're not an idiot for nearly getting us killed!" I huff, folding my arms. "You could have been obliterated! Unmade! And, at the risk of leaving you here alone, the rest of us were bound to follow. Anyway, I'm not getting drawn in to a discussion on existentialism. Real or not, it'd be no use to suppose it isn't. So let's find the Ohms and go home!"

I feel better for having vented.

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

The tiny medicine man flashes Emily a quizzical look. Of course, all she sees is a fearsome tribal mask. The swirling, spiraling face conceals thick wood. In turn, the thickness of the wood consumes all but the sparkle of Bonu's eyes. His breathing echoes behind the mask, amplifying until it is less like a man's and more like a beast's. He comes very close to her--closer than he used to come to anyone, for fear of contaminating them--and speaks in a voice that's not quite a whisper:

"Why fear what waits for all but spares not one?
There's worse in life than finding it undone.
The idiot fears places no-one knows;
The hero knows he fears...but still he goes."

Bonu crosses his arms as well, content that he has made a point that only he understands. Satisfied, he continues.

"We all agree that we should find the Ohms,
But here we're aliens, and them? They're home.
What methods do we have to seek them out
(Aside from running free with screams and shouts)?"

[Cardea]

Elias


"Okay. Okay, I'm still... me. For now." Elias says, closing his hands, and breathing. "I've no idea how to go about it. I don't know what kind of things these Ohms are, and my blood hasn't given me anything to see beyond my sight. I can fly a bit, though. Its been useful before, it could be useful now.

"But I'd prefer if someone had any divination beforehand. Just in case my spells don't function properly."

[RaggedAngel]

Lora

Standing still as stone, Lora seems completely lost in thought, but she murmurs in response to Elias's question. "I am currently determining if our spell-like abilities and magic will still function. Give me a moment to see if I can still communicate with my bound vestiges." Her eyes remain closed as she speaks, and her forehead is knitted with concentration.

[RCgothic]

Emily

"Even heroes look before they leap." I mutter at Bonu. I don't feel like being lectured on this subject, given how recently I overcame my own fear to make sure he and Lora
we

I turn from the little man to join the coversation Lora and Elias are having. "Something wrong? If you're saying our abilities may not work, I suppose I'd better check too..."

I focus my mind into a tiny point of light, attempting to regain my psionic focus. If that works I turn my gaze on one of the rabbits and let loose with a blast of sonic energy!
Concentration take 10 for 21 to regain focus.
Ranged Touch Attack: [roll0]
Damage[roll1]

[Cardea]

Elias


"Because I had a hand." Elias says, raising his claw to his allies.

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

Looking to Elias, Vortex seems to pause and study the raised claw with intense interest. [i]Not only does magic still function, but it appears alter the fabric of this reality with the simplest of spells.[/b] He thinks to himself. His mind drifts towards his own form of 'magic', the energies of the souls that he shapes into phantasmal fascimiles of magical beasts.

"That ... is curious. Curious, indeed. One wonders what would happen if One ..."

Vortex focuses his mind and attempts to draw into himself the life energies that seem anchored to the location on his back. He brings to life, in his mind, an image of a Girallon, the magical ape-beast that possesses four arms, each tips with vicious claws. Making a mental effort, Vortex attempts to meld an image of himself with the Girallon, his body replacing its and only allowing the four arms to remain. Many times has Vortex done this mental excerise, when he shapes his soulmelds.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora

The binder moves over to Elias, taking his hand between her own, gently. She says nothing, and she seems as if she has suffered a terrible loss. She turns Elias's hand over, tracing across his palm with a single finger. Then she looks up at him, a faint fire in her eyes. "I am more powerless right now that I have been for almost a decade, but this is not reality. We are not on the world we once knew, and the rules here are not the same.

I need you to concentrate with me. This transformation does not pain you, and for now your limb remains functional; but such changes to your body will only lead to more. Eventually, you will become something Else, something that is not Elias. And I may be powerless, but I have spent my life forcing beings of the void to give me their strength.

Let's force this place to do our bidding, together. Look at your hand, and make it be flesh once more."

This is a shot in the damned dark, but Concentration: [roll0]

[Fable Wright]

Despite all of Lora's focus, the hand is still stone. However, as an odd thought drifted through her focus- not of restoring the hand, but of turning more of him into this strange substance, a vague rune-shape, much like the one for summoning the griffon, appears in the back of her mind, along with a haunting, somehow familiar voice in her mind, whispering "Who's to say that what is before you is Elias? Who's to say that the hand is Else, and the body is Elias, rather than the other way around?"

------------------------

As Vortex focuses, he feels life energy flowing out of him, flowing into the shape of the huge, predatory ape. Something is different this time, though. It's harder to concentrate on forming the meld here, in the Other Place; the energy feels hard to move into himself, as if it wants to be free here. However, as he focuses, he feels the familiar surge of energy, the arms growing out of his side, the fur growing on his back- wait. That's... new... and the fur doesn't stop there. It begins to feel warm on Vortex's back, and warm through the soulmeld, almost as if it were alive...

And then the soulmeld flies off Vortex's back, shoved by an unknown force. The bind was a failure, the soulmeld's binding force lost. As Vortex looks around, he sees behind him, apparently just flung hard at a tree, a rather disoriented looking Girallion.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora

Frowning as no change comes over the stone hand, Lora opens her mouth to say something; only to be interrupted by the sudden spawning of a four-armed gorilla. She turns to face the girallion, and she calmly reaches into the extradimesional space of her haversack to retrieve her longbow; but she refrains from actually drawing it just yet.

"Is it hostile? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the soul energy you call upon is able to take on a more realistic manifestation here. But you might be able to command it, like a summons."

Is her Handy Haversack functioning properly?

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

The diminutive man puts his hand on his chin, quizzically studying the results as the others tried to work their various brands of magic. He thinks for a moment about trying one of his own spells, but if attempting to detect magic had changed Elias--if attempting to bind a soul had actually called forth a creature--Bonu is concerned that his spellcasting could have more deadly results. Instead, he stands and waits to see how the summoned girallon reacts.

The medicine man had never been much for the formulae and theorems of studied arcanists, but he had a way of knowing some things of how magic worked. He relied on Mama Urf to provide knowledge to him, and she often responded by whispering sweet nothings back to him. However, he wondered if her long arm extended to this far-off land.

[roll0] What's going on here?
[roll1] Does Bonu think turning undead would work here?
[roll2] to identify why Elias' spell had a changed effect here.

[RCgothic]

Emily

I can hardly tear my eyes away from Elias' hand as Lora attempts to heal it, such am I startled by the transformation. Not to such an extent that I don't flinch out of the way when a Girralion springs into existence off of Vortex's back! My serious concerns about being here are not lessening!

"Hang on, I'll find out." I murmer in response to Lora's query about the Girallion's intent. Focusing my mind, I attempt to ascertain its disposition.

Detect Hostile Intent: 3pp used, 30ft radius emanation.
Also Sense Motive on Girallion as free action (as allowed by power): [roll0]

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

Vortex's eyes flash with alarm as the Girallion is expelled from his body. Spinning on his heel, Vortex pivots to face the creature, briefly noting that it is dazed from its impact on a nearby tree. Vortex's mind races to try and understand what happened...

It was momentarily frightening when he reached for the magic that fueled his abilities and found it resistant. Still, it reacted to him, so he must still have the ability to manipulate the energies. Focusing, he was able to bind it to his will and concentrate the essence of magic into the form of a Girallion. But, something was different.

When brought together, it regained some of its sentience and resisted his control further. His curiosity peaked, and his stubborn price kicking in, Vortex pushed through his doubts and attempt to meld his own essence with the Girallion. The results were expected, his flesh began to warp and twist, differently that before and he could feel the raw, animal power entrenching his neural pathways but that is when it happened. The Girallion pulled free and ejected itself into the world. Never has that happened before and Vortex was unprepared for it, too slow to pull tight the weave of his concentration.

Now, Vortex studies the creature. How does it maintain its flesh when it is nothing more than soul essences, albet given form from his very will? Is it alive, as they were? Vortex attempts to extend his senses... Does its heart beat? Can it think for itself? Vortex must know...

He inches closer, slowly but steadily... Almost completely disregarding his allies, so deep is his concentration...

The thump of its heart beat and the 'taste' of its nature somewhat ease's Vortex's worry as it multiplies his curiosity. He tilts his head slightly and shuffles close to the Girallion, careful to keep a reasonable amount of distance between his and the beast. Vortex begins to grunt and make soothing gestures to the Girallion, acting very much like one would expect a Girallion to act.

Vortex wants to sooth the Girallion via Wild Empathy. If Girallion Arms is still bound, he'll get a +4 to the roll. Rolled in OOC chat to keep from using dice in edited post. Roll was a 12

[Fable Wright]

Emily
You sense no hosility in the area. You have absolutely no idea what the Girallion that was just conjured into non-existence is thinking, though.

Bonu
You have no idea what's going on or what Rebuking Undead would do here, and you're not entirely sure about what happened to Elias's spell. You have a hunch that it has to do with the purpose of the spell is, though. The spell was intended to reveal things; maybe that works differently in the Void?

Vortex approaches the Girallion, and can ascertain that it is, in fact, alive and most likely very confused. It's eyes are darting around, and it looks frightened and confused. You see traces of the ferocity you imagined in the Girallion, and it looked as though it was on the verge of attacking you, though Vortex's calming sounds seems to have calmed it down a bit. It now seems rather indifferent to all of you, glancing around and trying to take stock of its surroundings, and beginning to climb up the tree it was slammed into upon its arrival/

[OMG PONIES]

Bonu

The tiny medicine man takes off his mask and tucks it in his satchel, allowing everyone to see his natural features unhindered by the relic or his disease. His blue eyes dance and sparkle with childlike joy as he soaks in the strangeness of the girallon's sudden appearance and the metamorphosis of Elias' hand. He clears his throat as if prepared to share a grand revelation.

"I'd half a mind to try spells of my own,
To summon forth a creature built from bone.
But if our spells are (as it seems) enhanced
To tamper so we'd take a foolish chance."

At this, he turns to Elias and continues:

"The purpose of your spell was to reveal,
But what happens with nothing to unveil?
If all's a lie, perhaps instead a change
From what we think we know to truth (how strange)."

Bonu seems impervious to the perplexed stares of his traveling companions, instead skipping over to Vortex and the girallon with giddy laughter.

And you, your meld to summon forth a soul...
We're faced instead with not a part, the whole.
We may learn more still if we tarry long
It seems to me that here, magic is strong.

It seems the tiny man has come to his thesis statement now, as he stands and looks around the group to address each of them individually in turn as he wraps each of their unique powers into his hypothesis.

"And not just strong, but magic raw and real,
In Prayers and spells and mind and meld and seal.
How long we've sought such power, longed to wield,
And now we find it, not in town but fields!

In cities far and wide we thought it tamed--
The boundless power which left us unnamed--
To think that we could ever hold the reigns!
To change the world and yet remain unchanged..."

Satisfied with his grand conclusion, Bonu shakes his head and laughs at the foolishness of men. The crazy little man thought that magic was at its fullest in this place, but that it took unexpected forms other than the ones to which they had grown accustomed. Because of this, he had no desire to tinker with the raw, unbridled potential of True Magic unless there was great need for it...perhaps if they could find an Ohm?

[RaggedAngel]

Lora

Lora stares at the little medicine man, and she touches her brow, shaking her head slightly. "You're a wise man, Bonu, and I'm a fool for not seeing it." She kneels down, turning her attention away from the others. With a small stone, she begins to draw lines in the earth, scratching out a strange diagram some two feet in diameter. She works quickly, with fervor and focus, and the shape quickly takes root in the earth before her.

And then she circumscribes a circle around the symbol, and then slams her hands down on either side of it. She stares into space, looking at nothing, and she calls forth with a clear voice. "Dantalion, Who Knows! Dantalion, the Star Emperor! Dantalion, Scion of Seers, the Manyfold King, The Multitude In One! Dantalion, I bade thee come forth!" As she speaks, she releases her will, forcing her call through the symbol, just as she has done a thousand times before.

[Fable Wright]

As Lora calls out to Dantalion, as she did on that day long, long ago...

For the first time ever, he fails to manifest. The seal in the dirt is still there, the ritual was followed as it always was, but... for some reason, absolutely nothing happened.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora Dantallia lowers her head, her long, dark hair falling to shroud her eyes from the world. Her hands lay limp, and the small stone with which she drew the Binder's seal falls to the ground, forgotton.

"Why." She says aloud. It isn't a question, not really. "Why did I spend my life in pursuit of knowledge that did not exist? In search of that final place, from whose bourne no traveller has returned? Why could I not have borne another ill, to sweat and toil under the weight of some other task? Instead it was this, to seek the void, nothingness, to attempt to understand that which by definition must be incomprehensible. What folly was mine, to believe that I, after countless generations, would be the one to do it, to solve a puzzle with no pieces. A puzzle with no puzzle, even; and if such a thing makes no sense, then it is all the more applicable to the situation."

She stands, and looks to the others. "We are exposed here. I know that much. While understanding what we are currently capable of is vital, it is more vital that we attempt to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible in the process. We should move, before something larger than a rabbit comes our way."

[RCgothic]

Emily

I move to put a comforting hand on Lora's shoulder, but think better of it and pull her into a full hug instead, my earlier annoyance forgotten in the face of her despondency. "It will be ok. Perhaps Dantalion finds it hard to hear you here, but haven't you told us the void connects all places? If there is anyone who can find a new way to call him, even from this remote place, it's you! Don't think for one minute you're a burden - even without him you still rival any of us with a bow, could even charm all of us out of our money if you tried; those are no small gifts!"

I release her slightly and gently raise her chin with a hand so that she can look into my face regardless of our respective height difference and receive the full benefit of my encouraging smile!

"And even without those I wouldn't want to explore this strange new world without you."

[Cardea]

Elias


Elias merely blanks out his mind as he watches the power of others go haywire. From mastery to... uncontrollably unreliable. He scowls. These were his party members. His group. He laughed and murdered with them. If they were deficient, he'd need to pick up slack in the meantime. He breaths out slowly, and back in, expanding his lung capacity a bit more each time. Thinking of lava under skin. Thinking of heat under veins. Thinking of a bloodline that still should be in him.

He should make his ancestors proud.

He thought of... a tail.

Attempting to manifest a tail if possible.
Concentration check: [roll0]

[Fable Wright]

Elias focuses, clearing his mind of everything, focusing on a limb that was never there. As he focuses, he can feel one, moving from side to side, like a phantom limb. When he opens his eyes to inspect his handiwork... there's nothing there. It was just that: A phantom limb Elias imagined.

In the meantime, the Girallion has reached the top of the tree, and begins surveying the surroundings.

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

He studies the Girallion for a time, still marveling that he was able to create something that lived and breathed, from himself. His mind is alight with the possibilities. Yet, as Vortex looks back towards the group, he sets aside those thoughts. There was time for such fantasy at a later date, especially for him. Right now, he must act to secure his friends and his own immediate needs. Shelter, safety and time. Time to learn the ways of this new world and master it.

Vortex sets his gaze to take in everything around him. The game trails, areas that seemed to be avoided by the local fauna and any particular landmarks that he can make out. He looks up and grins woodenly. The Girallion has the right idea. Vortex begins to climb the tree as well, being sure to keep his movements non-threatening and fluid, taking note to place himself on the opposite side of the tree occupied by the Girallion. He wouldn't want to spook it.

As he reaches the top, he tries to get his bearings.

Spot check? Survival?
[roll0]
[roll1]

[Fable Wright]

The tree that the Girallion chose to survey the nearby area was a good one. Though it wasn't immediately obvious, due to the thick canopy, the tree that the Girallion started climbing was very, very tall, despite it's just slightly thicker than average base. As Vortex moved from tree limb to tree limb, wading his way up through the canopy, he begins to see some details about where he is. The trees, for one, aren't the kind that were in the Wild. There were pine trees mixed in with deciduous and the same kinds of birds and small animals that there were in the wild, yes, but something was... different. The ends of branches don't seem randomly placed; they feel manicured, in a rough, wild way. As Vortex climbs through the canopy, he realizes that it he covered as much distance moving through it as he did moving up the trunk, which was tall in and of itself. And then he breasted the top, and, he suspected, if he had lungs, the sight would have taken his breath away.

Burnished sunlight shined down on a sea of lush greens, bright golds and reserved coppers. All around him, all he can see for miles, are more and more forest around him, the lumpy trees waving in an unseen breeze like waves. Birds, at once familiar and foreign to Vortex, take wing above the sea, flittering, squawking, singing above the canopy, in the expanse between the endless, cloudless blue sky and the sea of gently melding colors of the forest, some settling down to nest, while others rise up to join in anew, a disharmonious chorus of songs and calls nevertheless turning to music in Vortex's ears. As he watches the scene, the Girallion, he finds, had come next to him, staring across the expanse, before leaping into the verdant seas, brachiating from branch to branch as though swimming through the endless sea. It looks... happy.

Far off in the distance, he can see a dull, golden glow, barely cresting over the horizon of the endless forest. Only one thing could make that much light in Vortex's experience: a City. But should they really go?

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

Vortex gazes over the vast expanse of the tree with something akin to awe, barely noticing the passage of time. All of his being sung with joy at what he saw. The endless sea of trees. It was all very alluring. Perfect... Vortex thinks to himself ... Too perfect.... He gives his head a brief shake before watching the Girallion swing off into the trees. "Be free, brother.

Vortex begins to climb down, somewhat reluctant to sever his view of the canopy. Never-the-less, he must report to his friends about what he saw.

Landing in a crouched position, to absorb any excessive force from his landing, Vortex looks to his friends and describes what he say above the trees. "There is a large source of light off in that direction," Vortex indicates with a gesture, as he is unsure of the actual geographical directions. "One saw nothing else indicating civilization.

[RCgothic]

Emily

I had half a mind to follow Vortex up the tree! I pass the time that he's up there checking that my gear is all in order. When he returns and after hearing his report, I'm eager to get going.

"I guess that's the direction we should head in then? Unless anyone has any better ideas?"

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

For once, the tiny man is silent. He simply shrugs and nods in agreement.

[Fable Wright]

And so you march on.

You walk through the wilderness, stumbling over the roots underfoot, gnarled, twisted, and obscured by the flora springing up around it, walking in approximitely the same direction as Vortex once pointed, though you can't see any signs of the light he said he saw. The light from above grows in strength as the hours drag on, though you can't seem to see a sun, and after hours more begins to fade. The travel begins to wear on you. The gnarled roots begin to wear on your feat, causing them to feel bruised brutally on the insole. Your legs begin to feel damp from the surrounding plants, brushing almost unnoticible drops of water from their underside onto your legs, slowly building up and soaking your pants and boots. The chorus of birdsong that Vortex heard earlier sometimes breaks through the canoply, though as the day goes on it begins to sound less hopeful and more raucous. Around you, it's just more untamed Wilderness in all directions, with a few game animals all around you. Actually, come to think of it, all you've seen so far are game animals. Deer, rabbits, maybe a boar here or there. Not a carnivore in sight. It's almost as if someone stocked the place with game. As you feel your logical, sensible mind begin to dismiss the idea, your adventurer's paranoia kicks in and begins gnawing on the thought, wondering what could possibly stock a Wilderness?

The sun has been growing dim for a few hours now, causing it to feel like late afternoon. Eventually, after hours of walking in the same direction, with bruised feet, unpleasantly soaked leggings, paranoia of what could be behind the prey surrounding you and the jeering crowd of birds above. You begin to remember why you enjoyed the cities so much. And then you see, right before you... a dirt road, surrounded by stones, and incredibly wide, almost like a causeway. The strange part is that it doesn't extend in both directions. It ends facing you, a path for the jungle almost tailored for you to follow towards civilization. Alarm bells begin ringing in your head, and impressions of a rubbery, squidlike but untentacled face with bulbous yellow eyes briefly flashes through your head, a bizarre impression for everyone but Lora. And then Bonu steps onto the road and begins walking, and, bizarrely enough, nothing bad seems to happen to him. Shrugging, you follow.

After a few minutes, you actually see someone further out. As you approach, you see that he appears to be casually walking, but moving at a breakneck pace up and down the causeway. He's clad in a shining metal breastplate, has armored leather kilt down his legs, and carrying a tower shield and spear, with a sword glinting on his leg. He sees you approach, and stops, facing you, about 30ft out, spear extended at you and tower shield readied. Halt. Who, or what, goes there?

You may roll spot and listen, and/or initiative if you wish to fight.

[OMG PONIES]

Papa Bonu

Bonu holds up his hands to the man in an attempt to show that he is unarmed. He bows slightly and explains to the gentleman:

"We're trav'ling through and do not wish to fight
If so, would we approach by light or night?
That darkness hasn't come and here we are
Should show we wish to speak and not to spar.

Bonu's my name, as those here can attest.
We seek a place to eat, perhaps to rest.
So what's this place? And may we enter in?
We'll follow your response; we mean no sin."

[roll0]

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

Upon first seeing the armored figure, Vortex pauses momentarily, summing up the strength of the creature before continuing forward. He attempts to place himself at the front of the party, getting between the figure and his friends, though remaining non-threatening.

As Papa Bonu speaks up, Vortex chooses to remain silent, waiting to see how the figure responds to Papa Bonu's question. Vortex would rather not engage the first intelligent being they've seen in this world in combat, without first knowing what they were up against.

Spot[roll0]
Listen[roll1]

[RCgothic]

Emily

I'm always cautious when confronted by armed guards, but it seems my two companions have the situation in hand. I try to act casual and unconcerned with how things are going, even though I'm actually quite on edge. It takes an act of will not to surreptitiously check that my weapons are ready to draw, and instead I focus my energy into determining his intentions. I reassure myself that if he tries anything I can at least defuse the situation by plunging him into darkness.

Detect Hostlie Intent PP-3

[Fable Wright]

@Vortex:
You hear the birds, the trees, and the sound of some gravel shifting. You don't see anything unusual, though in this world, that might be something unusual in itself.

@Emily:
The guard seems ready for a fight, but isn't moving quite yet.

The guard levvies a glare at Bonu. You know the laws. No outsiders shall be allowed ingress into the Imperium, no matter the circumstances. He gives the party a once-over. Even if you somehow slipped around the Layer Ward, you shall find all roads to the Imperium closed for you. He sinks into a fighting stance, the tower shield angled with the bottom in your direction and the top reaching up to the plume of his helmet, slightly to his left so as to let his spear attack unencumbered. For a moment, the image of an earthen rampart with sharpened spikes flashes through your mind, and you get the feeling that he's about as, or more, effective as one.

@Lora:
When the guard mentiones the layer ward, you get an odd feeling, similar to the one you get as you begin tracing a Vestige's seal. The road before you extends in your mind, looping around itself and curving, as though it were part of a seal of its own...

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

Vortex watches the knight for a few moments, letting the seconds stretch out to almost a minute before he chooses to react. Vortex takes a step towards the knight and turns his back on him... and in doing so, reveals the mark on his back. With one hand, he gestures to the mark and calls out over his shoulder to the knight.

"Have you ever seen a mark like this? I seemed to have been branded with it upon my arrival.". Vortex turns to view the knight once more. "Outsiders, we might be but it is not of our doing. We know not of these laws you speak of and are quite perplexed as to our surroundings. Nothing behaves as it should."

Vortex turns his gaze to lock with the knight's and keeps it there, waiting, demanding a response.

[Fable Wright]

The knight glares at Vortex. I don't care what branding you got whenever you crossed the Void Witches' Partition, and I doubt that you know nothing of our laws, given the effort it must have taken to cross the Partition. And of course things are different here, Outsider. We take care of our layer, unlike you. I don't care why you're here or where you're from, but you're not crossing this causeway without Furies.

Your adventurers' instincts are telling you that there's something coming up from behind you, but when you glance back, you see nothing but the jungle you crossed, and apparently a rather large rock that you don't remember before.

[OMG PONIES]

At the mention of "Furies," Bonu's ears perk up. So there was a way in! Now if only he knew what "Furies" were...

OOC: Any kind of knowledge rolls, etc. that could clue us in? If not, I smell another rhyme brewing.

[RCgothic]

Emily

Though the terms he's using aren't familiar, I catch on to most of them quickly enough.

"The partition? You mean the void? And by layer you mean this plane of existence."

I relax slightly, judging that we should be ok if we don't provoke the guard, and genuine curiosity gets the better of me.

"As far as I know we're the first from our layer to cross the partition. A madman decided to send us to find evidence that the Ohms that roam our world are extra-planar in origin for a very large sum of money."

And he didn't give enough down payment!

"How do you know about our layer, and what do you mean 'We don't take care of it'?"

[RaggedAngel]

When the boulder appears Lora holds up her hand, interrupting whatever was about to be said. "Everyone stop for a moment." Her voice carries an edge of authority that you haven't heard in her since she found herself without vestiges, and she turns to face the man without fear.

"I apologize for our lack of knowledge about your reality, but allow me to explain our situation further. We were asked by a powerful man, a worker of magical forces in our reality, to travel into what we thought was the absence of reality; the Void."

She pauses, and turns to address the boulder. "Do not come any closer. I know that you can understand me." She was not absolutely sure about the fact, but she didn't let anyone else know that.

"Now then. We touched a device that revoked our existence from the reality that we originated in, and it thereby hurled us into your reality. We did not know until now that there were other realities, apparently by design; in that same way, we do not know anything about the Void Witches or our marks.

Additionally, while I do not know precisely what a fury is I suspect it has to do both with your extreme speed down this causeway and the suddenly-appearing boulder. Elemental powers or spirits, perhaps? Either way, we possess no such thing, and many of us have been rendered powerless by the journey into your world. We are not a threat to you. Would you lash out at us when we have come to you, in peace, and in a state of loss and confusion?"

Diplomacy: [roll0]

[Fable Wright]

The guard looks at Emily incredulously, and then at Lora, his eyes darting back between the two, betraying some inner confusion. It's... it's not possible. You can't be here. It's two hundred years too soon for the next layer to form. He seems to mull it over for a short while, before his head snaps up again, pointing at Emily. You. Holder. You mentioned Ohms? They still exist? And you, he shifts to look at Lora, You don't know of Furies? The guard nods sharply once. In that case, under the orders of High Lord Aquillus, you shall be 'escorted' to him immediately. As you don't have furies of your own... He ponders for a moment. Brenton, he calls, get out here and give our 'guests' a ride.

Behind you, the boulder shifts, as Lora predicted. It rises out of the ground, elongating, taking the form of pale, rough granite in the shape of a rough, shallow oval on the ground. It halts, for a moment, before moving forward, out onto the road, its front coming to surface as it nears the path, revealing two sparkling opal eyes on either side of its head, set above a long, albeit closed, maw. It continues walking out, and as it surfaces from the ground, its true shape is revealed: That of a landshark (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG30.jpg) made entirely of that odd, pale, granite. The Legionnaire takes a small bow, his arm sweeping towards the creature. Please, make yourselves comfortable.

[OMG PONIES]

Bonu's eyes grow wide, and he claps with excitement as he scurries onto a thin part of the creature. He looks to the others as if silently asking why they haven't already taken their places on this beautiful beast. In all his travels in the wilderness, he had never seen anything like it. As he feels its spine below him, his thoughts wander to the creatures skeletal structure and what a re-animated one might look like.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora nods to the soldier politely, grateful that he decided to see reason and grant them the benefit of the doubt instead of attacking them. She was fairly certain that they could handle him, but his stoney landshark was something else entirely.

She turns to the creature, approaching it respectfully and cautiously, as one would with any dangerous but well-trained animal. But this was not an animal at all, unless she was very mistaken. It was something quite different. She holds out her hand, laying it lightly on the earthen bulette's side. Instead of climbing aboard the creature she instead closes her eyes, and with an effort of will she tries to get a sense for it outside of her five mundane sense.

C'mon. C'mooooon.

[Fable Wright]

As Lora attempts to expand her mind outward, she feels a presence around her, almost like... well, it's hard to explain. She feels as though there's a pressure all around her, more intense further down the road, but less intense behind her. Around her, she can feel round auras; for the humanoids, it's faint, but for the creature beside her... it's larger than the landshark itself, and thinking about it, more glyphs appear in her head, like fragments of seals. It's the bottom half of a circle, with a vertical line bisecting it into two halves. On one half is a glyph that looks vaguely like a rhombus, and the other half...

It seems fuzzy to Lora, like it was blocked out. The rest of it still seems like it holds power, but it's just... incomplete (http://i757.photobucket.com/albums/xx219/DMofDarkness/Image_zpsbd46a9c1.png). It's strange, though... all over noncreation, these symbols and fragments kept popping up looking like fragments of seals. Why does she keep on seeing them, and apparently no one else?

[RaggedAngel]

"This," Lora murmurs as she takes her hand from the stone landshark, "Is as interesting as it is frustrating. This creature has great power, power beyond its physical form. There is power in the land itself, it seems; more-so down the road, towards civilization."

She looks back to the knight, her tone politely inquisitive. "This creature- forgive, Brenton, here. He is a Fury, correct? Now, he's magical, anyone with eyes can see that. But his aura is massive. What are the Furies, exactly? We do not have them in our world, and they seem fascinating."

[Eldonauran]

Vortex

Thoughts churning with the new information he has learned, One makes his way cautiously towards this ... Brenton the guardian named. After seeing Bonu scamper on board, One sees no reason to hesitate joining him, though One could probably keep pace without trouble. One doesn't get 'tired' like living things do.

Confusion that remains hidden in his expression, Vortex turns his gaze to Lora as she speaks. He nods in agreement and says "She speaks truly. One is familiar with a number of natural and magical beasts in our world, and this ... Brenton, appears to resemble a landshark but is much, much more."

[Fable Wright]

The soldier gives Lora an unimpressed look. It's a fury. It's like asking me what a sky is. You want an answer, ask someone in Aquillius's court. Now, shall we get going?

The guard waves his sword in a gesturing movement for people to get on already.

[OMG PONIES]

Bonu hops on board the strange creature, chittering to himself in halfling all the while. He has some trouble climbing onto the massive beast, but disdainfully refuses any assistance offered by his fellow travelers. After a few moments of clawing at the thing's thick hide and using Vortex's leg as a handhold, he's finally able to get into riding position.

[RCgothic]

Emily

I'm relieved at the reasonableness of the guard, and I find I'm finally beginning to settle down and accept the strangeness of this new place. Perhaps I might actually enjoy investigating it after all!

With a rediscovered sense of adventure I vault onto the back of the fury behind Vortex, wrapping my arms around his waist for stability.

[RaggedAngel]

Lora gracefully seats herself on the back of the fury, ignoring the soldier's less-than-polite response. She merely made a mental note to have a discussion with the man about courtesy when she came back into her power. Resting a hand on the earth fury's back, she smiled faintly. There was power here indeed, and after a lifetime of binding alien wills to her own, she suspected it was a craft that she could learn.

[Fable Wright]

As the last of you get on Brenton, the soldier swings up behind the creatures head and, seemingly without any cues, the fury gets up, shaking gravel onto the otherwise clear dirt road, causing everyone save Vortex and Emily to nearly slide off the landshark, before it begins trotting down the road at a clip the beast's relaxed gait belies, covering ground at the same speed Vortex running flat-out with seemingly no effort. The soldier, rather than face forward to see where the fury is going, instead keeps his gaze silently focused on the party, stopping only for the rare blink of occasional glance over the shoulder at the sound of horns ahead.

As you travel, you begin to see the world in which you landed in. Far from the woods where you initially landed, you soon see that most of the terrain in this region is actually farmland; as the winding dirt road gently curves this way and that around and through flat fields, you can see people hard at work tending them; over there is a maiden, busy washing clothes, though rather than using a prestidigitation trap, she seems to just dunk them in the water, where a small vortex forms to wash out the dirt and grime. In the tall grass, you occasionally make out wisps of forms darting through, nearly human for a second, before disappearing almost immediately, the laughter of children easily heard coming from their direction. Nearby a stone-fortified barn, an old man smokes meat, with the fire staying at the same level and intensity no matter how much firewood was added or removed, burning at a level pace.

Aside from a brief interruption where another soldier draws alongside you and exchanges a few quick words with your driver before taking flight seemingly unassisted, your trip continues unimpeded, with most people taking no notice of you or giving you at most a quick glance before turning back to work. Over time, the fields begin to fade back into forests, swamps, and then back to open meadows. This time, however, rather than farmworkers, you see cities in the distance. Not the cities of the world you came from; a cross between them and the tribal homes of the races living in the wilds, heavy-set buildings inlaid with arches as windows and doors, often with fountains easily seen even from where you stand, and aqueducts leading into and out of the cities.

After passing two or three distant cities (one of them was far away and could have been a really, really intricate barn), you find the road you're riding on leading straight into one. While you didn't get much of a chance to see the scope of the cities before, you're almost certain that this city was bigger than the other ones. Inside the city, you continue on fury-back, though it looks like no others are trying the same thing, and you notice that the city seems surprisingly like your own, back in reality, from sparring arenas where summoning traps would be, to giant coliseums hosting spectacular displays of the elements dancing where the smaller far-realms gazing ports would otherwise be, even down to the magic item vendors (Stealthy Gladius of Flashing Lights and Intermittent Explosions! 85% off!), the place seems remarkably similar to your own, sans the natural lighting, arched buildings, and waterworks.

You don't get much time for sight-seeing, however, as your mount doesn't bother breaking pace until it approaches a heavily guarded building, at which point the landshark's pace descends to a trot, and the accelerated movement dies away. The guards, dressed remarkably similar to the one escorting you, save for a different insignia on their breastplates and different colored kilts, are quick to open the gates to let you through, at which point the guard escorts you into one of the largest buildings you've ever seen.

The building is at least 60ft tall, and as long, wide, and winding as a building made solely of interconnected Magnificent Mansion traps, filled with works of art, ranging from bronze replicas of humans mixed with animalistic humans rendered in exquisite detail to indoor fountains of wine that emits light, refracted off colored crystals to add color into the room, and more buildings than you can count. Your escort leads you through at least a dozen corridors, each twisting and disparate angles (and some, you're almost certain, in non-euclidean ones) before you arrive in a large hall, more ornate than the rest of the building. It's roof towers over 100' above you, and the room is similarly expansive in its other dimensions. A tall stage towers 30ft above you, with many important-looking individuals seated on ornate seats, ranging from gold and colored glass stones entwined in intricate whorls and obviously supported by magic, to ones hewn of obsidian even blacker than Elias's claw, carved with scenes of hunters taking down nonexistant beasts of prey. (The most impressive part being the fact that they actually carved obsidian like onyx; your experience dealing with magic-wrought artifacts confirms it.) Above them all is a large, strangely plain stone seat, with a man with greying black hair, old, wrinkled brown eyes, and an otherwise youthful-looking body stares down at a recently-mopped floor, despite the fact that you'd expect such affairs to be completed before dignitaries arrive. (And it's obviously a rush job; you can see the swab lines clearly, and they don't even cover the whole floor.) A quick glance shows three washerwoman as the source, apparently well-dressed for their station, though they might have been dressed up for this meeting, circled around you near the edges of the room, right by the guards dressed in ornate but obviously functional and cared-for armor, each radiating a tangible aura (literally, you can feel it; your gear squeezing closer around you, heat emanating, the veins in just your left arm feeling cold) of readiness to fight.

The man on the stone throne looks down at you with an imperious look, and then commands you, simply, to "Speak."

[RCgothic]

Emily

The trip here has been both inspiring and puzzling at the same time. If the people here are willing to use magic to help in their tasks, why not use magic for the entire task? I am confounded.

And now we are brought before whom must be High Lord Aquillus.

In any case, I get the urgent impression that the patience of our hosts is a distinctly finite resource. Lora would probably be able to explain our situation better than I, but I speak up quickly anyway in order to prevent Papa Bonu being the first person from our group Lord High Aquilius should experience! I trust that she'll fill in any gaps I might leave.

I curtsy politely and begin, paraphrasing Lora's earlier words to the guard.

"Lord, we still know little of what has happened, but I will explain as best I can.

We were asked by a powerful man, a worker of magical forces in our reality, to travel into what we thought was the absence of reality; the Void. We didn't know until we got here that there were other realities, that that which we call the Void was actually a Partition between our planes - our layers. The man who sent us tasked us to find evidence that the ohms that ravage our world are not native to our world and equipped us with means to return." I indicate the marks on our backs.

"Here we encountered your border guard, who sent us here as soon as he learned of our task and that we have no such thing as furies on our layer. I'm afraid we know little else. We mean no-one here any harm, we are simply here on a mission of exploration. We will happily answer any questions, and hope that we may be permitted to ask a few as well."

[RaggedAngel]

Lora takes in the grand building with a keenly appraising eye, and just as she has for the entire journey, she keeps a fastidious mental record of everything around her. The layout of the hallways, the alignment of the buildings around her, the relative positioning of the cities themselves...

For now Lora is a Binder without power, and that means that she is reduced to nothing but cunning and desperation.

She listens politely as Emily speaks, and when she finishes Lora continues fluidly onwards. "Your Grace, I would just like to stress the fact that we understand very little about the way your reality works. None of us knew anything about the Layer Ward, or furies, or even the fact that there were realities outside of our own planar cosmology. I do not know if we have violated any laws or otherwise caused an offense, but if we have I promise that we do not seek to cause harm. More than anything else, we seek understanding."

[Fable Wright]

Little can be heard in the chamber over the quiet sounds of the short, quick strokes of the washerwomen's mops as Emily and Lora speak. The guards' expressions do not shift, but take on an air of skepticism in addition to their menace. Behind what you presume is the High Lord's chair, a few of the beseated nobles begin murmuring among each other, glancing between the party, themselves, and the man in the middle of the stage. For his part, the man overseeing you does not move a muscle as you speak, calmly watching you with his heavy brown eyes, and does not appear to have any urge to move anytime soon even after you cease talking. Silence weighs heavily in the air around him, and the people behind him soon notice his lack of motion, and quiet down themselves, soon sending the silence to deafening levels.

The man makes no move to speak.

[RCgothic]

Emily

I share a look with Emily and Papa Bonu. I don't know what else there is to say, so I remain silent.

[OMG PONIES]

Bonu shrugs, indicating that he had nothing else to add. This man seemed like the strong, silent type; it was unclear to the medicine man if one of his rambling rhymes would do more harm then good.