The Ultimate Conflict (Of Gods and Royalty) IC

[Realms of Chaos]

Core OOC Thread (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=253202)
Group OOC Thread (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=253597)

Daniel: You can still see the scene in your head when you close your eyes, still see the villagers pressing against the opposite end of the barrier, inches away but unable to reach you. You can still hear the screams pierce the night, punctuated with the cries of flocks of crows awakened from their slumber. You can still hear that horrid monstrosity, walking and destroying even as its own body slowly seems to fall apart.


”dO YuO mIsS yOuR MOTher, bOy?”

Returning to the land of the living, Daniel finds himself safe in his bed once more, nestled in the depths of the Harvest Queen’s Acropolis. Your arm still hurts, the arm that moments ago in dream was pounding against a barrier. As your mind clears, you begin to piece things slowly back together. The pain in your arm comes not from your personal demons, no, but from the very real demon you fought just the previous day. Infiltrating the home of a known cultist, you and fang managed to slay a demon while Sebastian stayed upstairs to murder the cultist himself. Apart from a couple of innocent servants that Fang murdered to silence (or at least so you tell yourself), the entire mission went off without casualties. Another victory for righteousness, if one gained with unorthodox tools. Today the harvest queen is set to move the entrance of her acropolis. Until she finally does so, however, you are left to your own devices within these empty halls.


Sebastian Dettotoro: Sebastian awakes rather peacefully in his room. For all that could be said of the Harvest Queen, she certainly knew how to take care of guests in this Acropolis of hers. Well, aside from her taste in drink, perhaps. You’d complain about that horrid cider you drank last night if you hadn’t swiped it and your still sorely tempted to out of principle. Turning your attention to happier thoughts, you take a moment to admire the newest trophy you’d obtained, a small marble bust of a balding man with a chunk missing from its forehead right where you bashed it into its owner’s head. Hardly your best work, mind you, but still a decent farewell to that town. You only regret not being there to stop Daniel and Fang from slaying the demon in the noble’s basement. When Daniel offered a job that seemed halfway enjoyable, there was almost always a catch. Well, at least your time in that town is over. The Harvest Queen is moving the entrance somewhere else today. Another town to get reconnaissance on, another guild to get acquainted with, so many more necks just waiting for your blade. Sounds like another busy day for you.

Fang of the Shadows: At long last, the letter was done. It had taken most of the night to decrypt the message your forces had sent you and had taken longer than normal to encrypt a response with instructions. As soon as the Harvest Queen reopened her acropolis, you’d be able to send your message from the nearest town. There were, you supposed, certain advantages to living in an impenetrable fortress whose entrance teleported every couple of weeks. There were, of course, certain costs as well. Daniel, being rather reasonable for a Paladin, seemed to take it upon himself to search for areas where your interests overlapped. Claiming to have found a source of “possible competition” in town, Daniel lead you and a reluctant Sebastian to the home of a demonic cultist and his assassin demon (an insult to the title of assassin, really). The entire encounter, though satisfying, had left you rather physically drained. As you rolled up your parchment and peeked out of the window, you could see that the sun was rising once more. Sleep was not for guildmasters like yourself, apparently.

Erika Dreamweaver:The Harvest Queen’s Acropolis is rather lonely at times. When the others leave for sleep, you are left to your own devices, left to nights of the same empty dreams or lie awake and count the moments until the next day starts. You have followed the servants before but most of them can’t keep your attention. You can’t even wonder out the front gate into town now that the Queen has closed it. You wonder how that farmhand in town was doing. Though you only knew him for the better part of three days, his dedication and fervor really stood out among the more timid townsfolk. He would make a fine knight some day if he kept with his training. By the end of your last training lesson, he had managed a rather decent defensive stance. It was early morning now and the others would soon start waking up. When they did, you’d be there to greet them.

Gidae:To complete my personal treatment of your character during this stage of game-planning, here is a rough draft of the character blurb that I may use in the first post of your campaign. This isn't the entire post (just the first part, really) but please let me know if I get something wrong about your character, the backstory, or similar matters so I can revise until it works.

Day had returned once again to this hollow acropolis, beginning what would doubtlessly be another wonderful day. With the harvest in Dalesmoor over, the harvest queen would soon reopen the entrance to somewhere new. Though the acropolis had become the closest thing you know to a home, the travels it took you on were without a doubt the most exciting element. To find oneself in a new town every couple of weeks, to collect new stories and jokes from the people, to share your own talents and brighten the days of others. Something about this lifestyle held a most definite appeal. If your talent with humor and performance were any indication, you had been performing for a long, long time. It was pleasant at times to think that you were simply continuing whatever life you may have left behind. Such idle thoughts were best left for children and farmhands, however. The day was upon you and with it came the chance for action.

The Harvest Queen: It would seem that the Harvest Queen’s birthday has come once more. This, of course, is nothing new to you. After all, it’s always the harvest time somewhere. This doesn’t mean that you have no reason to celebrate, however. What is life without a celebration? A rather sad life indeed, one would suspect. The harvest in Dalesmoor has just ended the previous day and your tributes, true unbridled gems to those who can appreciate their beauty, decorate your throne room quite magnificently. You can already hear the soft footsteps of others in your acropolis, the menagerie of companions you’ve collected to join you in your journeys. They are likely just waking up and wondering where you will take them today. That much is left up to you. Such a decision is always best left to the queen.

[Maugan Ra]

Dawn had come once more, and as was her way, Erika wandered. Through echoing chambers and winding passageways she strolled, no fixed destination in mind save for mere curiosity. This place was either the favorite city she'd ever been to, or the most hated, and she was not quite sure as to which.

On the one hand, it was certainly interesting, every chamber a novel experience. Lakes of liquid silver, art galleries of animate darkness, entire rooms that seemed to resize themselves at will - a person could meander aimlessly through this place for a year and never grow bored with the scenery. And yet, despite that, it was so utterly empty. She hated isolation, hated being deprived of all company save her own echoing thoughts, and a place like this offered remarkably limited opportunities for companionship.

With a start, Erika realized that her unfocused thoughts had once again influenced her movements, setting her feet on the path that would likely take her to the throne room. Well, that was hardly a negative outcome - the Queen was, after all, a fascinating being to spend time with and generally observe. And she might even meet some of her other guests along the way.

Still, one shouldn't call on royalty underdressed. With a casual gesture, the Dreamweaver wove for herself an outfit of shifting black shadows, winding it around herself to create a suitably regal, if understated, appearance. Attempting to outdo the Queen in her own home would simply be rude, after all. Thus prepared, Erika made her way towards the throne room, her every step filled with fluid grace.

Using warp world for the random outfit. In the acropolis, shadows are a viable building material apparently, so creating and/or manipulating them to form a nice dress should be well within my abilities.

And let's get this game started. *is excited*

[Metroid33]

Rising from his desk, Fang places the roll of parchment into a special tube, then locks it. The only other key was in the hands of his trusted second command Jared, who was keeping everything inline while he was away. Checking to make sure the tube would obliterate the contents if forced open, he then looked back to the window deciding to watch the sun rises for a few moments. After the sun had parted from the horizon, Fang grabbed his coat and scarf then threw them on. He then walked to the door attaching his double scabbard to his belt and placing his knife into its secret scabbard under his arm, and out the door he went.

Quietly entering the hall way Fang started moving, quickly darting from one shadow to the next, a force of habit from all the time he spends skulking in the shadows. He then came around a corner and almost bumped right into Erika, realizing that they were both going to the Throne Room they set off again together.

Entering silently Fang walked over to the Queen and said May I ask where the acropolis will be opening today? I wish to send a letter to my guild.

[Maugan Ra]

"A letter? A strange way of communicating with people. One would think magic to be a better choice in most cases." Erika comments, her voice filled with the eternal curiosity that is practically her defining trait.

[Metroid33]

Turning to Erika Fang said In my opinion it can be more secure if you have as large a network as i do. Less likely some mage will come along and peek in on a scrying conversation. It's good to be cautious at times.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika simply shrugs languidly. "If you say so. I've never tried running an organisation, covert or otherwise. It always seemed like too much work for too little reward. I'm curious, why do you do it?"

[Metroid33]

I do it because the one man who felt like a father to me left me in charge of this organization after he died. From there I've grown to it and it has great uses, having contacts in hundreds of cities has it's perks.

[Maugan Ra]

"Ah, it's a family thing? A legacy? That explains why I don't really get it." Erika says with a faintly wistful smile. "Can't say I keep contacts either. Once I leave a place for any length of time, it's usually because it's just not interesting any more. Why tie yourself down to something mundane?"

[Metroid33]

The guild is like a family to me. They are some of my closest friends, I make sure I meet every new initiate remember there names. When a member dies I greave for them. Most people think we're a bunch of ragtag thieves but it's deeper then that. So tying myself to this guild is like leading a very large family. As Fang said the last part his eyes watered just a little bit, but he kept a steady gaze and didn't blink them away.

[hpboy111]

Daniel slowly rubs the sleep out of his eyes as he swings his legs over the edge of his bed. Taking a deep, somewhat shaky breath, he stands and looks around his room. It is a simple affair. The room is about thirty feet by thirty feet. The walls are simple cobblestone; only a single decoration, a painting of a small cottage in a forest glade, can be found on the walls. A small bedside table sits next to a queen sized bed. Another table with two chairs resides next to the wall on the opposite side of the room. Lying on the table is the Bag of Holding that Daniel carries everwhere. All of Daniel's possessions reside in the bag except for the three sets of clothing hanging in a small dresser on the other side of Daniel's bed. Two simple wooden doors with latches can be found in the room. One leads to small washcloset, the other to the rest of the Acropolis.

Daniel takes a few moments in the washcloset, splashing his face with water to help wake himself up. From the dresser he pulls a simple set of cotton pants and an equally simple white shirt. A piece of rope acts as his belt.

Daniel exits his room and makes his way down the many halls. He nods in acknowledgement to anyone he encounters in the halls, but mostly ignores them. Daniel makes his way down to the lake. On the far side he found a nice little beach where he enjoys going to meditate in the mornings. He spends an hour in quiet contemplation and prayer. With spells prepared and mind quieted, Daniel spends a half hour practicing forms before jogging back to the Acropolis and making his way to the dining hall. He eats a light breakfast, absentmindedly moving food from plate to mouth. He's distracted. The meditation had helped to temporarily distract him, but the dream still weighed heavily on his mind.

It was a recurring nightmare, one that had haunted his nights for twenty years. The creature always made his blood run cold, and he could never shake that image of the thing tearing, ripping, slaughtering, devouring. It was one of the worst displays inhuman cruelty Daniel had ever seen, and he had trouble removing it from his mind.

Under his breath Daniel mutters, What I wouldn't give for the chance to wring that things neck. He let's out a sigh and lays his head down the table. Losing himself in his thoughts, he waits until someone disturbs his quiet contemplation.

[AmberVael]

The queen was in a strange mood today, not an infrequent occurrence, to tell the truth. Some (perhaps even most) mornings she simply had strange ideas and emotions that seemed to seize her and define her for a time- until she bored of them or until something else seized her fancy. It was most common after a harvest day, after she had supped on the adoration and praise lifted up to her, and drunk deep of her own power. It lent her a certain enthusiasm, an unpredictable and manic drive...

As Fang and Erika enter the throne room, they find the Queen sitting not in her chair, but on the armrest- perched and balanced carefully there, a smirk on her face and her hazel eyes shot through with mischief. While at her festival she had worn formal attire that displayed all her colors, today she wears a slim dress made of multiple layers of jet black and crimson cloth, each overlapping and hanging slightly loose so they swirled and shifted with her movements.

Raising a hand in a grand manner, the Queen speaks in a voice suitable for royal proclamations as she makes her reply to Fang. "Today, we will go somewhere grand, somewhere full of life, magic, and strange things." Then, in a less formal tone, her smirk becoming a broad smile, she motions for Erika to approach. "A pleasure to see you this morning. Why don't you take a seat?"

Typically the throne room has a number of other chairs, but sometime since the Queen's visitors last saw it, they seem to have been cleared out, leaving the only choice of seating to be the throne itself, which the fey now gestures to. Whatever she's plotting is likely why she isn't actually sitting in the throne, a seat of power that normally she relishes.

[Metroid33]

Seeing the strange interaction Fang said, What place would this be? Quickly he then sank into the back of the throne room waiting for an answer.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika tilted her head up at the Queen, the faintest beginnings of an amused smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Her host is clearly planning something, and common sense would normally dictate that one should go immediately on their guard in the face of such a possibility. But then, she is a guest here, and one of the duties inherent in that position was indulging her host's whims every now and again.

Besides, she was curious to see what the fey was up to.

So, with calm grace, she approached and lowered herself onto the throne. "A pleasure to see you as well, your majesty." she murmured.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian had found himself, once again, awake moments before dawn. He had always been drawn to both dawn and dusk; probably because of the mystery presented in fast moving shadows and the almost eerie orange glow that bathed the landscape. This landscape, of course, needs no more eeriness, as the Acropolis seemed to be a monument to the strange and fascinating.
Staring out from a window in his room, Sebastian stretched and cracked his neck, back, and knuckles. As the sun crested the horizon and started today's journey, he kicked into gear, walking to the other side of the room and flinging open the unnecessarily large wardrobe hogging most of the wall-space. Various outfits were prepared in groups inside, ranging from peasant's garb to several guard uniforms, and even a jester outfit that had served more than well enough on three separate occasions.
Smiling ear-to-ear, he grabbed from the back of the wardrobe his standard black suit, one that was almost invisible amongst the other clothes. Black-and-white slightly heeled shoes, a pair of the finest black pants, and a far-too-magnificent-to-be-normal belt complete the lower part of his garb. Then he moved onto his favorite item: his shirt. Almost ironically bright white with the finest of black buttons up the front, it featured a rather large and ostentatious collar and almost flamboyantly flared sleeves. One could say 'Poofy' if one didn't mind making their way up the hit-list of an assassin who has earned his eccentric garb. Still smirking to himself, he donned his equally-fine black vest, three over-sized gold buttons being fastened without a conscious thought. He knelt, reaching into some un-seen jar for a moment before slicking his hair back over his head and wiping his hands on the peasants outfit with a small chuckle before standing and donning the Pièce de résistance: A massive cloak that put the rest of the garb to shame. Flowing of the same shadow-stuff the Acropolis is made of, it's ends swirl constantly over his feet. The long arms end per-maturely in thick cuffs, all the better to let his shirt-sleeves free, though everyone's attention is drawn at first to the collar. Comically over-sized, the thick black collar that reaches up to his ears, wrapping around the back of his head and keeping all but his forehead, eyes, nose, and smirking mouth visible. For someone that spends most of his time invisible, Sebastian definitely prided himself on looking damned good.
An audible sigh followed his noticing the height of the sun; he had gotten carried away. How could he have let himself be distracted like this with The Queen planning to open another gate today? Giving only a cursory glance at the literal pile of coins in the corner of his room, he shrugged and headed out of his room. Of course they weren't touched; only Fang could've pulled that off, and it's doubtful that he would be dumb enough to try that. Hurrying, almost jogging, down the hall to the throne-room, Sebastian managed to take a route that had already been used recently, it seemed. Keen and ever-practicing eyes showed that several of the others were ahead of him as he reached the throne rooms massive doors. Cursing himself under his breath as he fixed his clothes and hair, preparing to make an entrance: Because what else really mattered but presence?
Flinging the doors open just a tad more forcefully than necessary, he marched into the room, footfalls echoing through the massive, and beautiful, room. "Apologies for my lateness, Your majesty..." He nearly shouted, taking an over-the-top bow, nose nearly scraping the floor and cloak swirling about him. "It seems as though I lost track of time, again, in this most hospitable realm of yours."
Finally looking around the room, he perked an eyebrow at Erika's choice in seating, but as The Queen seemed pleased, he simply shrugged and trotted over to one of the chairs, passing close enough to Fang to set lesser men on their nerves before pulling out a seat and sitting into it, tilting it back onto two legs and resting his hands behind his head. To no one in particular, he asks: " So, what seems to be on the agenda today? Little unsuspecting thorpe? Hamlet with a single sheriff? Big city full of deserving sinners? Plane of existence featuring nothing but flowers and unicorns?" before trailing off into grinning silence.

[Metroid33]

"Why good morning Sebastian," Fang said. "Her majesty has yet to say exactly where we will be going, but has let slip that it is 'somewhere full of life, magic, and many strange things.'"

[Toska Moriarty]

Eyes still closed, still relaxed, Sebastian mutters out a retort: "Any morning when I wake up is a good one, Fang." Scoffing at Fang's response, he adds: "Well, atleast now I have all the details I'll ever need..."[/Sarcasm] Turning his head and opening one eye (Why waste two?) he asks: "You manage to get any word through to that rag-tag bunch of yours yet?"

[Metroid33]

Giving Sebastian a harsh glance, Fang wished he had been there a few moments earlier to here his conversation with Erika. Not yet, the queen hasn't opened the acropolis." moving a little closer to Sebastian Fang continues, "and as you know we aren't a rag-tag group of petty thieves, you ran with us for while until that incident."

[AmberVael]

"I imagine it is a pleasure." The Queen replies to Erika with a confident, arrogant smile- one that is both genuine and self-mocking. She sweeps off the edge of the throne, leaving Erika to sit there as she flows down to the lower level in front of the throne as smooth and swiftly as racing water. Arms spreading wide, she gestures elaborately and grandly. "Today, your highness, I propose that we set out sights on that most grand of cities, the jewel of the planes. No doubt our impatient ally could find a way to send his message from there- and the rest of us find worthy and intriguing pursuits to spend our time on."

"Sebastian, do you concur with my choice?" The Harvest Queen asks as she returns his bow with a low, magnificent curtsy that is just deep enough to take the assassin's absurd bow in stride but still look elegant.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sitting forward in his chair and letting all four legs touch the ground, he simply shrugged and rolled his eyes at Fang before nodding to The Queen. "How could I not? You haven't steered a single one of us wrong yet...." He trailed off for a moment, wondering where the others had gone before snapping back: "Though, My Lady, I must admit I'm a tad confused by your manner this morning. The Queen need not bow to any man, If I remember correctly? Why the change in, uh" He glances at Erika in the throne again, "policy?"

[Maugan Ra]

"There is a difference between acting and genuine submission, dear Sebastian." Erika says, her voice adopting a regal air as though she had been born to sit upon a throne. And who knew, maybe she had been. "Though it may largely depend on perception."

"That said, a visit to the crossroads of the multiverse seems a fine idea. All manner of interesting things pass through such places, after all, and we should not want to miss out."

[Infernally Clay]

"Acting..." the unusually silent woman in the corner finally said, as if the word had jerked her to life, "I tried acting to see if the plays would be familiar, but they weren't. I hear my performance wasn't entirely convincing, either."

She chuckled to herself then. As bad as her acting was, the children had indeed been captivated. They had laughed when she forgot her lines, laughed harder when she got them right and sat silently in awe as she sang. Was this her life? Did she travel, telling stories through music and dance? She could not deny that such a life sounded blissful, but it was one she had to rediscover.She had often asked the locals of the towns and villages they passed if they recognised her, but they didn't.

Amnesia left nothing but a hole where her memories once lived.

For Gidae, the name The Queen had suggested, the only connection she felt was with her axe. She held it now, its deep red colour faded. It was beatiful to Gidae, though. The most beautiful thing the world. Even though she couldn't remember what the rest of the world looked like, something told her none of it compared to her axe. It was a curious thing, both an axe and a stringed instrument, that seemed to resonate with her whenever she played it.

"As for going places, I'm willing to go anywhere and anywhen," Gidae smirked as she lowered her hood, "Just don't expect a guided tour."

There was power in the eyes that now scanned the room's occupants. Even though Gidae's dark red hair and bright blue eyes looked faded, as though the very life had been taken from them, the powerful presence Gidae had could not be ignored. Yet who would have such strength even when looking so diminished?

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian was more or less left open-mouthed when he heard Erika speak, a rare occasion of speechlessness. He started to think of a response, almost had something really clever involving theater masks and some metaphor about a ghost, but before he could form any of the words, a new voice had entered the conversation. Head turning quickly enough to practically cause wiplash, he was happy to see it was Gidae, hidden far enough back with her hood up, putting even Fang's skulking to shame. Had he still been rocking in his seat, he would've no-doubt fallen over, but at least now he could smugly shrug, cross his arms, and wait for The Queen to speak more of this 'Inter-planar crossroads'.

[AmberVael]

"Need? Need is boring, my dear Sebastian. What I want is far more important than what I need, for that is what defines me. A person who only does what they need is not a person at all, but a mindless machine, a wheel pushed down a hill." Laughs the fey.

"Since her highness approves, the way will be opened." the Harvest Queen gives a clap of her hands as if starting some foreign dance, and a distant, thundering sound answers her. The gate of the Acropolis opens at the end of the twisting path that leads up around the harbor and stables to the Queen's home, dim lights shining within it as it opens into an old abandoned crypt, where few would be likely to enter, but the Queen and her companions could exit without being noticed.

[hpboy111]

The faint rumble resounds through the halls of the Acropolis. Daniel lifts his head at the sound. Having heard it several times before, he assumes that Harvest Queen has just opened the gate, but to where?

He stands and stretches for a moment before making his way toward the throne room. On his way he takes care to compose himself in such a way that won't belie his current inner turmoil. He knows that in this company, it probably won't do him any good, but he'd prefer to keep his demons to himself. It's a shame that this nightmare coincided with a change of gates. Daniel has no choice but to meet with everyone today, at least to figure out where the gate was opened.

By now Daniel knows the halls of the Acropolis well and with his speed is able to navigate to the throne room in short order. He enters with no care for his current garb, effectively peasants clothing, or the sweat and sand that covers his body from the brief workout. He notes the current arrangement of his "allies", raising an eyebrow at the sight of Erika sitting on the Harvest Queen's throne, he says to those assembled, So... Has the Queen seceded her throne, or did Erika succeed in overthrowing her? I can't have missed more than a few minutes of this meeting, but you've got curious about what's transpired in that time. Daniel claps his hands together, rubbing his palms against each other. Regardless... Good morning to the lot of you. What's on the schedule for today?

[Maugan Ra]

"I am very efficient when I want to be." Erika says archly, then chuckles before descending from the throne once more. "But really, everyone attaches such meaning to simple things. Who knew the choice of seating arrangement could be so influential?"

That said, she approaches the open portal. "Now, let's go explore, hmm?"

And this will be where we see what Realms has planned...

[Toska Moriarty]

Standing, Sebastian closes his eyes and casually gestures that he concedes The Queen's point. Glancing and Daniel just long enough to remember that the man holds no value in appearance, and shrugs again, to both his question and Erika's prompt before following Erika towards the new gate, fingers laced and hands behind his head; Morning isn't exactly his best time, it seems. In the echoing and shadowy Acropolis, hearing him whistling to himself was far-too easy.

[Realms of Chaos]

The entrance of the fortress seems to extend far longer than it usually does as it extends its way to Sigil, slowly transitioning from the high artfulness of the acropolis to the more utilitarian cityscape. A few hundred feet outside of the entrance, you realize that the sky has become visible, placing the entrance in a normal (if narrow and unobtrusive) alley.

Harvest Queen:Crossing out into the city, you can practically spot the marks where your acropolis dug its way through the various city wards, spots where knives are subtly integrated into the decor. One more reminder of the city's grand ruler. Officially, the town of Sigil was simply off limits to those of more divine aspirations. Pragmatically, however, this "restriction" was a simple matter of evading the Lady, a figure that hardly appeared to the public in the first place.

Harvest Queen/Gidae: OOC:While it was stated that the town could be actual Sigil, I'd just like to quickly remind you that you are both technically deities in Sigil. The Lady of Pain isn't going to pop out of nowhere and eat you (or whatever it is she does) unless you make reeeeaaal spectacles of yourselves (and maybe not even then) but here's just a reminder on why making such a spectacle might backfire a bit.

In the town of Sigil, all hell seems to be loose. People are panicking on the street, others are in the midst of lootings, and the world seems to be breaking down. The sky itself seems to be filled with gigantic cracks. Even if you've never been to Sigil before, you have a pretty good idea that this is not the normal state of affairs.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika pauses as she comes through the entrance, looking out over the devastation and mass chaos. "....ah. You know, it's times like this I realize why 'interesting times' is regarded as undesirable. Still, I wonder what's going on... I'll be right back. "

That said, she vanishes from all sight, and there is a faint whisper of air before the sure knowledge of her departure somehow makes itself known.

Right, going on a scouting mission, basically. Erika has a base movement speed of 200+ foot and gains the effects of gaseous form when she is in motion, including the fly speed. Seeing as she doesn't have to make athletics tests or similar when she moves provided said movement is physically possible, she has excellent maneuverability, which she is going to use to make a quick scouting move around the local area of Sigil. See if she can determine what's going on beyond 'mass chaos', and hopefully work out the cause.

The invisibility is basically Greater Invisibilty, but it cannot be pierced by anything short of a deity or epic magic. With the rogue's skill mastery trick allowing me to take 10 on stealth, Erika is also going to hopefully evade any unfriendly notice during this trip.

[Toska Moriarty]

"Huh...Would ya look at that?" Sebastian calmly remarks, carefully fixing his suit as he casually struts out of The Queen's portal.
"Doesn't it usually take a bit longer after we get here for all the fires to start? The screaming is nice, as always, but looting? People taking others things without permission? Ghastly."

He takes a step out of the alley into the street, looking up and down, hopefully getting quite the ground-view, since Erika no-doubt has everything else well covered.

Beginning to trail off as he looks around, talking to no one in particular, doubtfully even himself, he continues: "I mean, lives are one thing. Taking that is just part of the day-to-day in most cases. Theft? Oh the HORROR..." He smirks at the chaos, remembering that perhaps Fang would hear that last bit of scathingly un-profesional sarcasm.


If needed:
Spot:
Listen:
Perception: [roll0]
Also pertinent information: Sebastian is not currently invisible.

[Metroid33]

Fang quickly follows Sebastian out of the portal looking up at the sky, "Well with this chaos going on, i guess i won't be able to send my letter."He said to no one but the air.

Walking up beside Sebastian, Fang takes out his two swords and they begin to give of a faint hum that is barely audible over the sounds of Chaos. Fang then slides into the shadow of the alley trying to disappear from sight.

Perception:[roll0]
Stealth:[roll1]

[Infernally Clay]

"If our regal friend Erika is scouting around, I'll take to the sky," Gidae said, lifting her hood back up to hide herself as her previously unseen wings spread outwards, "See if I can't fix some of those cracks. Might be best if you guys stopped those looters and tried to calm everyone down. We're here now - there's nothing for them to worry about."

Gidae's flight speed is 360ft. I didn't note it down 'cause it didn't fit anywhere, but the Half-Celestial template gives her wings. Since she has a +64 fly skill modifier, I don't think I need to roll anything. :smalltongue:

Either way, she'll get as close to the cracks as is safe. If it would help, she can roll a Knowledge check to see if she understands what's happening - and her goggles have Greater Arcane Sight and True Seeing, if either effect would help discern what's going on. Thankfully, she also has 250'000gp spare so that's nine uses of Wish if it is deemed that such a spell would do any good.

Knowledge (Arcana): [roll0]
Knowledge (Planes): [roll1]

[hpboy111]

What the... The chaos takes Daniel by surprise. He had assumed that the early stages of this this new trip would be peaceful. Looks like the multiverse has proven him wrong on that one.

Well, I can safely assume that this is not Sebastian's doing. He hasn't been here nearly long enough. Daniel thinks to himself. He reaches around to his backpack and... Damn... I left my pack in my room... I should know better than that.

Daniel turns to the walls of the alley, gauging whether or not they can be scaled in a short manner. A higher vantage point is always useful when trying to understand the extent of a threat.

I'm not particularly familiar with Sigil, but I don't expect the buildings to be more than 3-4 stories high. Daniel makes a jump as high as he can and then clambers the rest of the way up, if he doesn't just outright make it to the top from his jump. Spending one Ki point for the extra +20.

Acrobatics: [roll0] (I am treated as having a running start.)
Climb: [roll1] (Assuming it's necessary.)

Once up he takes a look around the surrounding streets and as far as his vantage point will alow hime.

Perception: [roll2]

[Toska Moriarty]

"Not my fault? Of course it's not my fault!" Sebastian shouts up during Daniel's leap. He continues to walk further out of the alley, moving out of the way of various people screaming various things in various languages, looting various, er, valuables.

Cupping his hands around his mouth and looking upwards, he shouts after Gidae: "And just HOW do you intend us to stop them? Unless one of you up there can find the root cause of this nonsense, the only option I see to stop them is to start *stopping* them!"

He thinks for a moment, and decides against using his ever-so-cleverly hidden knives. Reaching out and grabbing the nearest person, he shouts: "You! Stop this right now!" Before letting go, ignoring the person's reaction (Unless it is violent), and moving onto the next random crowd member, a sarcastic smile plastered across his face as he satire's the idea of stopping a riot as best he can.

Seeing as most of the people here are civilians, I don't think I really need to roll anything. And seeing as this is pathfinder, I'm not sure what I'd be rolling anyway. Touch Attacks? Combat Maneuver rolls? Both? Bah, I'll post both, just to make sure.
CMB Roll: [roll0]
Touch Attack:[roll1]

[Realms of Chaos]

Erika:From an early perspective, mass chaos seems to the big and small of it. Everyone seems to be running every which way and a good many people are struggling to hide indoors. Doomsayers cry from several corners that the end is nigh as loved ones huddle together in alleys and opportunists break into shops while the less fortunate are trampled by mobs. The longer you look and listen, however, the more likely it seems that the people are terrified of not one thing but two. The first, obviously, is the series of cracks in the sky, from which people are retreating indoors. Beyond that, however, everyone seems to be shunning a specific area on the surface as if clearing the way for something to move through, something only a couple of blocks away at most.

Sebastian: Looking up and down the streets, the precise source of the chaos isn't readily apparent and there doesn't seem to be any central figure to stab. Stopping the crowd is about as effective as you've expected, though it is also about as funny. From what you can hear amongst the panic, "The Lady has appeared."

Fang:Hiding amongst the chaos isn't much of a challenge at all. Even if you lacked the cover of shadow, you doubt that anyone would give you a moment of notice in the madness. Sadly, you don't see anything you could stab to end the panic. From what you can hear amongst the panic, however, "The Lady has appeared."

Gidae:Rising up into the sky towards the cracks, you can see that the cracks still seem to be growing, though their growth seems to be slowing. Your goggles fail to indicate what the cracks are and don't even reveal the cracks as magical. Likewise, you don't quite know what such cracks could actually be if they aren't magical. With that said, you have no idea whether wishes would work or not.

Daniel:Leaping up 20 feet and quickly scaling another 10 feet, you find yourself on the tip of a four-story pagoda (apparently part of a stylized restaurant, though you can't be sure). Looking down from above, you can see many of the people running about, trying to hide themselves indoors or in alleyways, likely to avoid the stampeding mobs as much as the broken skies themselves. Looking a few streets over, however, you spot another source of a stir, a figure walking down the street who everyone seems to be running from, a figure that looks a little bit like this.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SniTwfm5BwE/SxRM-oCE9JI/AAAAAAAAB5I/Bwjy7rG0TCk/s1600/Planescape+Lady+of+Pain.jpg

Whatever the figure is up to, it seems to be walking towards the docks, only a few blocks and a couple thousand of feet away.

The cracking of the sky above you finally seems to slow and stop, something that many of you might not have noticed if the disturbing noise in the background hadn't come to a stop as well. This is not to say that activity has stopped, however. The cracks are filled with all manner of motion, eyes and claws and pincers and legs and far recognizable appendages seem to reach out from the full extent of the crack. thousands of beasts can be seen "behind" the cracks, trying to claw their way out but restricted by the narrow width of the cracks. Noticing this particular fact seems to have whipped the townspeople into a greater frenzy. Even for beings as mighty as yourselves, corporeal travel along the ground may prove quite a bit troublesome.

Edit: Error? What error?

[Maugan Ra]

Erika rises higher into the air, and cautiously approaches one of the nearest cracks. She touches down on thin air and paces closer, the shroud of invisibility peeling away like a discarded robe as she stares, fascinated, at the things attempting to gain entry into this plane.

In Aklo:
"I am the Dreamweaver. Who or what are you, who seeks entry here?"

The words that emerge from her mouth are strange and alien, spoken in an otherworldly language that scratches at the throat and hurts the ears to listen to. It is not a form of speech the human mouth is normally equipped to make. Fortunately, though, Erika is far from limited in such a way. Her jaw flexes in a sickeningly fluid fashion to pronounce the words correctly, and the air itself seems to shiver and reverberate to add the proper intonations to the phrase.

So yeah, mostly that's just color text for speaking Aklo, the language of the things beyond conventional reality. And hey, with warp world and the ability to polymorph at will twice a round, we don't even run into the problems normally associated with lacking the requisite mouth-pieces.
This is mostly my interpretation of Protean Avatar coming through - given how Erika is capable of bending reality and violating physics with a thought sans magic, she's distinctly closer to things like this in nature than most mortals.

Experimentally, she reaches out with her will, feeling the fabric of creation all around her and moulding it under her fingers. Cautiously, that will extended towards the cracks in the sky all around her.

Likewise, going to see if Warp World can have any effect on those cracks. Not going to touch them physically, but from within a hundred foot, let's see if I can manipulate or understand them at all.

This might go wrong, I admit...

[AmberVael]

How tiresome. How thrilling. An opportunity, and a decided frustration. The Queen takes a long breath, a breath that did not reflect a need, but an expression of patience, and a respiration of her surroundings. She sensed it, took it into her to understand it, then let her own energy out without that she might master all that was around her.

The Harvest Queen gestured to draw attention and to mark her work as she attempts to simply assert her power over the surrounding terrain. Areas of looting, destruction, or places simply in the way will be slowly flattened and swept aside, while black, warding barriers of shadow raise. Her mind sweeps out around her, not with words, but with a beckoning call to all those frightened or terrified, that they might come to her for protection.

The Harvest Queen will first focus on smashing the immediate area free of debris and crap (full round action with eldritch blast, getting off two blasts, using her swift action on Eldritch Volley to get two more, thus putting out four Annhilating Blasts, probably with Eldritch Wrath), and then put up two Impenetrable Barriers (via Quick Invocation II) in a small wedge ahead of her, leaving a gap between them so people can file through if necessary.

As a free action to talk, she'll use her telepathy to contact everyone at least in 200ft, as mentioned in the post.

[hpboy111]

Well, first and foremost, knowledge Religion check to see if Daniel knows anything about the Lady of Pain. Basically, does he recognize her. If so, what else does he know about her?

[roll0]

I think religion might turn something up... although I probably need Knowledge The Planes.

After that's sorted out, I'll figure what Daniel is going to be up to.

[Realms of Chaos]

Down on the ground, the Harvest Queen's methods, though a bit unorthodox, actually seem to work. After setting off a few explosions next to a panicking public, she attracts attention to the space behind her walls of force, where a few more desperate individuals run (either singly or with their families). Nobody is hurt in the procedure and the unbearable chaos is somewhat relieved as more people find their way off of the streets. The Queen's telepathic call seems to calm down those who'd otherwise be particularly alarmed.

A few stories up, Daniel puzzles together what he knows about the lady of pain.
Though you know that the lady of pain is a being at least as powerful as a deity, you know that she is most decidedly not a traditional one. She possesses no temples, those who worship her are found without their skins shortly afterwards, and she is the force that works to keep all deities out of Sigil. None can quite agree on her origins, though at least some posit that she may be an overdeity.

As Erika heads higher into the air like Gidae, her query to the cracks actually elicits some manner of verbal response from the beings beyond.

Aklo
"Azfoij WEeZLu gROUIAD Conblurs ErxesHAN ERigurdden Saiya'ka'kO.

Perhaps the answer was less than "coherent" but it was most definitely verbal.

Erika's attempt to move the crack is met with mixed success, though she manages to roughly steer the crack, doing so presses it against the undamaged sky, resulting in many additional small cracks.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika frowns, slightly disappointed at the incoherent reply. Still, at least she could move the cracks, though the knock-on effect on the surrounding fabric of reality was unfortunate. With a thought, she ceased standing on the air and fell back down towards the city, landing a few moments later next to the Queen with a feather-light grace. The solid stone underfoot rippled ever so slightly as she touched down, though it stabilized almost immediately.

"Ia rackthos..." Erika said, then paused. With a conscious effort, she switched back to a mortal tongue. "Sorry. In any case, looks like the cracks are a source of the panic, and not a symptom of whatever's causing the distress. Though I think I saw a secondary source of fear moving through the city a few blocks away.

Our unusual guests from beyond don't seem too actively hostile - they didn't try to eat me, anyway, though I couldn't get a linear answer out of them. The cracks, though, are very interesting. They're just that, cracks in reality - I can manipulate them, but the stress just causes secondary fractures to open up, which wouldn't happen with a deliberate portal." she reports, seemingly genuinely intrigued and fascinated by the whole situation.

Using the Protean Avatar ability to shift skill points into Linguistics and Knowledge Planes. I'd like to see if Erika has any idea what that message translates to for those of us with four-dimensional existences, and if she has any idea what might be destabilizing the fabric of reality like this. Or what could do something like this.
[roll0] Linguistics
[roll1] Knowledge Planes

[Maugan Ra]

Actually, I just remembered that I took the Rogue talent skill mastery for everything that wasn't a knowledge skill. So'll I'll just take 10 on that linguistics check, by preference.

[hpboy111]

The Lady of Pain herself. If she's the one who holds back the Gods, maybe she has a plan for dealing with the cracks.

Looking down into the alley below him Daniel shouts, "The Lady of Pain is out and about. She's making her way to the docks. I'm goig to follow her and see what she's up to. Fang, Sebastian, if you want to do something useful, follow me."

With that, Daniel turns to face the nearest rooftop. The sprint and leap carry him over the alley and he makes his way towards the Lady of Pain.

So Acrobatics check: [roll0] for the jumps.

Daniel is going to move from rooftop to rooftop until he is caught up with the Lady of Pain. At that point he will match his pace with her until she has reached her destination.

Going to throw in a perception check while I'm at it to see what can been seen as he gains new vantage points. [roll1]

[Metroid33]

Catching a glimpse of which direction Daniel ran off in, Fang takes a moment and activates his scarf shifting in to the Ethereal plane. Then he darts after Daniel, passing straight through anyone in his way. Leaving very confused people behind him.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika's eyes widen in child-like delight at Daniel's pronouncement. The Lady of Pain, out doing something interesting... This, she had to see.

With a single, standing leap she reached the nearest rooftop and began sprinting off in pursuit of her colleague. Catching him easily, and keeping pace with unconscious ease, she looked over at the paladin.

"The Lady is around? I wonder what she's up to... I've never seen her before, but she certainly has quite the reputation."

Assuming that with Peerless mobility Erika has absolutely no problems running along rooftops etc like Daniel. Given she's also got a base speed over a 100ft faster than him, catching him also shouldn't be a problem.

Man, I have to play mobility based classes more often. This is fun.

[Toska Moriarty]

"No! When I said 'Stop' I meant 'STOP'!" Sebastian shouts somewhere in the crowd, more or less flinging the random, nameless person he had grabbed into the throng.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he sighs and remarks: "Mobs these days...sheesh"" before perking up at Daniels commanding voice. Snapping to mock-attention for a moment, he does the worst possible impression, intentionally, sneering to himself: "If you want to do something useful then follow meeEEEeee"
He makes his way into an alley on the opposite side of the street. Taking but a moment to inhale, he sprints at and up the wall, leaping from it at the top of his run onto the opposite wall, before clamoring the rest of the way up. Once at the top, he fixes his cuffs and runs off after Daniel and....Erika? Damn she's fast. Well, he thinks to himself, at least I'll be a bit harder to locate in all this... as he slips on his Ring of Sequestering. (Which I certainly hope looks like whenever anyone dons 'The One Ring')

I think between the Climb speed, 'Up the walls' and 'Walljump' skill tricks (Unless I'm forgetting more) Sebastian should be onto the roof rather easily. That aside, I should probably drop an acrobatics check or two while I'm at it: In the least just to enhance the fluidity and grace of his climb. And since We're going all 'Eyes in the sky' I should probably do a perception. Maybe listening to the crowd would even let me try out a Gather Info on the general state or get me some info on The Lady of Pain? CHECKS AWAY:
Acrobatics, Jump:
Acrobatics, Climb:[roll1]
Perception, Listen:[roll2]
Perception, Spot:[roll3]
Perception, Gather info?:[roll4]
Swag: [roll]1d20+alot

[Infernally Clay]

"You can't just leave things like that!" Gidae shouted, "There are holes in the sky and they're more interested in the Lady of Pain, whoever that is... Ugh... Seems like it's up to me."

Gidae will cast Wish to try to close the smaller fractures in the sky first. If that's successful, she'll do the same to the biggest fractures - even if it requires multiple uses of Wish.

If it doesn't work, she could always cast Gate and get two Solars to give it a try. :smalltongue:

[Realms of Chaos]

Up in the air, Gidae weaves a wish to shut the cracks in the sky. Curiously, it works, closing quite a few minor fissures entirely. With another two wishes, she manages to close off one of the thicker cracks, or at least a 1,000 foot track of it at one end. While closing all of the cracks would seem to exceed her abilities, she can most definitely neaten things up and simplify things quite a bit.

Erika: the words, as far as you can tell, have no direct translation into common. With that said, you can cipher out some degree of meaning from how the message is delivered (even though each sound seems to have come from a different mouth).

As you suspected, few (if any) of the beasts sound outright hostile.
A good many of them seem to be as curious about the cracks as you.
Some of them seem to be... hungry? Not quite hunger, perhaps, but some comparable phenomenon.
The rest of them, as far as you can tell, are completely mindless.

OOC: Are you invisible?

Many of you (save for Gidae above and the Harvest Queen's shelter below) rush off towards the Lady of Pain. When you arrive, (with Sebastian arriving last, shortly after Fang), someone actually seems to be talking to the Lady of Pain on the street, a draconic humanoid wearing an excessively large suit of armor. A couple more men stand cautiously behind her and a tiefling seems to be waiting for her at the dock entrance. The Lady of Pain actually seems to stop and give some manner of response, a process that seems physically painful to the armored humanoid. Walking onward, she stops a few steps beyond as if silently waiting.

[Maugan Ra]

OOC: Nope, perfectly visible right now.

IC: Erika pauses in her rapid progress, crouched on top of one of the nearest buildings, her garments of woven shadow streaming out around her. She studies the Lady with undisguised interest - wasn't every day one got to see such an interesting being. And she even seemed to have communicated with the strange draconic fellow! Though she had to admit, he clearly hadn't enjoyed it.

Well, might as well say hello. Careful not to warp matter too much - it might be a bit rude, directly in front of the Lady - she hopped down off the top of the building with a calm grace and touched down what she judged to be a respectful distance away.

"Good news and bad news." she says brightly, by way of introduction. "Our guests aren't feeling actively malicious right now, though a couple of them are worryingly... well, hungry. So it's probably not a deliberate invasion. Bad news is, they have no idea what's going on either. At least, I don't think so. Seven dimensional thought-concepts don't translate well." she continues, apparently addressing everyone as a group, including the Lady. "If anyone else has any ideas, I'd be interested in hearing them."

She pauses, shoots a look at the pained-looking Dragon-thing, then amends her previous statement. "Unless conveying those ideas would lead to... whatever happened to him."

[hpboy111]

What is she doing! Daniel screams silently in his head. Doesn't she know the kind of things the Lady is known for?

Daniel follows suit, jumping from the roof top and landing slightly behind Erika, and then taking a few short steps to place himself between the Lady and Erika. There is no way he's letting anyone but himself take risks with this... entity.

"Erika, no pain, no gain." Daniel bows slightly to the Lady of Pain but does not remove his eyes from her. "A pleasure. I, on behalf of my comrades and I, would like to offer our assistance in resolving this matter. If there is anything you would have us do to assist in dealing the cracks, we would be honored to do so." Daniel allows his back to straighten and nods in acknowledgement of the Dragonoid and it's companions.

[Infernally Clay]

With three or four Wishes, Gidae focused on closing the large fissure she had made some progress with (don't want to waste too many resources). Once she realised she had done all she could, Gidae dropped out of the sky and headed towards The Queen. A Bard's place is in front of an audience, after all, and The Queen had gathered quite the crowd.

"I closed what cracks I could, but I'll need a lot more help to fix the rest," Gidae said to The Queen, "What are the others up to?"

Gidae will then take the Hulmund and begin a Soothing Performance, healing any wounds and calming the civilians while the rest of the group does whatever it is they're doing.

[AmberVael]

"I'm really not sure." The Queen answers, broadening her shelter by shaping the earth and adding more black barriers. "While there is a great deal of chaos, however, I am beginning to question whether there is immediate danger."

Mentally, the Queen queries the gathering masses, raising her voice to question the cause of their distress- specifically whether it is something more than the cracks. As she does this, she spreads her wings and drifts higher, eyes focused on the cracks and the things beyond them.

"Erika didn't seem to have much luck getting a coherent reaction, but I suppose that's really more my expertise, isn't it? Keep the people calm, Gidae- I'll see what I can learn from our visitor." A grin comes to the fey's face, a suggestion that she has no idea whether or not what she's doing is wise or possible- but that she will make the attempt nonetheless.

The Queen's flight gathers speed as she closes the distance, but she pauses once she's within a reasonable speaking range, both with her mind and voice. "If there is something you would have known, speak and I will hear you." She decrees to the creatures, spreading her arms wide. With her mind she attempts to convey the concept to them as much through intent as exact phrasing, and with her magic she twists her tongue until it is not a language that she speaks with, but concepts and direct meaning.

First, the Queen is going to create another pair of barriers, and uses Master of Earth and Stone to shape the terrain a bit within her shelter to make it something more than just a flat clearing. Probably she'll put down a shaped Wall of Stone to make a small structure of some kind.

Then she talks to people as noted above.

I'm hoping/suspecting she'll have more success than Erika, as she has a constant supernatural Tongues effect (via Morpheme Savant) and can therefore understand and speak in any intelligent language, and since telepathy has similar effects.

[Realms of Chaos]

The two men standing behind the Lady of Pain silently converse for a moment or two before one of them teleports off. As the Lady of Pain waits, the male tiefling by the docks calls out to her, "Hey, Lady of Pain! I figure that if anyone can tell me what's going on, it's you. So, what's with the sky? Is Sigil under attack somehow?"

Erika couldn't have asked for a better cue, leaping in to deliver all she had learned and thought. Followed closely by Daniel, it would seem that the enigmatic lady is surrounded from just about every side.

Back near where you had arrived, A new fortress for those seeking shelter has taken in a good deal of the vulnerable, all of which rest as their wounds are tended. Thanks in small part to these efforts, the streets are now mostly deserted.

Rising up to talk to the beasts, the Harvest Queen possesses rather little luck communicating with them whether through words or telepathy. With all of the magic at her disposal, however, this failure may be far more telling than Erika's. Though the beasts beyond the cracks seem capable of producing sounds, the concept of anything even resembling language seems alien to them. For the Harvest Queen to fail, they must lack even the most basic of associations between sounds and meaning.

A loud groaning noise can be heard from above, as if the sky were bearing some unseen weight. Then, almost at once, all of the remaining cracks (currently only 12 large cracks remaining) burst open with a loud shattering sound, allowing allowing a swarm of creatures to float down from the sky on what appear to be spider webs. Each of the creatures looks something like a cross between a human and a scorpion with a black stinger in place of its head and suppported on eight humanoid hands. Several smaller ones seem to land in mid-air and scurry across it as if it were solid ground while larger ones drop down to the city below.

In response to these cracks, the Lady of Pain resumed her walk at a brisk pace, quickly walking past the tiefling and others to arrive at a ship in the port that seems to in the middle of preparing to take off.

Roll initiative.

[Infernally Clay]

[roll0]

"Does this happen a lot or is today going to be one of those days?"

[Maugan Ra]

"Oh... well, those are new. Seems we might be under attack after all.

[roll0]

(I should really consider improving my initiative score. Maybe shift a few feats around to do it. Yay, Protean Avatar allowing such things. For now, though, hitting people with an oversized sword...)

[AmberVael]

Seeing their willingness to fight and inability to communicate, the Queen simply prepares herself for the slaughter to come, determined to give them no quarter and show no mercy.
Initiative: [roll0] or [roll1]
She takes the better of the two.

Edit: Actually, it also looks like I forgot my +3 Quick to Act bonus. So her final initiative should be 48.

[hpboy111]

Initiative: [roll0]

Is she... Crap.

Unsure what to think of the Lady of Pain's movement toward the ship, Daniel is forced to turn his attention elsewhere. "You! And you!" Daniel shouts to the one remaining companion of The Lady and to the Tiefling near the dock. "Can you fight?" Then, turning to Erika, "Get back to the Queen and tell her start moving people into the Acropolis! We can figure out what to do with them later. Sebastian, Fang, take cover and get ready to hit them hard as soon as they get in reach!"

Daniel then turns his gaze skyward, trying to count, or at least estimate the number of creatures raining down on Sigil.

Going to hold my action until the reaction round. That way I have a better grasp on the situation.

[Metroid33]

Initiative:[roll0]

"You don't have to yell at us Daniel, we now what to do"Shortly after saying this Fang falls into the shadows attempting to disappear.

Stealth:[roll1]

Once safely in the shadows Fang activates his scarf again coming back into the material plane. Both of his weapons drawn and ready to slice some scorpian man throat.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian stands on the peak of a nearby roof, overlooking the interactions. Erika stepping in front of The Lady Baaaaaad Idea..., Daniel stepping in front of Erika How Chivalrous stupid, and The Lady walking off. Are we just lucky? Or...Is she...Running away?!

His stunned expression is lost in his invisibility, and at the thunderous snap in the sky he turns, looking upward at the monstrous bug-things raining down like so many lethal raindrops. Instinctively he drops off the roof and moves opposite the still-yelling paladin. Ignoring Fang (as usual) he simply makes his understanding of the situation known by failing to hide the chime-like sound of his daggers being drawn, invisibly, from his sleeves.

[SPOILER]
Acrobatics to drop down: [roll0]
Stealth, may aswell actively hide:[roll1]
Initiative:[roll2] /SPOILER]

[Maugan Ra]

"I really don't think that's viable right now, Daniel." Erika says, with a casual smile on her face. She actually looks entirely unconcerned with the whole situation. "She's a little bit preoccupied right now, I should say." she continues, gesturing into the sky where the graceful form of the Harvest Queen can just about be seen, facing down the incoming creatures.

Now, if I'm correct, this is the 'action' step of our combat, with the exact initiative not mattering quite so much because Realms is going to edit it into a coherent narrative after one day anyway. So, posting away what Erika is doing on her first turn.

"I think I'll join her. Wouldn't want to abandon our gracious host in what might be a time of need, after all." That said, Erika reaches into what appears to be empty space next to her and draws a gigantic, two-handed sword forged from a strange golden metal. She holds it ready, and the ground rumbles.

With a splintering crack, a tower of rock emerges from the ground under her feet, carrying her towards the skies at an incredible rate as it extends. Erika rises almost two hundred feet in less than a second, arriving in the midst of the monstrous horde atop a newly formed landmark. Then, she goes to work.

As you might have guessed, that was Warp World at work. I have the feat that allows me to move people with it, and thus used both my uses of the ability this round to travel two hundred foot up, or less depending on exactly how high up the cracks had been forming. Now for the attacks.

Peerless mobility from Unmatched Dervish allows me to move up to twice my movement, and make a full attack action as a single full round action. Given that I move with gaseous form, and that the attacks can be spread out as I like along the 510ft long flight path, I imagine it should be quite easy to reach and assign individual attacks to six different targets, each separated by a significant distance. I say six attacks, because that's how many I make in a full attack action thanks to Blink of an Eye, also from Unmatched Dervish.

For these attacks, the enemy does not get their dexterity bonus to their AC, on account of Unconquered Might, and if I hit I threaten a critical. Due to Weapon Mastery from being a 20th level fighter, critical threats from a great sword automatically confirm, but I'll keep the damage codes for the criticals separate in case they're immune to them.

Also kept separate will be the +10d6 sneak attack damage I get for each attack against a target denied their dexterity bonus to AC, since they may well be immune to those as well. If they aren't immune to sneak attack damage, they anything I hit also has to pass a DC32 fortitude check or be slain, as per Master Strike from being a 20th level rogue.

[roll0] to hit, Damage is [roll1] plus [roll2] and [roll3]

[roll4] to hit, Damage is [roll5] plus [roll6] and [roll7]

[roll8] to hit, Damage is [roll9] plus [roll10] and [roll11]

[roll12] to hit, Damage is [roll13] plus [roll14] and [roll15]

[roll16] to hit, Damage is [roll17] plus [roll18] and [roll19]

[roll20] to hit, Damage is [roll21] plus [roll22] and [roll23]

Swift and nigh-formless as the wind, the dervish flickers through the sky, a brilliant golden meteorite that moves almost too quickly for mortal eyes to keep track of her. Again and again she strikes, slicing through their monstrous foes without care, bypassing any futile attempts they make to grasp at her lightning passage.

She reforms momentarily near the Harvest Queen, falling through the sky next to her host in what almost seems to be slow motion, her oversized sword stained with multi-hued fluids.

"I'm having fun. How about you?" she calls across to her host, grinning widely and with genuine amusement in her tone.

I'll leave follow-up attacks for the second phase of the round, as I have Great Cleave, and due to Engage the Army I can make cleaving attacks over a distance of 40ft without using any additional movement. And since it's pathfinder, the cleave doesn't even need to have slain the enemy, merely hit them, in order to trigger.

[Realms of Chaos]

OOC: We are now in the action step of the first round. If any of you want to take an action but have yet to do so, feel free to post it within the next day.

[AmberVael]

The Harvest Queen only grins at Erika in response, and raises her hands like a conductor before a symphony. Light dims around her as she summons terrible energies that crackle about her hands, then spread outward in a wide flung web. Unlike the dervish, she does not move and dance through the skies, but simply keeps her place as she directs her power- yet at first, nothing seems to come of the broad array of magic.

Then, points along it ignite, boiling out for a split second before igniting with a terrible howl, lancing outwards in broad columns that engulf countless enemies. Again and again the Queen's power erupts outwards, sapping away at the life energy of the creatures. Those that fell prey to her power grew weaker- and worse still, a slow process of changing overtook them. With the draining of their strength, their bodies began to slow and change, all fading away into unmoving, lifeless black statues.

As the sky fills with the darkness of the Harvest Queen's power and its hungry, bloodcurdling shrieks, the Queen smiles.

As a full round attack, the Queen uses Eldritch Blast twice, thanks to Eldritch Sculptor. She then uses it a third time via Quick Invocation.

Then she takes her five foot step- due to Pact Heir, her 5ft step is actually 30ft of movement. She uses this to spread out her range and hopefully affect more creatures, so she should be positioned accordingly.

As a swift action then, she uses Eldritch Volley to shoot off another two Eldritch Blasts, and yet another via Quick Invocation.

(So it's three blasts, move, then another three blasts).

All of her blasts use the Eldritch Wrath blast shape (which due to area doubling of Eldritch Sculptor, creates 9 columns with a 10ft radius and a 120ft height, which may be placed within 120ft of her), and use the Utterdark essence, and the Stoneshape Essence (using two essences thanks to Lord of all Essences).

Her goal is to hit as many of creatures as possible, rather than hit any of them multiple times. She also wants to avoid hitting anything that isn't those creatures. Doing both efficiently may not be possible given, so she'll err towards hitting the same one multiple times over hitting anything else.

Anything within one of the 54 columns (6 blasts, 9 columns each) may make a reflex save, DC 56, to take half damage. All damage is negative energy damage.
Blast 1: [roll0]
Blast 2: [roll1]
Blast 3: [roll2]
Blast 4: [roll3]
Blast 5: [roll4]
Blast 6: [roll5]

In addition, each creature within the area must make a DC 58 Fortitude save or gain 2 negative levels (Utterdark Blast).
Furthermore, they must each make another DC 58 Fortitude Save or take a -2 dex penalty and a -10ft move penalty. In addition, failing this fortitude save means they must make another Fortitude save every turn for 15 rounds or suffer these penalties again, which are cumulative. Failing four saves in a row petrifies them (as per flesh to stone). At the end of the 15 rounds, all penalties are remove, but petrification is not. (Stoneshape Blast).

[Metroid33]

Quick perception to see if i can still see Sebastian. [roll0]That's a no.

[Metroid33]

Looking over in the direction where he last saw Sebastian, Fang yells. Hey sebastian, I was thinking maybe you and me could go and start working on one of the big ones that landed in the city, not the air. If your up for it then please say something before I go and get myself killed thinking your there to help. After saying that Fang walked 60 feet towards the closest one, then stands in the shadow of a building waiting for a response, if it ever came.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika blinks in surprise and shields her eyes slightly as the columns of energy explode all around her.

"That... is a strangely beautiful sight." she says with genuine admiration, before looking up at the cracks overhead. "Still not sure how we're going to deal with the entrances, though."

[Infernally Clay]

I.R. Late so I'll make this quick. :smalltongue:

Gidae cast Haste upon herself, a free action thanks to Sudden Casting, with the spell lasting for 26 rounds. Thanks to Diligent Rapidity, Gidae is under a Freedom of Movement effect. Thanks to Blurred Alacrity and Evasive Celerity, she has a 50% miss chance for any attack or spell that targets her. Fortified Hustle means Haste cannot be dispelled after it is cast and Perpetual Options allows Gidae to swap the extra attack granted by Haste for a standard or move action.

Following Haste, Gidae will use her Dragonfire Inspiration to add +20d6 sonic damage to the weapon attacks of everyone that can hear her. She'll then use Rapid Blitz, moving towards the nearest large Scorpiman and hitting it three times (expending a use of Bardic Music in the process to gain her Charisma modifier as a bonus on her first attack). before returning to where she had been standing beforehand.

Attack:
[roll0]
[roll1]
[roll2]

Damage:
[roll3] + [roll4] +42 (total damage: 47 normal, 88 sonic)
[roll5] + [roll6] +23 (total damage: 32 normal, 69 sonic)
[roll7] + [roll8] +23 (total damage: 27 normal, 82 sonic)

Yes, my excuse is that Gidae is so fast none of you actually saw her do anything. Can't really otherwise explain how she went before everyone but nobody noticed!

[Realms of Chaos]

The Round So Far:
Erika Launches herself to the queen, killing six airborne monstrosities on the way.
Harvest Queen launches out rays of energy that target around 250 different airborn creatures, 75 are instantly taken out. Around 70 show signs of stone setting in on their skin (Note: when dealing with such large numbers of foes, I'm doing saves by averages. If a creature would succeed on a save 70% of the time, 70% of creatures save. I hope that is acceptable as the alternative would be... kind of nightmarish).
Daniel may declare action during reaction step.
Gidae may declare action during reaction step.
Sebastian has moved into hiding and observation
Fang has moved towards a larger monstrosity
An airship in the port has suddenly sprung to life, on the bow of which stands none other than the Lady of Pain, leaving the ground of sigil for the first time in recorded history.
What looks like a fist of raw energy launches across the sky towards one of the newly landed monstrosities, missing by a mile. Looking back along the fist's course, you can see a male human standing on top of a building.
Gunfire opens from a second ship in the port, a ship that has been shaped like a tremendous tower, hitting one of the beasts.
The human who was following the lady of pain vanishes into thin air. Those of you who can see invisibility can see him teleport from beast to beast, delivering quick wounds before moving on and finally ending the movement on the newly activated ship behind the lady of pain.
Two of the hanging monstrosities are going to attack Erika and four more are going to attack the harvest queen (attack rolls will be posted tomorrow).
Larger monstrosities on the ground will start attacking buildings while smaller ones on the ground start swarming through the streets.

Reaction round is now starting. Round 1 results up Monday.

[hpboy111]

More than 250. Ok, with that question answered, let's get this show on the road.

Daniel begins to glow with bright white light, emanating an aura of pure holy energy. Then, channeling his Ki, he calls upon his meager knowledge of the arcane arts, vanishing into thin air and reappearing on the back of one of larger creatures that has not yet been attacked.

[roll0] Checking to see if I reach the back successfully, need a 1-94 for a success. That's a success.

Landing squarely on top of one larger creatures trampling through the city, Daniel readies himself to begin pummeling the creature beneath his feet.

Using a free action to activate Daniel's Protective Aura. Then using Daniel's Ki Evocation ability, sacraficing all 5 of his Flowing Ki points to replicate the ability of Teleport. If there are any checks required to make sure he stays on top of the creature just let me know.

[Toska Moriarty]

"Idiot..." Sebastian whispers to himself, still impressed by the lingering magic of the fire-work-esc display above. It seemed as though the skyline overhead was safe; not to mention what these unknown people were up to. Still though, even if he's not saying anything (which he isnt), following behind Fang and watching him try to kill himself is sure to be entertaining. Hopefully, he thinks, as entertaining as watching The Queen and Gidae rip through the sky-born ones...


Pretty sure I didnt get the weapons out and stealth accomplished before initiative, but If I do have actions left, I'm following after Fang. If I don't, I'll be doing that next round. Even if I would rather be trying to get onto that ship...

[AmberVael]

As the creatures close in on her, the Queen's smile becomes amused, but she seems entirely unconcerned. When the first attack falls, the deep ringing of struck metal sounds as the shadows around her twist into writhing armor that blocks the blow. While the creature recoils, the Queen simply pulls back with effortless and practiced grace, slipping well beyond its reach. As the others close the gap, she pulls no surprises out against them, but does continue to simply slip away from their attacks whenever they fail to hit and follow up appropriately, steadily leaving them all behind.

As her immediate action, the Queen will block the first attack with Black Omen Aegis, and gain its AC bonus.
Then, using the Shifting Defense stance, she will take a 5ft step away since the attack missed- and again, her 5ft steps are actually 30ft due to pact heir.

Since she has a large supply of attacks of opportunity to burn on Shifting Defense, she will continue to take 30ft steps every time an enemy misses her, so it's unlikely any of them will get to attack her again once they missed.

Her armor class is 84 (the +2 above her sheet is from Dark Foresight, which I forgot to add in), and note that she can't be flanked, so no bonuses that way. In addition, they suffer a 20% miss chance unless their attacks are ghost touch or force effects.

[Realms of Chaos]

Initiative
16 Monsters
19 Sebastian
23 Tower
27 Fang
28 Erika
29 Fist-Launcher
31 Draconian/Vanisher
43 Tiefling
45 Harvest Queen
46 Daniel
50 Gidae
55 Ship

Attacks:
[roll0][roll1][roll2]
[roll3][roll4][roll5]
[roll6][roll7][roll8]

[roll9][roll10][roll11]
[roll12][roll13][roll14]



The ship in the port towards which the Lady of pain was running suddenly blares to life with incredible sound, taking off from the port with the Lady standing upon its bow as the ship heads for the cracks.

The sound of this departure, however, is quickly covered up behind the beauty of Gidae's performance from up high, inspiring all to greater martial heights. Empowered with great hast, she assaults one of the larger scorpions in mid-performance, hitting with the first strike and missing with the second two before falling back.

Daniel vanishes from where he stands and soon finds himself standing atop of the nearest large monstrosity. Though unable to fully appreciate Gidae's performance in his situation, he would likely make use of it in the next few moments (Just a DC 40 Acrobatics to stay in place).

Whereas Gidae fills the air with song, the Harvest Queen fill the air with light. Rays of judgement rain through the air, scorching and destroying the hanging monstrosities even as they leak forth from the fissures above. Only the lucky survive from such an assault.

The tiefling by the port, seeing his ship leave, runs with grace nearly equal to Erika's own to end up back at the ship. The subtle man who'd stood behind the lady of pain seems to vanish from thin air but those of you with magical sight watch as he invisibly teleports from foe to foe, hitting each one before teleporting up onto the ship as well.

The draconian, meanwhile, seems far more concerned with bloodshed than with any coordinated effort, running at the nearest clustered group and slicing through eight of them with one fell blow, destroying them with the aid of Gidae's music.

A bolt of force, shaped like a man's fist, rains out over the street where the lady of pain once stood, aiming at but missing one of the hanging beings. Following it back to its source, one would find a human male standing on a building on the opposite side from where Daniel once stood, perfectly symmetrical and honed in form.

It is now that Erika launches up from the ground and joins the Harvest Queen up in the air, destroying a fair number of the airborne monstrosities on her way.

Fang sneaks up to the nearest large monstrosity (upon which Daniel stands) and calls for Sebastian to join him. After the sound of distant gunshots accompanies the death of yet another hanging monstrosity, Sebastian manages to catch up.

Back in the air, all is not well for Erika and the Queen. A single monstrosity quickly approaches, only for the attack to be rebuked by her aegis, giving her the chance to retreat. Even as she retreats, however, more of the monstrosities hone in on her location, delivering two more successful strikes that seem to pierce through her defenses to strike her (23 damage and 26 damage respectively, before damage reduction). As each one of these creatures withdraws its stinger, however, it takes back with it a strand of a white, web-like substance, apparently extracted from the Queen herself (temporary -10 penalty to all mental ability scores). Thankfully, the final strike against her misses, allowing the queen to retreat further.

Erika is similarly attacked by two more creature (I don't know if you'd want to spend 10 feet of evasive repositioning to avoid the attacks but if you don't, you suffer 25 and 24 damage before DR and take a -7 penalty to all mental ability scores. Either way, in the future, the intention to use evasive repositioning should probably be stated either in the reaction round or beforehand. Sorry if I just missed it somewhere).

Hundreds of additional creatures rain down from the cracks, nearly replacing all of those who had just perished. As if aware of the Lady's presence, a good many of the hanging monstrosities swarm to block the path towards the cracks.

Next Action Round

[Maugan Ra]

Ah, right, should have noted that yes, I wish to make use of Evasive repositioning there. 10ft of it used up for this encounter, then.

Dancing backwards, just about evading the strikes of the hostile monstrosities, Erika frowns to herself. She was fast, almost impossibly so, but there were a lot of incoming creatures to deal with here. More were entering in every second than she could reasonably expect to stop. More than that, they were apparently capable of extracting the very essence of their targets, and she was rather attached to her own essence, thank you very much.

Out of the corner of her eye, Erika spotted the ship rising towards the cracks, the magnificent and intimidating figure of the Lady on its bow. Presumably, the powerful being had some kind of plan for dealing with the situation. Therefore, their best best was to assist her. The dervish created, evaluated and accepted her own plan within a fraction of the second, pivoting on the spot and taking off with the speed of a zephyr.

She dives between the two creatures attacking the Queen, sword flickering back and forth in vicious disemboweling arcs even as they tried to strike at her, and plunged onwards.

Making use of the Whirlwind Dervish ability here, deliberately triggering attacks of opportunity from the two creatures that hit the Queen last round. I get to make my attacks against them first, and they are going to be taking truly ludicrous penalties to their AoO rolls if these hit. As before, denying dexterity bonus, and since Abberations are not immune to critical hits or sneak attacks, I'm just going to roll all damage together. Including the ones from Gidae's dragonfire inspiration.
[roll0] to hit, for [roll1] damage and
[roll2] to hit, for [roll3] damage

Faster than the eye could follow, she advanced on the clusters of monsters attempting to block the ship's path to the cracks in the sky. She drew herself to a halt, smiled slightly to herself and, as the inspirational music reached a momentary crescendo, struck.


Now then, here's where we get to employ 'Engage the army'. Having used her move action to approach the grouping of the monsters that are trying to get between the Lady's ship and the cracks, Erika makes a Great Cleave attack. Thanks to engage the army, each successive attack with great cleave can take place as I make 40ft steps between the successive targets. Since I can move freely in three dimensions and do not trigger attacks of opportunity when moving, I imagine I can probably get a considerable number of the enemy with this.

Since I don't want to have to roll fifty odd dice rolls or something, though, I propose a simplified and cinematic set of mechanics instead. I take ten on the attacks, and make as many of them as I have to until I stop hitting targets. Since I take a -1 stacking penalty on the attack rolls for every ten foot I move between strikes, I leave it up to you to work out how far I have to move before the penalties reduce my initial attack roll of 71 to below the enemy AC. Remembering of course that they do not get dexterity bonuses, and thus no dodge bonuses either if applicable. Everything I hit takes about 300 or so damage on average.

Though with the lunge feat, my attacks have an additional five foot reach for this turn. Which means that I could theoretically be getting something like twenty enemies into range every time I end my between-cleave moves. More if we're taking three dimensions into account, possibly less if they're not as tightly packed as they could be.

[hpboy111]

Stradling the creaature's spine, or at least where the spine should be, Daniel stares at the creature under his feat, channeling divine energy into his eyes, trying to understand more about the creatures around him.

Then, lifting one hand several inches from the creature, he thrusts his fist into the backside of the creature. Behind the blow Daniel throws every ounce of the power at his disposal, both divine and internal, his fist glowing with a grey aura as it impacts the monster.

Ok, as a move action I'm casting Detect Evil to determine whether or not the creature is evil.

Regardless of whether or not it's evil, Daniel is using Justice Blade to Smite the creature regardless of alignment. He's also initiating a Stunning Fist.

To hit: [roll0] Damage: See OOC
In addition, if it's an evil creature, it takes another [roll1] damage.

For extra effects, it needs to make a Fortitude Save DC: 43 or be paralyzed for [roll2] rounds. I am purposefully waiving the Banishment effect of my Smite, even if it is an Outsider.

[Realms of Chaos]

The Round So Far:

A beautiful song can be heard from the ship (all attack rolls this round are treated as natural 20s)
Erika leaps out and basically destroys all of the creatures with assistance from the tiefling, who moves at similar speeds (as all of your attacks are natural 20s and natural 20s are auto-hits (regardless of the penalty from engage the army), you and the other unmatched dervish basically knock everything out of the sky).
Daniel Manages to seriously harm one of the grounded monstrosities
Sebastian/Fang/Gidae/Harvest Queen may declare their action during the reaction round (remember that you're moved to the end of initiative, something that I accidentally forgot last round).
The airship suddenly speeds up and hurries out, launching a series of inaccurate shots that the monstrosities handily dodge.
The invisible man on the ship each take out a handful of creatures as well.
Gunfire from the tower in the port takes out another couple shots and kills three more grounded monstrosities.
The monster that Gidae his is launching its stinger at her
The monster Daniel rides will be trying to attack him (if not paralyzed)


Reaction Round 2
Edited

[Maugan Ra]

She moves with a speed and precision that should be impossible, scything through the ranks of the enemy like a typhoon. The glowing sword, practically singing from the raw amount of magical energy flowing through it, sweeps from side to side, delivering dozens of blows a second, every one of them fatal. The bodies of the monsters fall from the sky like rain.

She stops momentarily in the air, surveying the tiefling fighting at her side, the one who was actually managing to keep up with her.

"I'm impressed. You are, perhaps, the first person I have met capable of matching my speed. Tell me, where did you learn to do so?"

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian, it seems, has found himself in the same trap he always has to deal with; which of his companions is worth watching. Daniel riding some sort of twisted scorpion-beast bareback is sure to result in either it or him getting seriously injured. Fang was around here somewhere, likely to jump out of hiding to help Daniel. There was an airship roaring into the sky with none other than the Lady of Pain aboard, so that might be worth noting. And the flying tower was also interesting; was that...some sort of missiles? At this range? Ludicrous.

He sat there for several seconds, thinking what he should look at, let alone what he should do, he had a sinking feeling that he had forgotten something. There has to be something else I was keeping tabs on..Something Important and fascinating.... He was too deep in thought to pay any attention to the squishy 'ploping' noises all around him as aberration pieces rained down. Shrugging and darting forward to the now-mounted aberration, he just barely dodged most of one's 'torso' smashing to the street.

One of his daggers in each hand, Only the slighest hinto of footsteps, no doubt shrouded in the chaos of the battle, revealed his position as he charged the creature, invisible smile going ear-to-ear across his face. Also, it seemed he couldn't help but hum to himself, mimicking the tunes that filled the air.
(OOC: How big is this thing we're fighting, anyway?I Hope it's massive, so we don't look so awful next to, or under, Gidae and Erika and The Queen :smallbiggrin:)


Alright, so hopefully I do this right, please-oh-please someone go-over this.
So a race feature called Silent Hunter lets me run while stealthing(Assuming this applies to a charge aswell) at a -20 on the check. Swift as Shadows, another race feature, further reduces the penalty by 5, so I'll be moving silently (Or Stealthing, darned Pathfinder) at a -15. With our 'allies' giving us a 20 on all our rolls that puts me at a total of 20(roll)-15+77, so an 82 to Stealth to remain un-noticed via sound durring my charge. Invisibility takes care of the visible aspect, so that's no issue.

Two Weapon Pounce allows the use of both weapons during a charge, so there's that. If I can manage to do so from an angle opposite Fang's approach, I'd like the flanking bonus, but I won't factor that in.
Also, I don't know if the 'Natural twenty auto-roll' turns the attacks into crit threats and you have to roll the confirms, or if they automatically roll twenties there two, or what, but I'm just going to ignore crits until I see something about it on the OOC. Either way I'm psyched that I have vorpal.
So to hit:
With a charge being +4 (If I remember correctly, of course) and Invisible being a +4 (Again, If I'm doing this right), I'm on a +8 to a flatfooted, possibly grappled, beasty-thing.
+8 on top of the +53 to hit from BAB and whatnot puts me at a +61, then throwing the Nat 20 on puts me at +81 to hit against flatfooted. For each weapon.
I'm Pretty sure that hits, so now to damage:
Each does 1d4 + 10 (Enhancement)+12 (STR). Gidae adds another 20d6. Attacking as invisible, unless I'm detected, gives me the 20d6 of Sneak Attack. (Offensive Defense Rogue Talent lets me get a +1 Dodge to AC for each Sneak Attack Die, so for two weapons doing sneak attack I'm getting a +40 to AC here :smallbiggrin:) So from what I can tell here I'm doing 1d4+22+40d6 TWICE for straight up damage, and using Master Strike class feature from Rogue forces it to make a DC 39 fort save or die for each of those.
As far as any contingencies are concerned, I'll be using Positioning Attack to move up to 30 feet free if Fang makes himself seen, so that we can flank the bugger. I certainly hope I'm not missing anything.
Short Version:
First attack: To hit= +81 Damage: [roll0] Gidae's bonus: [roll1] and Sneak attack [roll2]
Second attack: To hit= +81 Damage: [roll3] Gidae's bonus: [roll4] and Sneak attack [roll5]
Each attack is from an adamantium weapon, if the thing has DR that may be important to note...
And a +40 to AC for the next round, with positioning attack to move and Opportunist Rogue Talent allowing another attack if someone else hits it (With sneak attack damage, due to Sneak Attack of Opportunity, plus Gidaes bonus, too, I think) and Positioning Attack ready to move Sebastian opposite Fang. Unless I do, in fact, get criticals and get to 'Vorpal' it, I think I'm done for the turn.

[Realms of Chaos]

As the ship seems to suddenly accelerate, a single note of triumph rings out from somewhere aboard, perfectly complementing Gidae's own performance and making time appear to slow down for everyone.

The human monk and draconian each leap up into the air and seem to spin into a frenzy like miniature cyclones, taking out over dozen of the swarming monstrosities apiece. Up on the ship and between the two of them, the invisible human repeats his teleportation technique with far more lethal results.

This is not to say that those on the ground are ignored, however. The ship rains down violent destruction through its cannons on the skittering monstrosities below, landing every hit and delivering massing amounts of harm even as further gunshots from the tower slay another 3 of them. One of the largest creatures, struck from above and below in a coordinated effort of assassin and paladin, falls limply to the ground, slain.

Just as the ship risks ramming through the mass of monstrosities hanging before them, both Erika and the tiefling leap into action, inspired by the note of triumph and swarming across the battlefield like horrid tempests. Hundreds of the monstrosities simply fall from the sky, leaving the way wide open for the ship.

At last the ship has approached within 100 feet of the cracks and the Lady of pain extends a single hand towards the sky. Pointing at the cracks above, they appear to shudder in place, slowly retracting and shrinking. As you continue watching, it is almost as if the cracks are imploding upon themselves. When at last the cracks are gone, the entire sky seems to shatter, revealing a second, flawless night sky behind it. Slivers of the sunlit sky rain down from the heavens like fireworks, each one fading out of existence long before it hits the ground.

Up in the sky, however, you see more than the moon and stars. A message has been written across the night sky in faint, glowing letters.

Daniel/Fang/Sebastian/Harvest Queen/Gidae/Erika:
"If you possess the strength to read this portent, know that the Great Wheel requires your strength"
"The gate to the meeting grounds has opened"
"May we all survive into the next golden age"

[Maugan Ra]

Erika regroups with the others, ideally back near the temporary bunker that the Queen erected, since that seems the easiest location for everyone to find.

"Now what do you suppose that means? " she asks, curiously, indicating the glowing message in the sky.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian pulls free his blades from the dead beast as the sky rips clear, and again kicks himself for not always looking up. "Damn..." He whispers, before speaking up and slipping off his Ring of Sequestering: "What do you all make of that? "

He trails off, not really caring for a response, simply staring into the scarred sky. Moments later he looks down at his own hands which, unlike his self-cleaning wrist-frills, are stained with the deep and ichorous 'blood' of this not-too-local creature. Shaking what he can from himself and re-hiding his blades in his sleeves, he takes a single step away from the creature's corpse before stopping. Perhaps, he considers, there is something to gain here yet?. Anyone with a vantage of his face is able to see an extraordinarily over-excited smile nearly rip his face in two for the briefest of moments, before he turns, re-draws the daggers, and begins to prod and cut at what-s left of the creature, searching for any discernible organs, useful pieces of claw or chitin, and most frantically, for poison glands of some sort.

"Who even knows...maybe we can eat it?" He chuckles to himself as he works through the creature. How, afterall, could he be serious?

I figure Knowledge (Nature), Knowledge (Dungeoneering) and Craft (Alchemy) would be most useful here to discover anything particularly valuable. Generally looking for obvious organs, heart, liver, brain. Any sort of poison glands, or spinnerets would be a good find, as would any armor-worthy chunks of it's hide. Last but not least, I'll drop a Craft (Cooking) Just to check if it's even feasible to attempt making something edible out of the most recent thing that tried to eat us.
Knowledge Nature:[roll0]
Knowledge Dungeoneering:[roll1]
Craft Alchemy: [roll2]
Craft Cooking:[roll3]
:smallbiggrin::smallwink::smallbiggrin::smallamuse d::smallbiggrin:

[AmberVael]

The Queen drifts down to her makeshift fort with Erika, focusing on to undo what the aberrations had inflicted upon on her. After a moment of quiet meditation, she focuses on the others around her, then glances up at the message in the sky.

"Much of its meaning is obvious, but it doesn't actually say much." She observes. "It mentions that the Great Wheel needs us if we can see it, so it is probably only readable by certain people, and those people are being exhorted to serve our cosmos in some way. Likely we are meant to protect it, if this assault is any evidence. Some gate has been opened that was presumably shut, but I don't know what the meeting grounds are off hand. That could be any number of places, but likely it is something we don't know of if the gate has only just been opened.
"The third line reinforces my hypothesis that we are being called to protect our cosmos, implying that there is a danger, but also probably some great reward as well, due to the mention of a golden age."

"But again, it doesn't actually say much. What danger? Who is addressing us? Where are the meeting grounds?" The Queen raises her shoulders and hands in an eloquent shrug. "Either the writer doesn't care for us to have any of that information, or we're expected to find it out on our own."

The Queen is going to use Caster's Lament to try and remove the penalties if they don't fade away quickly or after the creatures die.

Edit: Rolls will be in OOC.

[Realms of Chaos]

Sebastian: As far as you can tell, the entire creature is so abhorrent to known laws of geometry, chemistry, and biology that its entire being is likely toxic in some way or another. The ichor would serve as an injury poison, the flesh as an ingested poison, and even ground-up bones may work as an inhaled poison. No particular organs, though. The amount of poison you can extract largely depends on how much you can carry around and how much time you're willing to spend.

Harvest Queen is fully restored.

[Metroid33]

Walking back to the Queen Fang takes his time to think about the message. Well i guess I'm being called for something, I wonder if the rest of the group is seeing as well? His mind trails off for a few moments before coming back to his original train of thought, I think that golden age bit refers to the next era of our civilization.... I don't know maybe, I guess I'll talk to the group in a bit about it.

[Toska Moriarty]

RoC:
I'll spend the couple minutes necessary to decapitate it, hollow out the 'skull/stinger' and drain enough blood into it to fill it, as a gourd. NOT sure what that adds up to, or even how big that head is. Regardless that's what he'll do. I'll edit this to make it more graphic later.

Arms deep in the fallen creature, Sebastian sighs, and flicks what's left of the blood from his clothes.
....There's no way this stuff exists around here... There have to be a million ways to use it! He moves over to the 'Head'-esc stinger, dragging a blade across the base and neatly severing the appendage.
....And If I know that this could be useful, I wonder what my contact would come up with...
Still humming the awe-inspiring battle-anthem from earlier, he sits on the remnants of the beasts corpse, stinger-in-lap, and hollows it out, as one would a pumpkin come several past-harvest rituals.
...On the other hand, there is the message in the sky. I'm sure I wasn't the only one to see that... Though if it means anything important, I'm sure someone would get me....
Now void of all it's usual meat and fluids, Sebastian places the head on the ground near the body before running another slice, the deepest yet, into the corpse. He adjusts the head juuuuust right, so it captures and contains as much of the vile thing's dark, sickly, ichor as possible for it's dimensions.
...Afterall, this is me we're talking about. Leaving me out is like having a party without cake. Everyone loves cake....
As the 'head' finishes filling with blood, he re-sheathes his daggers, straightens up his suit, shakes off any remaining ichorous fluid from his ever-clean clothes (Though ignoring what is on his hands and possibly face, that could be cleaned later) scoops up the creature's 'skull' under one arm, and, still humming, casually saunters back towards the gate they had come in through, winking at Daniel as he passes without breaking his stride.

[Realms of Chaos]

Sebastian:You acquired 20 doses of Pseudonatural Ichor. :smalltongue:

Erika (Retroactive Edit): While you flew and slew those creatures in the sky, the tiefling responds to your query, "I learned to move as I do on the burning plains of the Abyss, where to be slow is to die, or worse."

[Metroid33]

As Fang walks along he thinks about how everyone else got around so easily, Erika with her spire of rock, the Queen and Gidae's ability to fly, and finally Daniel and Sebastian's insane acrobatics. Hmmmm. I wonder if any of the merchants would repay us for helping to save the city.... He stops mid stride and then turns down a narrow side ally way.Lets go see those merchants in town, and i can also send my letter finally.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika files away the tiefling's reply as one of her library of interesting facts. The Abyss... She's never been there herself. Might be interesting to see it one of these days. Of course, it might also be fatal.

"Well, I certainly can't feel any kind of portal opening up. There's usually a detectable aura, and nor did I see anything particularly exceptional while I was up there." she muses, still considering the message. "I'd ask the Lady, but the last person to actually get a response from her didn't seem to enjoy the experience very much."

[AmberVael]

"I am sure you would have little difficulty receiving a message from her. We are not insignificant ourselves, after all. Of course, I am also sure that you could discover the meaning of this riddle on your own, if you were so inclined. Those of our stature needn't rely on another to do the job for us." The Queen says with a smile.

Almost as an afterthought, she addresses all those who took shelter with her, her mind reaching out to them. The immediate danger has passed, but these entities may strike a second time, and some of them still roam the streets. If you desire, you may take refuge in my home- the way is open for you.

If she senses that any of them worship her, she will quietly suggest to them to lead a few rituals to her once they arrive, and inform the others of who she is and what she does.

Once she has spoken, the Queen goes silent and smiles to herself. She quite clearly gave shelter and pitted her strength against these invaders, and she and her allies came out victorious. Surely some of these people were feeling gratitude or awe, and were inclined to take up worship of her, even if it was only the odd prayer here and there- even that would spread her name. Some might even be moved to make a few sacrifices.

[Realms of Chaos]

Fang (and any coming along):The mercantile district, taking up 80% of Sigil, is slowly coming to life. Though the merchants haven't met you personally and have yet to see you slay monsters, they believe you when you say that you work with the Harvest Queen and Erika and that seems to be more than enough to be treated as a king. Some merchants travel around you as you make your rounds, introducing you to others and ensuring that you're treated well. A good deal of the more wealthy merchants pay you for your service either in coin or magic. Only the most wealthy of merchant princes, however, can bear to part with an item you have sought for quite a long time: a narrow aurorum band engraved with a feathery pattern.

200,000 gp in coin, gems, and art objects divided among Fang and all that travel along with him.
100 mundane/alchemic/magic trinkets (1,000 gp or less) for each person to come along. Multiples are time.
Ring of Solar Wings for Fang.

The Harvest Queen:Among those you have sheltered from harm, you can sense much respect and gratitude. Even those who only witnessed your magical might from afar hold you in the highest regard. While many of those assembled there have both lives and families to return to, the wayward citizens who knew not what their futures held remain around you, seeking your guidance. In a few, no more than a couple dozen, you can detect the warmth of devotion, of raw worship.

[Infernally Clay]

"The Great Wheel...?" Gidae mumbled to herself, "And the meeting grounds?"

Knowledge (Religion): 1d20+30
Knowledge (Planes): 1d20+30
Knowledge (Geography): 1d20+30

Gidae will use all three uses of Lore Master, taking 20 on each check.

[hpboy111]

Gate? What gate? Daniel skims the sky momentarily looking for anything that might be a portal that hadn't been there previously.

Afterwards he jumps down from the carcass of the creature he and Sebatian had slain, noticing Sebastian's attempts to harvest the "blood" of the creature. Strengthening his vow to never eat anything Sebastian cooked, Daniel makes his way to the nearest building and scales the side, taking his time while he thinks.

I have one question. I need to make this count. Settling into a meditative posture, Daniel enters a trance like state and calls to the universe around him, seeking knowledge which he himself did not have.

Daniel is using Infinite Wisdom to ask the Universe "Where is this gate?" As the description for Infinite Wisdom says that the answer is given to suit the needs of the asker, I figure there's no need to hire a team of lawyers to make sure that the question is absolutely perfect. Therefore, I'm going to keep this simple.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian manages, at a brisk pace; he wouldn't dare risk spilling his new prize, to get back to the current 'Forward base of operations' soon enough. Not so soon as to hear the start of The Queen's speech, no doubt similar to previous ones, but he catches the last bit and cannot help but smirk. Well, at least she's safe from distraction, getting her off her goals is probably impossible. He shrugs, knowing that she's no doubt in his head anyway, and weaves his way through the crowd in the Shadow-fort. As he approaches under her, he makes a not-quite-as-lavish-as-before bow (Not wanting to risk his payload) and looking up, addresses her: " Your majesty, what, may I ask, is our next course of action? You no-doubt have seen the sky, and your words are already taking root amongst the people here, so perhaps some investigation is in order?
He shrugs again, almost answering his own question, before using his free hand to shield his eyes enough that he could look up at Erika and Gidae.
"You know, It's just a tad impolite to 'show off' like that Erika. You almost hit me with several of those poor bastards..." He stops for a second, chuckling.
"Not to mention all the flying about. Frankly, you got your hands on more of the buggers than I could count before they got to my level. Not fair at all, really." He sighs in an exaggerated manner before unnecessarily wiping the back of his hand across his forehead, no doubt smearing more ichor about. "You know, if I could do that, I'm sure I'd at least have been able to out-do Daniel. Would you believe we had to SHARE? Yuck."

Shrugging, and heading closer to the 'Gate' that Her Ever-beautiful-Powerful-Omni-Magnificient-and-Gracious-ness opened, he adds almost as an afterthought, more to himself than anyone; "Wish I could freakin' fly..."

[Realms of Chaos]

What is the Great Wheel (Everyone):The great wheel is a common term used to describe the shape of the multiverse (or at least of the outer planes) with the outlands in the center and the other outer planes revolving around it and gradually transitioning from law to good to chaos to evil and back to law.

What/Where is the Meeting Grounds (Daniel/Gidae):the meeting grounds refers to an older name of a legendary demiplane called Common Grounds. This realm is said to be one of the few places where battle is truly impossible and has long been used as the meeting place of powerful gods. So far as you know, no mortals have ever been able to find the astral color pool to the meeting grounds (supposedly in the center of the astral plane) but that may be more about some ward than common chance.

[hpboy111]

The Common Grounds... Hmm... Rising from his meditative position Daniel's eyes scan the streets below him. It looks like almost everyone was converging back near the entrance to the Acropolis, except for Fang who was currently nowhere to be seen. Daniel was unconcerned by this, after all, Fang had come with several errands in mind, he was probably off dealing with those now.

Making his way across the nearby rooftops, Daniel arrives at the alleyway that holds the entrance to the Acropolis. "Well, I have some good news," Daniel syas to the group at large. "I figured out where this meeting ground is. It's a place know as the Common Ground, a demi-plane which can only be accesed through the Astral Plane. Now that we know where it is we are being called to, who is interested in answering the call? If it's true that the entire Wheel is endangered, then it matters not where we head from here, we will meet this same chaos unless we take action to try and stop whatever is causing it. I for one say that we find this portal on the Astral Plane and attend this meeting. Thoughts?

[Maugan Ra]

Erika watched the Queen's manipulations with a curious eye, a faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Cults and religions in general could be so very entertaining, and she counted more people in the Acropolis as a positive thing. So much potential for growth and creativity, all overseen by a Fae queen... It would be fascinating.

That smile blossomed into full life as Sebastian returned, smeared in other-wordly ichor and complaining in what she assumed was a mostly good natured fashion.

"Ah, terribly sorry, Sebastian. Clearly, I'll have to make it up to you. Hmm... How about some wings?" she said, gliding across to him on a rippling tide of solid ground. "I'm not necessarily limited to just inanimate objects, after all."

By way of demonstration, she held out one hand towards the assassin in an imperiously regal gesture. The arm shivvered and melted in the course of a moment, skin color changing even as the underlying bone structure warped and shifted, until the whole limb terminated below the elbow in a hissing snake of jade-green hue. The reptilian appendage looked up at the assassin and winked, before shuddering once again and melting back into a proper humanoid form.

"See? Always happy to help a friend overcome a deficiency." the Dreamweaver finished with a wicked, teasing smile.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian represses his desire to grin as much as he can, merely perking an amused eyebrow at the snake-arm display. He opens his mouth to speak and pauses. Wings!? he shouts in his own head, She said WINGS!!
He again opens his mouth, still trying to keep himself cool and collected. He takes a step back, places his stinger-gourd-o-extraplanar-gore on the ground with thorough care, and steps back, finally able to talk. "Well if you put it that way..." He finally smiles wide, the smallest portion of a childlike glee sparkling in his eyes for a moment before he can contain himself again. "And if you don't mind..."" He spreads his arms out wide and shuts his eyes, expecting quite a bit of 'uncomfortabalness', at the least. "Then do do that voodoo that you do so well!"

Peeking open a single eye at the last second he's stricken with a rather worrying thought: Wait...What about my suit?

[Metroid33]

Removing the golden ring on his right hand, Fang then delicately slides his new possession onto his ring finger. Once firmly on and the other stashed away in his pouch, He clenches his hand into a fist, Channeling power into the band, feathers seem to drift away from it, peeling off the metal in infinite quantity. As they move around Fan, they grow larger and their color changes to shades of white and black, becoming real feathers. Finally they position them selves on his back, just an inch away from his jacket. Forming wings, they flap once bringing him into the air, then once more carrying Fang off towards the Acropolis entrance. OOOOO I'm going to love these. Fang thought to himself.

[AmberVael]

The Queen does not make any attempt to dissuade most of those from returning to their homes, nor to impress full devotion to her upon them. Instead, she quietly and subtly urges them to remember her in small ways- to recall what she did, to remember what she claimed sovereignty over, and to respect that authority of hers. Few were those she called into full service, but many were those who offered a prayer up to her in the harvest days.

It does, however, surprise her that so many are willing to immediately leave rather than take shelter in her realm until their safety was more assured. Upon considering this, the Queen makes her decree. "It is clear to me that this is a time of need. The world shudders and cracks under the strain of unseen foes, and even now our work is not complete, for enemies still roam the streets. I will stretch out my hand and power to provide protection and to finish the work we started while my companions and I seek out the root of this disturbance."

With this, the Queen sits and focuses herself, speaking to her comrades with her mind as she works on her magic. I can quite simply facilitate our journey to the Astral Plane. And I agree, it seems the simplest route to obtaining further information on what is occurring, which seems a wise idea. Shadows ripple around her as the Queen takes her time to make good on her word.

The Queen is going to spend about twenty minutes or so assembling a small force to protect the people choosing to stay, and hopefully aid in cleaning out the remaining monsters in Sigil... as well as giving a constant reminder of her.

Her method is pretty simple. With the Shadowmaster epic feat, she can mimic conjuration spells, like Shades, as a spell-like. This in mind, she can duplicate Greater Planar Binding to bind some outsiders to do her bidding, 18hd worth per casting.

She can cast this once every round, so 10 times per minute, so 100 times in 10 minutes. In those first ten minutes, she will summon 100 Mariliths, (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#marilith) and in the next 10 minutes, 300 succubi. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#succubus) None of them can succeed on charisma or spell resistance checks against her to resist service now or later (her initial check she can just take 10 on since she isn't in danger). Only those that roll a 20 can succeed on the initial will save, which is frankly a tiny amount, and they don't show up anyway, so I feel pretty justified in largely ignoring them and assuming the Queen spends a very small amount of time making up for those very infrequent failures. In short, in the course of 20 minutes she'll have about 400 demons bound to service for a full month's time, and there really isn't anything they can do about it.

Her orders will be to protect Sigil, get rid of those monsters that entered through the cracks, and (specifically to the succubi) to quietly and subtly spread her influence. In order to hopefully quell any potential disobedience or revenge, the Queen promises that if they do their job well, they will have her favor and ear should they have need of it in the future. It might seem small, but the potential for a minor demon to call on a demigod even in a limited fashion is probably a pretty rare opportunity.

And no doubt they can make use of time spent as protectors in the name of the Harvest Queen to advance some of their own causes, as they're sheltered by her good name.

[Metroid33]

Whoooaaaa, when did you get into my head?? And why are going to the astral plane? I was taking care of some business in the city and missed some stuff. Fang responds to the queen as he flies through the Acropolis entrance. The eyes of people leaving it moving upward as he soared overhead. "Now I'm all for going to the astral plane your majesty, but why?" Fang says directly to the queen, landing in front of her. As he lands the feathers slowly go back to floating around him then finally returning to his ring.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika looks Sebastian up and down with the evaluating eyes of an architect, then reaches out and taps him lightly on the forehead.

The following sensations are somewhat unpleasant, as the assassin's skeletal structure ripples and deviates from its initial pattern. Two great spurs of bone erupt from his shoulder blades, before swiftly sheathing themselves in leathery flesh and pale membranes, as the begginnings of demonic wings take shape. Fortunately, the suit seems to part easily before them, swiftly redesigned so as not to get in the way.

The Dreamweaver stands back, one hand touching her chin in a contemplative gesture. Then she beckons one of the nearby Succubi over, speaking rapidly to it in its own tongue, before gesturing to Sebastian once again. The two of them, world shaper and corrupter, confer for a few moments, and Erika goes to work again, tweaking the design of the wings into a more aesthetically pleasing form.

"That should about do it. How do you feel, Sebastian?" she says, smiling, and then pauses to look back at the Succubi she roped in as a makeshift fashion consultant. "Ah. Stick around, Sebastian, I think Daniel might possibly react poorly to this." she adds, quietly, indicating the gathered legion of demons taking shape around the Queen.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian stops wincing, realizing that the ripping a tearing was the sound of flesh, not his precious suit. Eyes still squeezed shut, he goes over himself: Eyes good, ears good, hands and feet good, wings good, face go- What? Wings good? She did it?

Her discussion with someone nearby in one of the demonic or devilish tongues confirmed his suspicions. A few more little rips, spurts, and unpleasant twitches and she stopped, and was asking how he felt. He smiled for a second, then opened his eyes, letting his body adjust to the new weight and trying to stretch them out as far as he could to either side.

"Oh-ho-ho man!" He shouts to the group, gathered demons, and no-doubt-staring townsfolk: "You guys will not be-leave...How much this hurts." He shudders again for a moment, shaking himself as though he had the willies before giving them a couple flaps, twisting his head around trying to look at them. "Ah, and no tail! I was so worried that you'd go ahead and stick me with a tail...Good."

Fang, as it seems, had found a slightly less-intrusive way to get into the sky, though, and seemed almost... Is that smugness? "Oh Fang?" He chuckles, again, still happily flapping the wings, "You weren't thinking about trying to beat me to the sky next time, were you? That, I think, Would be a very. Bad. Idea." He closes his eyes again, trying to concentrate enough to let the wings fold in and rest, like several of the demons were doing, and is able to pull it off after a bit of effort.

"Aye, Your majesty, your wish is my command!" He nods to her after shouting, looking back up at Erika: "And as for Daniel...Oh I bet he'll be just the littlest tad annoyed, don't you think? I won't be missing that if I can help it." He laughed again, surprisingly haughtily and dignified for someone whose mind is currently akin to a child on Christmas.

[Realms of Chaos]

The citizens respond to the summonings in a variety of ways. Some of them, out of principle, leave the assembly when they see that they have fiends to rely on. Many more simply accept these guards with wide-eyed wonder and a few of the duller men allow their eyes to linger on the succubi as they pass by.

[hpboy111]

Good. The sooner we get to the As...tral... Plane... Daniel starts to respond to the Queen, and then he notices the shadows. As the shades coalece into the solid forms of Demons, Daniel can only stare ahghast at what she was doing. That stage lasted for all of a fraction of a second. "Samhain, what do you think you are doing. Why are you adding more problems to a city that still hasn't been rid of all of the initial problems?" His voice is deathly serious as he watches the Demons materialize en masse.

His eyes are carefully watching the Demons, ready to spring on any of them that so much as look like they are going to touch anyone assembled in the area. Meanwhile he waits for Samhain to respond. How many is she planning on summoning?, he thinks as she continues.

He is distracted by the appearence of the demons and does not notice as Erika grants Sebastian his wings. However the moment he hears Sebastian's crys about how much something hurts, Daniel turns and sees the wings, finally seeing something even worse than the Demons. Making his way over to Erika, he sighs heavily and sets his hand on her shoulder. "Thank you very much Erika, you have just made my job even more difficult. Now it'll be even harder to keep track of him..." Looking now at Sebastian he says, "Those wings are a privallege. And I am capable of taking them away. If you abuse them, I can guaruntee, you'll regret it."

Great. So many things that should REALLY not be happening. Just breathe deep, grin and bear, and be ready to act at a moments notice. I swear, these people might drive me insane.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian smirks, thoroughly engrossed and amused, winking at Erika in a very 'I told you so' manner. In one fluid motion, he whips a small bag from his belt, drops the ichorous head into it, and looks up at Daniel, head shaking. He sighs, letting his wings flap just slightly, an interesting touch, one he'd have to learn to use more, and trots several feet away. He moves his hands behind himself, interlocking his fingers at the small of his back, and watches the demons disperse into the city as a general would oversee troops, superficially of course, they were clearly not his.
Appearing to think for a minute, debating consequences, ideas, the proper witty response, the gravity of a paladin's threat, how potent Daniel can be in combat, and how much he may-or-may-not be worth to the group, Sebastian turns back to Daniel, Erika, and the others, clearly having trouble prying his eyes off of the more inciting of demons. With a full mouthed grin, and a single cocked eyebrow, Sebastian addresses the issue; "As is anything, Daniel. The same could be said about any item, any power, and even any life. All are great gifts from the universe, and all can be removed like they were never. Even. There. The latter of which, as you know, is my spesh-'e'-al-ity. I'll use my gifts as I see fit, as you do the same with yours, deal?" He stops for a moment, flapping his wings once again, kicking up dust and small pebbles as he grins, hands having made it to his hips.
"Are we clear on that much, Daniel? Or do you intend to try to stop me?" The last bit more of a gritted scoff than anything else, a direct poke to the ego.
There's not any reason we can't have a little fun, is there? he thinks, trying his hardest to direct that thought to The Queen, even as he readies himself for a little 'explosive disagreement' that he's waited on for some time.
We do, afterall, need to blow off a tad more steam than those beasts had provided...

[AmberVael]

The Harvest Queen dismisses those that so easily walk away from her mind and attention. She had no interest in the narrow minded and dogmatic- to her thinking, inflexibility was the sign of a small mind.

Nonetheless, she smiles at Daniel as he makes his question. "Solving several problems at once. Aiding the city in removing the remaining creatures. Stationing extra protection in case it returns, protection that answers to and can easily alert me. Surely you would agree that these are good things? We cannot remain to stay ourselves- we must be proactive.
"So who should I set this task to? Angels? Would you have me remove them from their rightful tasks, whisk them away from battle and righteous duty to satisfy my own whims? And the inevitables- surely you know none of them would ever heed my voice- they would struggle against me and hound me later for my supposed hubris. Though elementals would be loyal to me, those who would answer would not be strong enough to serve in this way."

The Queen gestures for the demons to disperse and go about the duty she has assigned to them. "But demons will answer me, and they will obey the rules and guidelines I set down for them. They will have the strength to do what needs to be done. What is more, they will be turned away from their usual mischief, and will be drafted to this good cause. What harm can they cause while under my eye, the eye of Sigil, and the Lady herself? Even if had they desire to rebel, they do not have the power."

"There are dangers and risks in summoning demons, this I understand, and well." The fey says in a calm tone. "But there is danger and risk in wielding weapons, and yet you do not rebuke our allies for carrying them, because they have control and mastery over them. Tell me, Daniel- you know I have my whims and impulses- but do you truly think I am not in control?"

The Harvest Queen grins at the paladin, her hazel eyes focused. "I believe I have demonstrated my mastery quite well."

[hpboy111]

Completely outdone by the Queen's superior logic, Daniel remains silent for a little while. Eventually he speaks, "You do have a fair point there, on all of those. Very well, I shall not question your methods. I have seen your power first hand and I understand perfectly well that you are in control of your abilities. Unfortunately, no matter the precautions we take, things can happen. I merely ask that you be cautious."

"I see absolutely nothing wrong with you using your newfound wings as you see fit. Anything can be considered a gift, but some are far more precious than others. A life can not be compared to a fancy new item because a life is so much more valuable. Removing lives from the world is something that nobody should have to do, however, sometimes it proves necessary. That's why I keep you around, because you are very good at what you do. Unfortunately, anything that makes you better at that job, makes you more of a threat to everyone around you, myself included, I don't deny. It's my duty to make sure that you focus your skills into something useful, much as the Queen is doing with these Demons. Because of the particular threat you pose, if you can't be focused in the right direction, then you need to be dealt with."

Starting to get tired of the argument, Daniel rubs his temples. "My point is that I don't want to HAVE to do anything to you. I'm saying be responsible, if that's even possible for you, just as I've asked you to be since we first met. The sooner you accept the fact that those wings, much like your own life, can be taken away, the sooner we can move on and deal with the larger problem at hand."

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian waits a few more seconds after Daniel finishes talking, either for an attack or some straight-forward threat. When that doesn't come, he nods, still grinning, and performs his usual mock-bow, now with outstretched wings, to the Grey Guard. Upon completion, he re-evaluates the situation.
"Well, I'm glad you keep me around for something. Happy to be of service when it falls into the realm of what I like to do. Deal with me if you finally need to, try to take my wings or life if you feel you can and have to, but realize this: I will always try to keep what I consider mine."

He stops for a second, still grinning, before moving a step closer, thrusting out his arm, hand out stretched. "Deal?" He asks, grin and sparkling eyes almost competing with each-other to look more excited.

Then, of course, I need to hurry up and get in touch with my 'supplier'. Faster I can do that is the faster I can get to trying these wings out...Maybe one of our lovely lady companions would be able to give me lessons so I don't look like a fool fluttering about the acropolis. And since we're bringing company back there, perhaps they need a bit of instruction, themselves. I have a few tricks I could teach quickly enough.

[Metroid33]

"Oh come on guys." Why am I taking Daniel's normal role as moderator, why? "Who cares what's protecting them? Really we don't have to protect them, they have the lady of pain." As he says this he points out to the city. "They don't need us, lets just go to the astral plane and find out why we're being called, and also Daniel I have wings to, you gunna try and kill me? Sebastian and I are both assassins. So just forget about it. "

After saying all of this Fang leans against one of the walls and waits for us to go, becoming rather impatient.

[AmberVael]

"Oh, my apologies, your majesty." The Queen says to Fang, her voice saturated with scathing sarcasm. "I had no idea your highness was in such a hurry. Please, do not feel obliged to wait for us. I would not dream of making you wait another moment, so do not delay or hesitate- go on." Samhain bows and waves, pointing onward as she urged Fang to go to the Astral Plane on his own, and to leave them behind.

[Infernally Clay]

"Okay, okay, enough," Gidae said firmly, having grown weary of the pointless arguments, "Nobody is going to the Astral Plane alone and nobody is killing anyone, either. We'll go to the Astral Plane together when we're all ready to go. Whoever wants our attention will simply have to wait a little while longer."

Waiting for the bickering to die down, Gidae spoke again, "What is there left for us to do before we can depart?"

[Maugan Ra]

"Aw. It's like we're a proper family, filled with hatred and death threats." Erika says, smiling as she watches the confrontation. "Still, I don't think there's anything else we need to do here."

[hpboy111]

"Deal. But just remember that I have no intention of taking what's yours, so long as you don't needlessly take the lives of others." Daniel makes it a point to cross his arms here, showing that he had no intention of taking the hand that was offered to him.

Turning to the other Assassin, arms still crossed,"Fang, calm down. Yes, you are an Assassin, but you don't kill needlessly. I trust you somewhat more than I trust him." Daniel motions towards Sebastian with his elbow.

"One more thing I suggest we do before heading out. We might want to check in with the Lady and those others on the airship. Make sure that they have everything under control before we leave. At the same I would like to know who the captain of that ship is. It's always nice to know who the powers among the planes, especially if you ever find yourself in need. If anyone plans on accompanying me, feel free, otherwise I'll meet you in the Acropolis shortly." With that Daniel turns and begins making his way through the now clear streets towards the harbor.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian leaves his hand floating in space for a moment or two more, until he's forced to shrug, resist the urge to turn an offered handshake into a rather rude gesture, and simply let it fall back to his side. Still smirking happily, quite amused by everyone's reactions, he manages to keep everything but his wings, which flutter slightly, from betraying how annoyed he is.

" Clearly, we are a family. We're violent, twisted, conflicted, and usually ready to butcher each other. Sometimes, though, it's a shame. As unnecessary as Fang's defense is," He turns to Fang and winks, "Thanks dearie, I'm a little offended you trust him more than myself. At least I'm predictably violent, confident, and devious. Did anyone else see the mood swing coming? " He chuckles; this was all far from the point. Hands still at his side, he takes a couple more casual, slow NON-THREATENING steps towards Daniel, closing the distance.
A quick whisper, "Good call , but I wouldn't dare do anything vile to you though." before he continues to speak loudly and arrogantly:
"Though, 'friend', you do have a point about the other nearby powers. I would like to go with you, if you'd mind 'babysitting'...
Do you want to me to lead, or will you?"

Smiles all around, wings anxiously moving, He waits, looking upon the group. Well there's one of my little goals. Score one Daniel.

[Maugan Ra]

"I always got the impression that Daniel was the one who... leads." Erika says with a slight smirk that somehow manages to be loaded with enough innuendo and subtext to fill a small novel.

I apologise, but you step really close to Daniel, whisper something in his ear, then immediately begin making arrangements to go with him. Away from the rest of the party. Into the mostly abandoned city. With an excuse that covers a variable time frame.
:smallwink:

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian laughes, shrugs, turns his back completely to the paladin before he can answer and walks (No... saunters?) off. Passing Erika, he winks, adding "Only if he's quick enough."before chuckling again and heads off toward the docks, debating in his own head if flying would make him look 'Gayer', then realizing he just doesn't care

Not that it matters, of course, He continues laughing, reaching into his bag of holding and pulling out one of the several aspect mirrors. They just better agree that I look damn good.

[Metroid33]

"Uuuummmm, well you two can do what ever you want later, but for now lets just see who owns that ship. Ok?" After saying that fang pushes off of the wall and waits at the door. Mental note: If they drift off some where else, keep moving to the airship.

[Realms of Chaos]

The three of you reach the ship without a problem. Though the Lady of Pain has departed, the gangplank isn't lowered. You see a couple of men (namely the armored draconian and the fist-launching monk) walking along the deck.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian walks, in very plain sight, up toward the edge of the dock. Peering up at the massive, gorgeously crafted ship, he cannot help but be impressed. Looking to either side, first to Fang, then Daniel, he shrugs, deciding to leave the 'Need a lift' comment, lest he be taken incorrectly again. Funny as it was, wouldn't want to lead the holy-knight on.

Forgetting his wings, or rather, not wanting to try them out for the first time in public, he backs up a bit from the edge, sprints to the edge of the dock, and leaps off at the ship, wings unconsciously flapping in a superficial way.



With a +47 Acrobatics, a +45 climb, a running start, a fly speed, and a climb speed, I dont think I need to roll anything. Mind you I'm doing this perfectly visible, rings in my pocket, and the daggers are thoroughly re-hidden. Only thing in my hands is a silver, jewl-encrusted, mirror.

[Metroid33]

"Sebastian, why didn't you use your wings?"Taking a moment to create his wings, Fang then jumps off the dock and starts to fly over to the boat. "May we come a board? My friends and I wish to meet you, after all you did help kill several of those 'things'."

[Toska Moriarty]

Clawing his way up over the edge of the ship onto the deck, Sebastian lets the mirror rest at his side. He eyes the 'crew', particularly those who are likely not 'crew' at all, with apprehension, but as he offers a near-mocking bow, his face holds a genuinely friendly smile.

Shrugging at the other assassin, he mutters: "Now Now, fang. Friend is too strong a word." Before continuing to size up anyone new that came onto the deck, more-or-less waiting for either his impromptu hosts (Or more likely, Daniel) to say something intelligent, and Fang to try at the same.

[Realms of Chaos]

Turning towards you, the armored draconian seems to size you up before saying.

"Aye, you may come aboard. Anyone who fights as well as that is welcome as my guest on this ship. We are currently heading towards the meeting grounds if you want to tag along and meet the crew."

OOC: Experiment time. So that I don't have to play he-said-she-said and slow things down, let's try consolidating things a bit. If you're in the conversation or end up joining it, let's do things on the other thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=253624&page=3).

Edit: All of you who choose to remain can almost visibly watch Sigil return to being Sigil over the course of just a few minutes. Within five minutes, a few philosophers within the Queen's flock begin taking advantage of the crowd, improvising philosophical arguments in favor of the queen's rule and how she may or may not represent the paradigm in Sigilian Aesthetics, Law, and government. Factions quickly form around these philosophers as they engage in great debates concerning the nature of the queen, all while standing within earshot of her and refusing to call her a "deity" (likely fearing the Lady's presence), though you can swear they they've invented a couple of new honorary titles specifically for her.

Within 10 minutes of the message in the skies, the first adventurous villagers try riding one of the now-timid monstrosities like a pony. Within 11 minutes, the first stands start raising that sell helmets and trinkets specifically to cancel out the aura of insanity surrounding the monstrosities. The first such items that actually do anything are widely available within 15 minutes and the creatures are being mobilized in scale to start the repairs on the city within 20 minutes.

Within 25 minutes of the fiendish summoning, almost all of the fiends are now wearing armor crafted by the citizens of sigil (including more "liberating" armor for the succubi) and several general trends for how such armor should be made and how demons in what part of the city should be labelled already seem set in stone as if they've always been there. Almost all of the demons are now carrying large fistfuls of fliers and half of them can't remember quite where they came from.

A mere 30 minutes after the catastrophe has resolved, the marketplace opens once more with a quick round of fanfare before everyone continues on their everyday lives (with the addition of a few new philosophical schools and monstrosity rides for the kiddies).

For the first time since you've stepped out of the acropolis, you begin to understand why you came to Sigil in the first place.

[Realms of Chaos]

Edit: Sorry about double-post but editing one post over and over and over can lead to a bit of stagnation.

The attention paid to the Harvest Queen seems to dwindle as something else starts brewing in town. It is unclear whether the disruption is directly related to the previous events or not but the monstrosities are breaking free from their yokes and seem to be congregating elsewhere in town, working their way around fiendish guards that try to stand in their paths. Thankfully, mass hysteria has yet to return to the populace.

[Maugan Ra]

"Ah, whatever it is, I'm sure it will sort itself out." Erika says after a few moments. There's a new adventure on the horizon, and the thought of lingering here did not hold much appeal. She turned to the Harvest Queen.

"Shall we get underway? I'm sure our companions will either make it back in time or hitch a lift to the destination themselves. Planar travel isn't too hard to come by in Sigil, from what I understand."

[AmberVael]

"If nothing else, I am sure they remember that every prayer to me reaches my ears." Samhain concurs with a smile. With an imperious wave, she dismisses the entrance to her home, then extends her hands to her nearby allies. "Come. We do not need to use my home for this."

The Harvest Queen focuses her magic once the others have taken her hands, and a whirling wind of shadows spins around them, pulling them from the plane they found themselves on and casting them out into the astral ocean.

The closing of the Acropolis gate assumes everyone who wanted to go to the Acropolis got there already. She'll direct people in if they haven't gone in yet. They can go make themselves at home, she's not worried.

After that, the Queen is going to take everyone who wants to go now to the Meeting Grounds. She won't be fussed if that's only Erika and herself. She will use Shadowmaster to mimic Greater Plane Shift to move them there with full accuracy.

[Realms of Chaos]

Harvest Queen, Erika, GidaeOnce within the Acropolis, The Harvest Queen, Gidae, and Erika find that the pathway to the meeting grounds opens up quite easily. Leaving the new throng of loyal followers behind, the three of you find yourselves in a large room perhaps a quarter-mile in diameter. Every surface in the room seems to be carved of ivory, down to the pillars that climb up to unseen depths. A large group has already assembled in the area. Fiendish, celestial, and everything in between, the inhabitants seem strong, canny, and armed to the teeth with such weaponry and dweomers that the room is filled with a soft buzz and clashes of metal on metal just from their attempts to move through the room. Up on a raised platform in the center of the room are several gods or godlike beings. Kord, Wee Jas, St. Cuthbert, and Olidammara stand atop the pedestal surveying the crowd. A fourth character, a roughly feminine form hidden beneath a cloak of rustling leaves, stands behind them.

Harvest Queen:You recognize the figure in the back. Though she is no true deity, she is one of the greater powers from the Seelie Court, which might as well be the same thing. She is the one called whisper, a sonic spirit of nature responsible for whispering winds, burbling brooks, and rustling leaves along with similar soft sounds.

Fang/Daniel:Turning the corner into the alley where you know the Queen placed the gate, you see only a dead end.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika's eyes light up with an almost childish delight as she takes in the various different individuals gathered here. And a collection of gods as well... oh, this is fantastic.

With a giddy smile on her face, she waits to see what happens next. Regardless of the specifics, it's almost certainly going to be interesting.

[Metroid33]

"Dammit, this is the right ally I know it. they left without us,"Fang falls into a kneel thinking about there options,Daniel, I think our only options are pray to the Queen or go back to that ship and hope they take us."

[Toska Moriarty]

Alright, So I'm back to this board. You all miss me?
I'm fairly certain that Sebastian can find and follow tracks for Daniel and Fang easily enough. He has a +42 Survival check as it is, and then slap on Favored Terrain, Urban (Another +2) and Favored enemy Humanoid, Human (Another +4) which brings it up to a +48. I'm assuming familiarity doesn't affect anything and that this is hard ground (Cobblestones), which puts the DC at 20 to find and follow tracks. [roll0] to find the tracks.
And then to follow the tracks at twice my speed (150 feet per round) I'd take a minus twenty to the DC 20, so to follow the Tracks I'd be at [roll1]
Assuming all that goes without a hitch, wearing the Ring of Sequestering he's got makes him completely invisible, so I should only have to make a Stealth for moving silently, and am able to do so at those speeds with a -15 due to race bonuses. [roll2]
Additionally, since this is his Favored Terrain, Sebastian is untraceable in Sigil.

Sebastian walks easily through crowds, weaving through them without drawing so much attention as any other feature of the city. Sure, the metallic band wrapped around his finger made that all a bit easier, but that didn't explain how crowds almost seemed to part for him as he waltzed through the streets and allies, following the footprints of a very unlikely pair through muddied allies and dusty streets.

Eventually, he rounds the corner into the last alley, and he stops to wonder why he tracked them even though he knew their destination. Stepping several feet, silently as always, into the alley, he casually leans up against the wall, buried in shadow, stealth, and the invisibility of his ring. Smirking at Fang's comment, he cups his hands around his mouth and looks straight up, hoping to echo his voice around the alley:
"Of course they left without you, you dolt! Since the ship's no-doubt on it's own way out, I think praying might just be your best option. In fact, I'd love to volunteer myself for just such a duty. "

He quickly darts to the opposite wall, still just inside the mouth of the alley.
[roll3] to move silently

Again cupping his hands he shouts again: "Unless, of course, you think either of you should try it. That I'd love to see!"

Following that, he chuckles, still throwing his voice about the alley, off various surfaces, and generally being as annoyingly cryptic as possible.

[Realms of Chaos]

The Meeting Grounds:
OOC: No, seriously, guys. If your character isn't in the meeting grounds, this is not for your eyes. Considering that the Harvest Queen is in there, relying on second-hand information may actually become a plot point. :smalltongue:
As the deities survey the crowd, a few angered mortals murmur and shout loose accusations at the deities. Apparently ready to proceed, Kord quickly clears his voice and walks to the front of the stage."I'm guessing all of you want to know what's going on, right?" Kord looks among the other gods to see if any seek to interject but none do. "Well, I guess that it's my honor to explain things. First thing first. After reading those messages in the skies, some of you may think that those cracks were merely tests, that we would release untold horrors on our own worshipers just to see if someone was worthy for some great "honor" or "duty"."

At this, the deity scans the crowd searching for those who show signs of believing this. "Of course, if we wanted to find those of you with power, all that we'd need were those messages up in the sky. Commoners and weaker beings can't read the message and it would save us a whole lot of trouble. No, this was not some test. We have fought the cracks just as you might have and even our own number has been thinned by this catastrophe. Thanks to our efforts that those of powerful mortals and immortals like yourselves, most of the cracks beyond the astral plane have been sealed. Even so, this may be only the start of an era of loss and change... even for those with strength. In under an hour, we have lost the inner planes. Six planes wiped from existence."

With these solemn words, Kord turns his head downwards, giving the audience a chance to process what has just been declared.

Harvest Queen: Even as you listen to Kord, you can hear a faint whisper emanating from the air around you.

So, the courtless queen seems to have done quite well for herself

The voice, if it could be called one, lacks any degree of emotion.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika tilts her head in consideration.

"Just the inner planes lost? Is it more severe in that area?" she calls out, pitching her voice so that it carries over the crowd to everyone's ears. The implication is apparent - find the centre point of the phenomena, and you're much closer to finding the reason for it.

[Metroid33]

Ugh fine go ahead Sebastian, pray for her. We have nothing better to do.

[Realms of Chaos]

The Meeting Grounds:The response from the assembled beings is mixed. Some volunteer on the spot to help the deities (if they haven't already) while others outright insult the deities for their negligence and start leaving.

To the rest, Kord continues speaking, "As much as I regret the loss of entire planes, we had limited time to do anything at all and we were forced to prioritize. Thankfully, the elements that we possess in the material and outer planes never came directly from the elemental planes. There is no risk of the world running out of fire or air or life."

After making one more deep sigh, the god of strength resumes "Right now, the great wheel is facing the greatest of hardships it has ever endured and our meager numbers have proved insufficient with our to save even entire planes, much less keep cosmic peace or attend to lesser matters of importance. To this end, we have called upon the strongest we can work together. Even the forces of Faerie and what remain of the elemental lords have left their elusive courts to join us in this endeavor."

With this, he nods to the leafy woman behind the rest of the gods. "Though we have always respected and treasured the free will of mortals, might we call upon you, champions, to help maintain existence as we know it?"

[Maugan Ra]

The Meeting Grounds

Erika considers this for a moment or so. Work to save all of reality, alongside the greatest and most powerful individuals in existence, at the direct behest of the gods. Now there was a purpose! There was something she could apply herself to, a driving goal to give meaning to her life. Oh yes.

"I get the feeling I should make some kind of grand proclamation." she mutters to herself. Then she simply takes a few paces forwards, separating from the crowd in a visible demonstration of commitment. "Where do we start?" she says instead.

[Infernally Clay]

.: The Meeting Grounds :.

OOC: Let the awkwardness ensue! :smallbiggrin:

Gidae, as usual, stayed quiet and in the background as others spoke their minds. There was something... familiar... About Kord's words, about what was happening in the Planes. But how could she have known, even subconsciously, about this? Did she have a part to play in what was happening? Whether she did or didn't, it was apparent she had to get to the bottom of this catastrophe. If she did, she might find out who she really is.

"Six planes gone and even the Gods themselves are dying? Not a pretty sight," she said, finally speaking up and making her presence known, although her eyes held no familiarity with the Gods whom she unknowingly once stood among, "So just point us in the right direction and we'll see it done. I doubt we have much time to waste on pleasantries and the like."

[Realms of Chaos]

The Meeting Grounds:Finally stepping back, Kord allows St. Cuthbert to step forward where he left off. After a quick scan of the crowd, the god of law gets right to the matter "As a perfunctory matter to those of you with more straightforward ideals, I must regretfully report that these disturbances aren't the work of some death cult or forbidden ritual. To all appearances, this event seems "natural" in certain ways and fighting it would be much like fighting an earthquake. The world is trying to reshape itself. Into what, none of us dare say. All that we know is that these changes have been unpredictable and that they have left the fabric of reality fragile and... pliable... in parts. If we don't act carefully, the great wheel may restart, reform, or end altogether. Your homes, your families, your lives, your pasts... any or all of it of it might end or be unravelled or shifted in this flux with hardly a moment's notice.

With this disaster in the distance, we require the aide of others for three separate purposes. First, our attention will be devoted to suppressing the worst effects of this calamity. We require others to act as our representatives in the world. Beyond mere clerics or adherents, they will be our voice and the voice of constancy in these troubling times. If you desire no such honor, none will be granted to you.

Secondly, lesser effects of the calamity may yet make themselves known in the world and we need others who can help track the damages and protect whatever they can. Should more monsters break through the fabric of space, warriors will be needed to fight them. Should a world start fading from existence, assistance will be needed to evacuate all who can be helped. As any of us may pay the price within these coming days, I would hope that you would help your neighbors and trust them to help you in return.

Finally, though we see no way to do so other than waiting for things to end, we require aid fighting back against this calamity. If anyone can find any means, and spell, any artifact that may slow or halt or even reverse its effects, doing so is among the most worthy of endeavors. Though we will spread information to all, however, how you choose to act against this threat is ultimately left to you to decide.

As for support, we can lend some small sliver of our power to those who would act as our voices and will continue to provide our blessings to our faithful. Other than that, all we may offer is information, the assistance of our heralds and planar allies, and full access to our godly realms. If you agree to help us, step forwards and we will provide you with a gem through which you can communicate with us"

[Maugan Ra]

Erika steps forwards smartly at the prompt, smiling slightly. To do otherwise would be to allow the opportunity of a lifetime to pass her by.

"I can fight, and I had some success in manipulating the breaches over Sigil. I might be able to close them fully, but only a few at a time."

[AmberVael]

Meeting Grounds
The Harvest Queen listens to everything said, a small smirk playing across her lips. She wasn't entirely sure where she would go from here, but the response of the gods to the situation amused her. If the world was naturally changing, and so much had already been destroyed by the change... well, she wasn't sure that could be reversed, or even should be. Though of course if it is really that volatile she might have to play along with them just for purposes of self-preservation.

Samhain mentally sets up her two priorities- securing her own life and power, and investigating the real nature of this calamity, then flicks her eyes towards the faint figure lingering in the back.

Your words are a contradiction, whispering wind. How can you see my wealth and power and not see my court? Are there not servants who work beneath my banner and in my name? Are there not countless courtiers who seek my favor and attention? And even now, noble heroes array themselves around me and mine. I am not without a court- indeed, all that I do establishes it and my sovereignty within it.
The Queen's mental voice reaches out to the fey, carrying a rather whimsical, contrary feel to it, but her tone remains polite, erring on teasing rather than rebuking.
I assume you addressed me for more reasons than bestowing compliments? Please, speak your mind.

[Realms of Chaos]

The Meeting Grounds: Erika is one of the first to volunteer with all of the information prevented. As the crowd grows in volume and intensity, the deities walk off of the alter to spread their blessings to those who would seek them.


There is a fourth reason.

What you hear is not a voice. Hundreds and whispers and murmurs combine in a breeze that whips through the room to form a coherent message. The deities, still on the steps of the podium, turn back to the leaf-covered fey.


There is a fourth reason why we have called you.

The deities are far from the only ones to have taken a vested interest in the world. In order to protect ourselves if some great power should try to end existence, we have created... precautions.

In each generation, we find a few individuals destined for greatness and tie them to the fabric of reality itself. While their deaths won't doom the world, their lives may yet serve to protect it, at least to some degree.

Most groups that we talk to learn next to nothing of these mortal leylines but our fourth purpose on this day is to alert those leylines to the crucial role that they play in this game. As luck would have it, we have one of them in our midst.

[AmberVael]

The Meeting Grounds
"And who is this pillar upholding reality?" The Queen asks, presenting a grinning facade that covered her thoughts. Is this why the being had addressed her at first? Or was that merely politeness? No, the more she thought of it, the more she wondered- was this one of the secrets behind Gidae? If so, how would it affect her plans- how could she use this to her advantage?

But then, all of her companions seemed remarkable; She would not be surprised if it were Erika either. She could suspect and wonder all she wished, but she'd have the answer soon enough. Still, her mind raced as she thought of how to turn this to her advantage, no matter who was named.

[Realms of Chaos]

The meeting grounds:A pillar of light shines through the meeting grounds, bright as sunlight but refined to a five-foot column that engulfs Erika.


If you should meet this pillar on your travels, do all in your power to keep her from harm, lest an untimely end come to us all. While she is neither your lord nor master, her existence is precious to us all.

[Maugan Ra]

The meeting grounds

Erika blinks once. Twice. Ten dozen thoughts spiral through her mind in rapid succession, clashing against each other in insane confusion before... stopping. Deep breath.

"An explanation would be... very much appreciated." she says at last. Her voice, normally whimsical and carefree, is now cold and diamond-hard.

[Realms of Chaos]

The Meeting GroundsDespite Erika's reaction, nobody else seems too worked up over the issue. They may seem a bit shaken knowing that the last line of defense is composed of a meager few individuals but they seem to sympathize with her disbelief. Had it been themselves instead of her, after all, they would probably feel similarly. Even so, the crowd grows silent and gives her space to breathe as Erika makes her demand.


It was predicted that you would acquire divinity of a sort, that you would find yourself in the protection of one of our queens should you require additional protection

Harvest Queenor so we chose to interpret


It was even foretold that you would find your way to others who could blend in with and disguise even your own great power.

How have we chosen wrongly?

[Maugan Ra]

Erika considers this for a long moment. She should feel angry, really. There should be outrage, or disgust at the way in which her life had apparently been manipulated like this. And yet, she just couldn't find it in herself. Ever since she could remember - which was not really all that long a time - she'd been whimsical and wandering, and above all else searching for a purpose. Should she be angry, now that she'd apparently found it?

"You haven't." she admits at last, grudgingly. "It will require something of an adjustment, but I'm good at making those. Very well then. You said you tied the individuals, ones like me, to the fabric of the world... presumably, distinct aspects of it, hence the need for multiple individuals."

She waves a hand, and from the ground rises a narrow staff of wood, which became a tweeting bird perched on an outstretched finger, became a puff of smoke, and then became the floor once again. "This is my aspect, it seems. Chaos, in the form of directed adaptation. What, for reference, would the likely effects be if I do perish?"

[Realms of Chaos]

The Meeting Grounds:


Thankfully, those we have chosen simply act as the final defense for reality. So long as you live, chaos shall remain recognizable, if not completely unchanged. There is no guarantee that there will be change should you die but I believe that everyone here would rather not take that chance.

[Toska Moriarty]

Stepping out of the shadows, Sebastian laughs heartily at the other duo. He saunters past the two of them towards the back of the alley, rolling his eyes at Daniel as he does so: "Well, I know you agree Fgang, and judging by the dumb expression You've had on your face, Daniel, I can guess that you're worried..."
He stops at the wall, turning to the both of them. "So let me calm you down. There is no time for theatrics, large rituals, or getting a nice big crowd involved. Even though I want to..." He shrugs, chuckling again as he draws out a dagger and casually twirls it in his hand absent mindedly.

"Now, just give me a moment. I want to get the words right... It's been quite some time since I had to use this." Sebastian closes his eyes, breathes deeply, squeezes the handle of the dagger, and drops to his knees.

OOC: Sorry I cant finish it right now, still trying to choose which version,. Give me like, 6 hours (work, lol) and Ill be back to post the actual prayer. Sick of waiting, you see, but Ive got to go for now!

[Toska Moriarty]

Eyes still closed, Sebastian places his empty hand on the ground, fingers spread, palm down. He breathes again, whispering the words he's only said once before to himself, and more importantly than Daniel or Fang, to The Queen.

"Green to Red to Brown to Dust,
All things die because they must,
There is no light, There is no mist,
There is only a chill, Death's cold kiss...

To see you walk into your doom,
A single woman in ancient room,
She holds the string, the light, the life,
To make her smile, bring forth the knife..."

On the end of that verse, Sebastian plunges the dagger through his own hand, between the knuckles and the wrist, sinking it hilt deep in his own flesh as the adamantine blade easily passes through the rough, now red-tinted, cobblestone beneath. He grits his teeth as the blood runs through the cracks in stone, and smirks, knowing it'll just heal when he's done anyway.

"Though you bleed and cry and hurt,
She listens now, awake alert,
Talk to her, now at your worst,
But hope and pray she sakes your thirst..."

He trails off, the ancient prayer finished. Trying to ignore memories of the first time he had to call to her, he focuses on one thing: If she still could, she would be listening. Head still bowed, eyes still shut, he cannot help but picture her laughing at him as he speaks to a nearly empty alley.

"My Queen... We have found ourselves in a dilemma; Your gate has closed to us. To speak with GODS, to deal with a sky-written prophecy, and fight the vermin eating away at our world, I, uh, WE, would enjoy nothing more thoroughly than such an opportunity. There is nothing more important than standing by your side, My Queen, enshaddowed or otherwise. Bring us o you, we beg, so we may do so."

Smirk still playing across his face, he continues for one more breath...
"And nothing would make me happier than to see the lovely ladies I've begun miss ever so much..."
...before pulling the dagger from the ground, opening his eyes, and standing. Shuddering a moment, he spins the knife, blood flecking across the stone, before re-hiding it in his sleeves. Holding his hand up to his face , he watches the minor wound sew itself as he awaits an imminent answer.

[AmberVael]

I didn't think things were so formal between us, Sebastian. Shadows crawl around Sebastian and begin reaching for the other two as the Harvest Queen manifests her power. But the poetry and prayer are a pleasant surprise indeed. The darkness grows and swirls in a slow circle as a passage between the planes forms.

Samhain's slender arm reaches through the portal, and she takes a firm hold on Sebastian's bloodied hand before dragging him through. The shadows writhe and whirl, then engulf Daniel and Fang as well, pulling them into the Meeting Grounds.

[Realms of Chaos]

What the Men See: Entering the common grounds, you enter a large room carved of ivory, filled with all manner of beings strong, eternal, ephemeral, sagely, wise, and intimidating. The greatest of heroes, villains, and beings that fall in between have been gathered in tremendous number, armed to the teeth with so much magical equipment that you can feel the air buzz with their enchantments. On a platform in the center of the room stand several deities and a feminine being of leaves you aren't quite familiar with. At the moment, however, all attention seems to be not on them but on Erika as the crowd has cleared away the area immediately around her. Your entrance seems to remove a bit of tension hanging in the air.

[Metroid33]

Fang leans over and whispers to the Queen, "How nice it is to see you ladies, especially you your majesty, but I must ask what is going on here? and what is Erika up to?"

[Toska Moriarty]

Chuckling mildly to himself, Sebastian shakes off the magic and stands close behind The Queen. "Well, I have a thing for the older prayers. Especially ones I've confirmed work." Looking around, seeing several faces he recognized and just as many that he hoped wouldn't recognize him, he adds in a whisper: "So what's happening here? Mind filling us in, we were a tad delayed, and all of the sudden Erika is in the spotlight, and more literally than usual...."

He looks around again, rolling his eyes at Fang and using a few quick gestures from back in 'his Nightsong Days' (No doubt long out of style, but hopefully remembered) to signal a request: we do not steal anything. Combat isn't possible here, but if Fang was anything like Sebastian, he'd not be above borrowing a few artifacts if he could.

"Hell, m'lady, I'm not even sure if those nice pirate folks are going to make it."

[Maugan Ra]

Erika nods to the two new arrivals. "Fang, Sebastian. It turns out I'm apparently some kind of cosmic leyline. The embodiment of chaos. I can't say I'm entirely sure what to think about it, but it does answer a few outstanding questions."

She turns to face the being made of leaves. "I suppose I owe you a favour at some point, in return for the explanation. Should prove interesting."

That said, she regards the deities once more. "So. Back to the matter at hand. Something about a gem for communication purposes?"

[Realms of Chaos]

You almost don't notice them until they raise up their baskets. Tiny, dwarflike beings with twisted faces and pointed ears stand throughout the crowd, wearing what looks like tunics of bark as they raise fine woven baskets over their heads. In each basket are assembled gems of every color and cut. Walking with perfect silence, these beings rotate throughout the room, making sure that everyone still present receives a gem.

The Harvest Queen:Umberlings, among the least of jesters and couriers within the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Still more intelligent and cunning than the average human, they lack any true power or force of personality, surrendering their fealty at the drop of a hat. When not needed or not noticed, however, Umberlings cease to exist in traditional terms, their one unusual "gift". Though useful for manual labor, their suggestibility and lack of self-concept makes them practically useless to send far distances

[Metroid33]

Fang looks in to the basket, then reaching in and pulling out a Lapiz lazuli, that had been rounded into a perfect sphere, "So how do we use them and who will we be communicating with?" fang asks the ladies, hoping to get some kind of answer out of them as to what else has happened in their absence.

[Toska Moriarty]

"Bah!" Sebastian scoffs, snatching a large, crudely-cut, fist-sized ruby from the nearest basket. "Details. Who cares?" He holds it up to the light, looking through as best he can, reddish light dancing across his face. "Have you even SEEN these things....Can we take two?"

Looking quickly toward the highest deities he covers his own ass: "You know...Just in case."

[Realms of Chaos]

A voice echoes out from the ruby in Sebastian's hand, "We have a few extras but do keep in mind that we'll know if you sell them."

Ringing out from all of the gems, then, comes a single message in unity, "we can speak out through these gems whenever we wish, as easily as speaking with our mouths. Speaking to us, however, is a bit difficult. Each gem may be used once each day to deliver a message to all of us. An inconvenience, certainly, but it was the only way to make enough of them in time."

[Metroid33]

Not speaking directly into the gem but out into the room (now that he knows they can here him from anywhere) Ah makes sense, Sebastian no selling them." Fang then proceeds to plop his lapis lazuli into his bag of holding.

[Toska Moriarty]

"Of course, of course, I'll only take the one...." Sebastian chuckles, putting the Ruby into his coat pocket, patting it once or twice and...
And hopefully snag a second, knowing full well that the gods would be aware, though hiding it more from Fang than anyone.
Slight of Hand: [roll0]

[Metroid33]

Perception:[roll0]
to see if I notice him taking it.

[Realms of Chaos]

"Are there any other questions then?" asks St. Cuthbert.

[Toska Moriarty]

Coughing once to himself, in a very 'I-Want-To-Ask-What-I-Missed-But-Figure-Someone-Less-Important-Could-Cover-That' manner, Sebastian simply shrugs and shakes his head, standing in The Queen's Shadow, because even though there was no combat here, if this whole group was moved somewhere else en masse, hiding would be step number one.

[Realms of Chaos]

Gradually, the "champions assembled in the room filter out. Leaving through their own portals or the main gate back into the astral plane, a gate that seems to appear out of nowhere at all. Within a few minutes, you are among the last people assembled.

[Metroid33]

Fang, standing close to the queen so she wouldn't leave with out him again, he then looks around the room to see who else is here. "Hmm shall we introduce ourselves to the people still hanging around" Fang says to the Queen. "Or have you already done that ladies?"

OOC
I have a feeling that the people left here are the other parties?

[hpboy111]

Before I do anything else, rolling perception to see if Daniel noticed Sebasian's grab for a second gem.

[roll0]

As Daniel approaches the same basket that Sebastian had removed his gem from, he notices the grab for a second. "Sebastian, put that second gem back." He then reaches in and removes a medium sized garnet, rough cut, and slides it into the pocket of his tunic. Turning to the women in the group he nods at each of them in turn. A pleasure to see you all again. Perhaps one of you could fill us in on what we've missed?

As he listens to their response, if any is forth comming, he looks around the room to see who still remains and whether or not he recognizes any of them.

Knowledge rolls in the OOC since I'm editing a post right now.

[Metroid33]

"oh come on Daniel. the gods themselves said it was ok to take another. Let it slide." When Daniel looks away fang quickly grabs another for himself, an obsidian sphere.
Sleight of Hand [roll0]

[Toska Moriarty]

In a clearly mocking tone Sebastian repeats everything Daniel just said: "Sebastian, put the second gem back. Pffft!"

Rolling his eyes, he starts to pace around, observing whoever's left in the room before turning to face Daniel head on. "Besides, Dannyboy, It's not like you can do anything about it here." punctuating the last word by prodding him in the chest with a single finger.

[Realms of Chaos]

Both emphasizing and undermining his point, Sebastian's prod utterly fails as a prod. The moment that his finger reaches Daniel, it fails to move further to apply even the slightest of pressures as if it had reached some impassible barrier. If Daniel could not see the action, he would not know that it was happening at all.

Daniel:about fifty feet up, hanging from one of the ivory pillars like a koala latching onto a tree, is a kender dressed in bright and garish clothing. Around fifty amulets hang around his neck. This fellow would meet the description of a certain Gorb Goodfellow, supposedly one of the most infamous thieves from the city of Union (whose pockets you can't help but notice have large, gem-shaped bulges).

Two more warriors standing near the pillar (one elf, one aasimar) could probably pass as average sell-swords if it weren't for their equipment. The aasimar, bearing two holy devastators by his side, is likely Aleric the Just, a paladin of considerable might who had endured two decades in a personal ongoing war against Baator. The elf, who seems to be arguing with her darkwood shield, may well be Irina Blackadder, a wandering knight from a dead kingdom who has traveled across worlds to end conflict.

The final person of note you can see is a gnome who seems to be wearing workman's clothes with overralls covering a paint-spattered white shirt. A pair of thick goggles obscure his eyes and he seems to be wearing a spellbook like a backpack. Also, he seems to be hovering in midair thanks to a fiery reaction being shot downward from the soles of his shoes. You've heard tales of an absent-minded artificer called Fixit but this is your first time seeing him.

[Maugan Ra]

Erika shrugs languidly. "Long story short? The gods don't know what's causing it, so they're enlisting everyone to either fight, maintain morale, or research into the problem." she frowns slightly. "Also, the Fey had contingency plans in place, by tying the leylines of the universe to discrete beings as... anchors, I suppose. I'm apparently chaos incarnate, which explains why I can do what I do and why I have no memories of ever... well, not being able to do so."

[Metroid33]

"Oh very interesting Erika, Know wonder you are how you are." He then proceeds to try and poke Daniel, encountering the same barrier as Sebastian This is rather interesting. he thought to himself.

[Toska Moriarty]

"Yeah..." Sebastian steps around Erika, re-inspecting her as though there should be something different. Shrugging, he wanders toward Fang.

"So that's a few things we could do...Anyone have any suggestions as to which path we follow?"

With that he circles completely behind Fang, drawing his daggers in a single lightening-fast motion, and plunges them into the spine of the other assassin... Only to be stopped a fraction of an inch from his flesh, the same shield as before.

"...Because my usual suggestions seem...Impossible. Here atleast..."

Shrugging and walking back to the Queen, the knives seem to disappear into his sleeves without effort.

"Anything you'd suggest, m'lady?"

[AmberVael]

"I think we may see our best results if we apply our skills as practically as we are able. To know what to do, we need to understand what we face. To understand, we need experience. For experience..." The Harvest Queen grins fiendishly.

"Well, we can hardly sit back and keep our hands clean. Lets see if we can find any remaining monsters or rifts or signs, shall we? We can start there."

[Metroid33]

"Aye Aye your majesty. I look forward to slaying some beasties." As Fang utters these words, his right hand falls to the hilt of his short sword "there's bound to be a place or two that doesn't have someone to protect them and close the gaps. Although unless the paladin objects i'm not to sure if we will be protecting them that much." Fang then walks over to the queen waiting for her to bring us back to her great acropolis.

[Realms of Chaos]

Back within the Acropolis, all of the Queen's new followers seem to have taken to their new roles in life quite swimmingly, many of which tend to the yard as you return. Where you next emerge (if you indeed choose to) is up to you, however.

[Toska Moriarty]

"Whatever you say, your Majesty..." Sebastian whispers, standing at mock-attention at her side.

We're in a room with one of the only people who could ever hide from someone like myself, why not leave? I'm sure the whole 'saving the universe' business is more important than catching an uncatchable thief. So long as it pays as well...

He sighs, shrugging. "Atleast at the acropolis I can take care of some business. Unless you have other priorities, M'lady?"

[Realms of Chaos]

Fang:A message, viewed as if looking at words on a page, slowly filters through your mind. You recognize the phenomenon as a sending spell, likely cast from a scroll. For someone to contact you directly, however, this must be a pretty big deal. "Scouts in Union Panicking. People disappearing. Murderer? Not from any guild. Can't seem to escape. Streets changing layout. Spellcaster? If we survive, rendezvous at marketplace."

[Metroid33]

Feeling a little dizzy from the message Fang works the thought to say,Your highness I must make my leave now, my guild requires me. Would you please open a pathway to the market place of _______, I must meet with my men.

Never thought of a city RoC you can come up with one that you know.

[Realms of Chaos]

How's Fortune's Reach as a city name?

The Harvest Queen nods absentmindedly, mumbling something to herself about the fey, altering reality, and godhood. Whatever she has on her mind, it is probably for the best to avoid getting too embroiled in it.

The gateway behind you opens once more, revealing the cobbled streets of ___________ beyond.

[Metroid33]

"Thank you your highness I hope to see you all again," Well except maybe Sebastian, he thought to himself, walking through the portal and into Fortunes Reach. "Ah it's good to be back," Fang muttered under his breath.

[Toska Moriarty]

"So this is the scumpot you moved the guild into. "

The all-too familiar voice echoes through the space behind fang as Sebastian saunters into view through the portal. Stopping to absentmindedly inspect his fingernails, he sighs.

"Pitty. And I half-expected a parade. Say, what's the bounty for my corpse up to nowadays? "

[Realms of Chaos]

Fortune's Reach is just as you've left it, a large metropolis long past its prime. Already, the outer reaches of town have become a shantytown shielding it bleeding heart from monstrous raids. There was a time once, you've heard, when most trade routes had to travel right past Fortune's Reach; a time when gold rained down from the sky for parades and when even prolific thieves could live their entire lives unnoticed.

Nowadays, ironically, it is the seedier elements of the town that continue bringing money through the gates. Certainly the meager offerings of the artisans in this marketplace don't get the job done. One of the town guards, seeing the two of you enter through a portal, turns his back on the town square and walks away. Within the town gates, Fang is all but untouchable.

The avenue that passes through for a marketplace is a snowy cobblestone road lined with a few modest food stands selling warm food, a permanent tailor's shop, a couple passing merchants hawking their wares, and a loose street performer or two giving their all for the rare passerby.

Most of the business on this street, fitting for the town, takes place either right below the street in the "rat tunnels" or in an opium den down a nearby alleyway for those with power and clout. Two familiar men stand on the opposite side of the road in dark scarves and coats. Slim (a lithe guild enforcer) and Beetle (a stout and forgettable scout who doubles as one of your better bean counters) smile at Fang as the mist of their breath wafts out of their mouths. The two of them walk over, offering up to both of you a couple of warmed pastries from one of the stands.

Sebastian:Thinking back, you realize that you've acquired quite a few separate bounties in different regions ranging from small cash rewards and hands in marriage to vast fortunes and rulership over communities. If one were to chop you up and hand out the places to all the right people, they would want for nothing for the rest of their lives.

[Metroid33]

"Slim, Beetle, why did you use that scroll to get me? and Sebastian why in the name of all the gods of thieves did you come along?"Slim and beetle's mouthes gap open as they realize who this cloaked man behind fang is. Giving them a look as shard as daggers fang gets them to close there mouthes.

[Realms of Chaos]

Slim keeps his eyes on Sebastian, drumming his fingers along the hilt of his dagger as a child might cling to a teddy bear for security. Beetle meanwhile, wipes his hand over his greasy black hair and smiles apologetically at Fang (though his beady eyes show no sign of emotion). "We're not sure if it's safe up here any more, boss. And I don't mean just for us, either. I can brief you on the way but can we make our way back to the den? About the only safe place left anymore."

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian keeps his thumbs hooked into his belt, absentmindedly ignoring both of the underlings. Shrugging at Fang, he just rolls his eyes and sighs. "Honestly? Little bored."

He mocks out a long, drawn out yawn, Sarcastically wandering close enough to the more apprehensive minion (Slim) before staggering back next to Fang, yawn having broken down into a snicker moments earlier.

"Den? Oohhh. I really like the sound of that. Though, judging by how crummy this whole place has gotten, I would bet that I can find it on my own if I had to...."

He shrugs again, hands now clasped behind his back, eyes wandering along the horizon and rooftops.

[Realms of Chaos]

Sebastian:It would seem that Fang came from a real hovel of a town, not that it's too much of a shock. It might have been nice once, perhaps. A good deal of the buildings have a second floor and that normally speaks to the presence of money. If there's any money left in this rat nest, though, it is likely as ancient as the broken flagstones beneath you.

[Metroid33]

"Alright then" Taking the lead Fang darts through the streets remembering the path to the ratways easily enough. Finally he stops at a blank wall. Taking a moment to find the mark he presses the simbal of the Nightsong guild. After pressing it the wall opens up to a long dark hallway.

I assume that Sebastian is following.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian casually strolls behind, easily keeping pace, hands in pockets, absentmindedly whistling to himself. Ignoring looks from the two nightsong enforcers, he just saunters along.

"A hole in the wall. SO clever."

[Metroid33]

Rolling his eyes at Sebastian's comment Fang then Strolls straight on in Hands in his pockets whistling as he walks "come in Sebastian you haven't seen the new base yet, not since you destroyed the last one." Fang then continues his whistling as he walks along.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian is more offended at the copying of his stature, and simply chuckles off the comment, strolling along the route.

[Realms of Chaos]

Make a reflex save, Sebastian.

[Toska Moriarty]

Standard bonus is +40, with another +2 for Favored Terrain Urban.
120+42

I'm being attacked am I? Guess I'll get to kill Fang anyway.

Mistyped the first, lemme try again. 1d20+42

Stupid post edit thing. Ill roll it Ooc then.

[Realms of Chaos]

Taking a few steps inside, the ground seems to collapse around Sebastian as the ceiling smashes downwards leaping up ahead, Sebastian manages to detect and quickly dodge out of the way of a large invisible hammer swinging downwards and a flurry of darts launches up to the ceiling on either side of the swing. Whirling across the area, Sebastian leaves the small gauntlet of traps unharmed as the ceiling raises once more.

[Metroid33]

"oh sorry Sebastian, forgot to mention the traps." Looking over his shoulder Fang lets a small grin escape his face. then proceeds to move down the passage way.

[Toska Moriarty]

In a blatently mocking, fourth-grade-esc tone, sneering face included, Sebastian retorts; "Sorry, forgot to mention the traps! Jackass.". He lightly dusts himself off, steps to the side of the hallway, and, with a mocking, sarcastic, and over the top gesture, he asks Fang to lead on.

[Metroid33]

Continuing his walk Fang looks around brushing his hands along the wall, almost as if he hadn't been here in decades. The tunnel was carved through the rock of the earth. A slight smile crosses his face as Fang remembers the face of the men who built this tunnel, at least their faces when his sword went through their chest.

The tunnel had a slight downward slope delving deeper and deeper. Finally they came across a door on it was the seal of the guild.Welcome to the new base Sebastian.

Flinging open the doors they found themselves in an extremely large cavern, just like the tunnel it seemed to be carved out of the earth not built in it. The ceiling seemed to be higher then they had gone down and within the cavern was almost like a small village, each building was a barracks for the men. An a strange glow eminated from all around. On the far side was a larger building, Fangs building, and the central command center of the guild. "So what do you think now?"

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian shrugs, blatantly unimpressed. "Oh, same as usual. I think I should stab you, but that's not beyond normal. " Looking around a bit more, he sighs: "What do you plan on accomplishing with this rabble? Pitiful location, pitiful fortifications. The traps are beyond pathetic. I could march through here with a blindfold and my hands tied, and these dullards wouldn't know what hit them. "

He shrugs and sighs again, disappointed. "Wouldn't even be worth my time, really."

[Metroid33]

Glaring at Sebastian, considering whether what he was about to say would make Sebastian's head explode. "Well you are admittedly one of the best assassins/ thief in the multiverse so to you this maybe "nothing" but to anyone else they would probably no longer exist in any plane even the plane of the dead. Now then slim, what is going on?

[Realms of Chaos]

Slim slicks back his hair as he looks over the base uneasily, "Well... it's killings, I guess. Nothing like we've ever seen around here, though. No witnesses, no suspects, no lingering auras, and no bodies anywhere. Killings all around the clock and essentially random as well. Some of our men, a few from the assassin's den, a couple of our protected assets. Already well over two hundred are gone." Nodding to Sebastian, he continues, "We thought it was you for a bit before we remembered that minimalism wasn't your bag."

[Metroid33]

OOC: Knowledge checks to see if this sounds like anything I know.
Dungeoneering:[roll0]
Local:[roll1]
nat 1 crap

[Toska Moriarty]

Rolling his eyes and sarcastically mouthing his words back to Fang, Senastian stops to listen to slim. Chuckling, he adds in: "If it was me, you'd know it..." He leans in a BIT too close for comfort to Slim before whispering "Because I would TELL you."

Stepping back and sizing up the joint again, He shrugs, offering a suggestion: "There another Coup coming? Last time I got involved in that, well. Fun times all around."

[Realms of Chaos]

Fang:Doesn't resemble anything in particular that you're aware of. Not in town, at least.

[Metroid33]

Well we gotta start somewhere, when and where was the last incident if you even know.

[Realms of Chaos]

Slim smooths back his hair as he thinks. "Um... couple of the watch down on broker street, I think. Right at the entrance of that allley past Oscar's pawn shop."

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian begins to slowly wander off, just taking a step or two away to get a better look at the workings of the base. Hands clasped behind his back, he leans forward to the wall and puffs some air on it, dust scatters everywhere.

Snickering, he turns on his heel and takes a couple long strides back to the conversation.

"So...Are we supposed to be STOPPING the killing? If it's someone that can evade your cronies, easy as that may be, no offense" He reaches up and lightly punches slims arm, ''thatta' boy, bucko" style, and continues "Or are we trying to out-do them? I swear it would be easiest to stop them by making sure there is no one left to kill...."

He turns on his heel and walks in a circle around Fang, stopping behind him and leaning over his shoulder. "Not to mention the possibility of recruiting someone like that... Sometimes I get bored enough that I think training myself a rival would be good fun; and this person clearly has at least the basics down...."

[Metroid33]

"Several flaws in your logic. 1) We want to keep the guild intact, 2) If what ever this is wants people dead then I don't think it would want to be recruited." Fang then takes a look around at the place and realizes how desert it feels. I never should have left with the queen. He thinks to himself.

He then walks off at a brisk pace to the right of the entrance they came in through. He calls back to Sebastian saying "Now would be a great chance for you to use your stalking and tracking skills Sebastian," Fang then walks into a small building roughly 10 feet by 10 feet.

Inside is 2 curved spires sticking out of the ground. Fang utters the name of the Pawn shop and a portal opens between the spires. On the other side was the store front of the Pawn shop.

[Realms of Chaos]

Walking onto Broker Street, it would seem that even the wealthier part of the business district has fallen on hard times. The streets are all but abandoned in the area, as are most of the stores, though a visible bakery and (of course) the pawn shop are both open for business. A married couple hurries along the street at a quickened pace, pretending that they can't see the portal, while a couple of winos lounge on the opposite side of the street.

[Toska Moriarty]

Rolling his eyes and mimicking Fang again, Sebastian shoves his way past and trots through the portal. Stopping to breathe in the 'fresh' air of the open street, he looks up and down the road before shrugging and heading to the bakery. Holding a hand up in what was once the near-universal signal for 'silence', he quickly crosses the street, opens the door, steps in, and closes it behind him.

[Metroid33]

Ignoring Sebastian Fang walks into the pawn shop, taking a look around. trying to see if there is anything strange or out of place.

Perception[roll0]
Survival:[roll1]
Appraise:[roll2]

[Realms of Chaos]

In the bakery, an hunched elderly man and a younger woman (presumably a daughter) are working within it, preparing pastries and bread. The moment that they look up to see Sebastian, they grow silent as if comprehending that the man before them commands respect. Even accustomed to the thieves that run this town to the shadows, something about Sebastian visibly puts them on edge.

Looking around outside, meanwhile, Fang spots a bit of black residue resting on the stones at the entranceway to the alley. It's not much, enough so that the watch could have easily missed it (especially resting in shadows as it is).

[Metroid33]

Fang moves down the alleyway following the the black muck.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian quickly takes in a view of the bakery, and in seeing no obvious and immediate danger or opposition, he smiles, ear to ear, and holds his hands up and out to the sides, signaling (Falsely, but the gestures the same), that he was unarmed, or atleast meant to remain civil.

Walking up to the counter (Or atleast, I assume there's a counter: Any surface will do), he leans forward, head in hands propped up by the elbows, and eyes their work.

"Hello you two... I'm a bit confused, it has been quite a few years since I wandered these streets. Is this still the best bakery in town? Judging by the aromas in the air it just might be..."

He shrugs, turning away from them towards the door. Still smiling, he turns back, letting his coat swirl just a bit.

"What, may I ask, are you making? I'm more than interested." He winks at the girl, replacing his hands on the counter.

[Metroid33]

As Fang begins to walk down the alley. He decides for a moment that he might need some help. "Sebastian get over here I don't care if you just killed everyone in that building right now I just need you to do some tracking." Fang then hears some squealing from inside the building as the people recognize his voice and take in what Fang said.

[Realms of Chaos]

The girl seems to swoon on the spot, nearly collapsing onto the counter before catching herself and looking up at Sebastian as she tries to regain her speech.

Both members of the bakery bow down behind the counter as Fang enters, however, apparently fearing the one they know better.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian quickly takes in their reaction, turning his head to make sure it was just Fang behind him atleast twice. Chuckling, and without turning completely around, he waves Fang away, 'shooing' him.

Leaning forward over the counter to look at the cowering bakers, he smiles. "Nevermind him. MY question stands.

[Realms of Chaos]

"...bearclaw..." comes a response from below. A few seconds later, one such pastry is slowly rested on the counter in front of Sebastian.

[Metroid33]

"Good now that you've got your pastry come on I need your help." Fang then turns around and walks out of the bakery.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian nods to the two frightened bakers, smiling ear to ear.
"Why thank you. Completely appreciated. "


He winks at the two of them, bearclaw in hand, and turns to the door. Stopping halfway out into the street, he casually flings a pair of platinum coins back over the counter. "Thanks, again."

Smelling the pastry and perking an eyebrow at Fang, Sebastian cannot help but remark: "It's amazing how much you get for simply being polite, isn't it?"

[Metroid33]

Rolling his eyes fang waves his hand off to the side saying "This way your politedness," Pointing to the ally with the black muck.

[Toska Moriarty]

Sebastian rolls his eyes and takes another bite of the bear claw, casually strolling over to the alley and crouching to inspect the goo.

[Metroid33]

"Well Sebastian what do you think?"