Oh Their Sorrows

[Exegesis]

The fumes of the fire market even in the night when it’s liveliest can’t reach the dormitory window: the whole building is sheathed in a filtration/defense bubble. The slum is making its night revolution, a barge in the aether, fast enough that as she looks out the lights shift; nightwalkers stride on the skyline. The agent dislikes her ambivalence.

“I can’t see your face, but I think your answer is yes.”

The rest of you are still getting up. You haven’t been here long enough to have been ironed into the robot waking habit.

“Tusk girl is having trouble deciding. I bet those of you without grandmas to bail you out aren’t. It’s on her account I came here, but anyone who wants to can be saved.”

The shade turns back to Urza:

“This is not freedom. I know you’ve heard those other worlds are utopias. But trust me, if you don’t go with me now your chances of reaching majority are low. If you do survive, jail is the most likely end. Operations like this don’t stay in favor forever.”

Checkpoint: considering your steps

A shade, playing a flute of silence, leads a small line of children out through the back door into the yard. At his instruction they form a conga line and hold their breaths; then all sink into the ground. They emerge on the other side, headcount, and he leads them to the nearest municipal teleportation circle.

The nearest to their destination is at the top of the Planet Drowner’s Tower. They take the elevator a long way down, headcount, then exit.

Into what seems to be a staircase landing the size of a grand plaza, crowded as if it were day, lit by legions of strung fluorescent bulbs and neon-decorated market stalls but not highly enough that the ceiling isn’t sky-black. On either side inhumanly large staircases, so gradated they could be ramps, rise. Between them, opposite the elevator, is an arch leading downwards. Like all city danger zones it is marked in neon green—the neon chain along the arch is so virulent it dwarfs all the square’s other light sources. This is obviously the way to the Undercity.

The actual way down turns out to be a giant balustrade from which the lights of the Undercity below slowly enlarge. The kids walk for most of the a.m. night simply to reach the chute that’s being built, which takes them the rest of the way: the shade hands the operator a few bills and in return the kids each get an Unseen Servant to ride on, who grips them tightly across the chest and chairs them down the metal slide. Their bodies have no warmth.

In the Undercity, it's freezing. They’re taken to a hostel with gray rooms, where the shade pays for five days stay each and tells them he’ll visit tomorrow.

They find their door is locked.

The next morning you troupe in and are given protocol. You’re to go through the wormrent and come right back with the gist of the area beyond. If you come back you’re on your way up. If you take more than ten minutes you’re not welcome back. If you lie about what’s beyond you die. A metal band is strapped to your wrist which will send your vitals back home.

The portal disgorges you in a field of massive hard green stalks that reach far above your head and are spaced just wide enough for you to crawl between.

[Cowardly Griffo]

Thrash crosses her arms, which melt halfway into her chest as her head tilts quizzically to one side.

"Yo, did I miss a message or something? Who's your friend and what's she talking about, Urz? I thought we were all gettin' saddled up for the Plane Shift Express in the morning."

[Epsilon Naught]

Inik uncurls slightly from the ball in the center of her blanket nest and hisses,

Shaddup loud tall folkses, don't get us in troubles today. Today is big day, going through the wyrmhole, first to explore new world is big honor

[RedSand]

Urza thought for a fair bit on this; thinking took a lot longer since she'd become feral, but she assumed her thoughts arrived at the same place sooner or later.

"If I take the job, I could end up anywhere. Explore anyplace. You want to take me to some dingy, dark...sewer, or something, to hide with the rest of your rebel hobo friends and my grams. Sounds majorly weak."

[dextercorvia]

Romeo had been in a haze for, well, what seemed like ever. The last thing he remembered clearly was heading to a party with some of his friends. Well friends wasn't the right word exactly, but they were the best people he knew to get under his parent's skin. They had been planning to head off and save the multiverse -- again -- but wanted him to hang out at home with them before they left. Like pretending for one night that they were a family was going to matter. So, Rico and Ezi picked him up in all their necro-chique glory, and they went to a rave. Well, it was suppose to be a rave, but the people there were really serious, and the drink they handed him wasn't right. Everything went fuzzy after that, but he remembered lots of screaming, and pain in his gut. Romeo traced the incision line on his stomach. It was still tender to the touch. He didn't know what they had done to him, but there was somthing in there.

Apparently all the screaming freaked them out, because when he woke up next he was in the slums on some plane he'd never heard of. Almost everyone here was dragonkin of some kind, and he was still dazed from whatever they spiked his punch with, but he had found a quiet place to rest, and now this. Some weirdo wanted him to go visit their grandma? Romeo huddled back into the corner. This lot was supposed to go planehopping tomorrow. With any luck, he'd get somewhere familiar, and could hitch a ride back home. If not, at least this dorm was quieter than outside. The noise made the throbbing in his abdomen worse.

I'm sticking with you lot. Thanks for letting me crash here.

[Exegesis]

The shade's stance showcases nonaggression.

Great, you can all talk. So even undocumented, you can make lives here. Maybe get to another plane safely, if you earn and save. The law says you're all hatchlings. If you want rights you'll have to grow up. But I can hardly drag you kids out of here.

So anyone who wants to live, come with me. I'm visiting the other two rooms on this floor. For those not outside the door in five minutes, that's it.

He shadows out.

Thrash:
If you stay, you're taken aside and given another assignment--you're valuable and the bracelets don't work for you. You're to go with the dog to serve as daze-muscle on a trip to the post-post office.

Obviously it is dangerous or they wouldn't need you, but why? Perhaps it's actually a derelict building someone is using as HQ, since everyone uses the post-post-post office now. Maybe not. Your trip and confrontation is yours to describe.

This is a great opportunity for you to live and become infamous.

[Cowardly Griffo]

"Anyone who wants to live, come with me," Thrash echoes as the shade vanishes. "Think I heard that line in a play somewhere. Pretty sure the guy who said it ended up dying later, so... ya know. Grain of salt."

She sits down on the corner of a nearby bed with a plop. "I dunno, though, she might have, like, a point? I mean, touching down on new worlds is totally rad and all that, but it's kind of a buzzkill to rock out with no faces to melt. And we'd be coming back to the same crummy little two-bed when we were done, which is, like, not ideal."

"Of course... that's if we come back," she adds in a lower tone. "Like ya said, Urz, we could end up anywhere. And if they had the scales to actually go out and drag us back they wouldn't need to send us in the first place. If we left 'em in the dust and made our own way we could be, like, legends. Epic legends. People'd write songs about us instead of the other way around. How cool would that be, right?"

She lets out a bubbly sigh. "Well, for what it's worth, I'm staying. Been to the Undercity once anyway, probably not much to see compared to wherever we're gonna end up tomorrow."

[dextercorvia]

The next morning brought some relief finally for Romeo's clouded brain. And, while the thing in his gut still throbbed, the pain was less. He could feel the darkness in that one corner of his mind. It was awake. Tendrils of that darkness reached out from the mass. That one, the long clear one, if he touched it, would cause him to cast a spell. That had happened once. When Brotok -- one of the more senior employess -- had brought him in. Brotok was a spellcaster, too, and recognized some of what had happened to Romeo. More than he probably let on. Still, Romeo ran through the exercises that the half-dragon had shown him. The tendril grew shorter, and greyer, and the pain in his abdomen subsided even more.

Being dropped here had other disadvantages. Romeo was about to explore a probably hostile plane, and he didn't have so much as a copper to his name, let alone a crossbow. That wasn't enought to bring him down. Romeo had talked his way into and out of quite a bit of trouble, and never needed a weapon before. Still, it never hurt to be careful. Romeo activated his protection aura -- a gift from his true father, not that Romeo had ever met him -- before stepping through the portal.

*****

On the other side, Romeo casts a quick spell. He touches the nearest stalk, and slowly it's color changes. From his hand up to the top, a few bands of brilliant orange appear on the stalk. We've only got 10 minutes, and I want to be able to find my way back. If we can get clear of these stalks, I can fly up and see what else is here.

Raised Summer's Caress -- it is a Magic Circle affect.

Cast Prestidigitation, and spent a couple rounds to color the stalk.

[Exegesis]

Obviously there's no day and night in Eyrie, since it's drifting in the Chaos. (Obviously you don't know why gravity doesn't seem to have built clumps there yet.) Rather, it's sunned by loose floes of fire nearby and so its 'days' are dim and intermittent.

The portal usually only places you in the vicinity of a portal on the other world--it's low-magic and has a hard time pinpointing exactly.

As such, the company staggers its canaries a day behind actual exploration. You have hours, not minutes, before you're in deep trouble, as you have to locate the portal back.

[Epsilon Naught]

Inik slipped through the gate behind Romeo, blinking in the brightness of the new world. It was cooler than she would have liked and the sun looked too small in the sky, but it was a sun! Breathing in the fresh air she realized now how much she missed it after even the few days spent on that floating rock of a city. There was water nearby, and birds and insects chattering. Her mouth watered at the thought, she was unusually hungry and wanted something live and crunchy not like the long-dead processed meat-food they would provide at the company dining facility.

She wended her way in a generally spiraling path, holding herself near to the ground, often on all fours, hunting for small game. Keeping an ear out for where Romeo and any others who came through the gate were positioned. Eventually she found a boulder which rose above the grasses. She scaled it and attempted to get a better view of her surroundings.

[Exegesis]

Focusedly divagating through the forest you see, through the trees—purple. You’ve come to the edge. Beyond (it comes into view suddenly) is a segmented, shiny sprawl of violet mounds. They’re fiveish feet high and stretch far as you can see, cresting upward at the horizon.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/67574000/jpg/_67574266_148664712.jpg

You realize then that something must be wrong with physics, for looking back at the trees you see they reach much higher than their broccoli-like stems could support them, and burst at the top into vibrant autumnal broccoli.

From the spikemaze: pure white trees like baobabs with tendrils so long they pour downward and snake out. A white and violet savanna.

That’s when you hear a drone rattle the treetops. A giant, birdlike shadow is visible through the canopy.

/RedSand’s turn

[RedSand]

Urza looked up, marveling for a moment at this most fascinating of ...forests? Glades? This could be an alien equivalent to all sorts of more typical environments, and so excited was she that lept onto one of the broccoli-stems, digging her claws in and attempting to climb towards the sky, and the birdlike creature, to get a better look at both.

Urza takes ten to climb the stalk of broccoli, gaining a net 16.

She then makes a spot check and knowledge(Nature) check if she reaches a high enough point in the stalk to see farther away.

[roll0] Spot
[roll1] Knowledge(Nature)

[dextercorvia]

Romeo was just unfurling his wings to go for a look, when he heard the approaching creature. Still, it seems worth making contact. He wings to the top of a nearby mound, and waves his hands overhead. Hey, we're new here, and just wondered if you would mind telling us about the place? Are there any good places to get a drink? I'm buying!


Diplomacy [roll0]

[Exegesis]

The shape, a kind of pterasaury thing, seems unwilling to go beyond the end of the foliage, but it sees Romeo and skims to perch on one of the border trees.

The trees don't have weight-bearing branches but do have anise-like filaments whose armpits can be used as footholds, if you go fast.

Urza would be way too heavy to ever make it, but so would the trees be to lift themselves, if she were at home. Climbing, the slight buoyance she's felt while squeezing between trunks is suddenly cashed in: the gravity (does she have a concept of this?), though barely lower than ours, propels her so fast it takes her numerous falls to get the hang of it.

While this goes on the treetop creature is staring at Romeo--if you have some kind of visible communication you want to try, go for it.

So it's surprised when Urza comes bursting upward through the dandelion head of the tree--and so alarmed that it leaps off and wings round in an arc to an adjacent treetop.

When it flies the droning resumes.

Its whole top is a bright yellow-green, its underside pale; it's structured more or less like a bat. Has feathery hair, a blunt beaklike edifice, a sunken head. Each of its eyes is two eyes stacked on top of each other.

It gestures at Urza in a peaceful way with hooked, prehensile fingers. There seems to be a sign language to it. When this fails it bleats, but you can't be sure you know any emotional inflection if there is one.


Those on the field discover the mounds are clearly part of the ground, like boils, and somewhat springy.

[Exegesis]

The fanciful, spurred by silence and miscommunication, intensifies. --The creature buzzes again, like a telephone wire, casts Comprehend Languages, and through magic's incredibly complex heuristics all the problems of communication are reduced to the one long-set framework.

These worlds haven't been separate so long. But--logical torture--you don't have anything like the data to know species are fluid: what a tiny worldview.

Comprehend Languages: its eyes glow golden, it opens its beak and two golden bubbles coast out. And what? What now? Its chest swings open! Two tiny dragons emerge, mongrel colors. They each suck in a bubble.

They seem to be dragons.

The one whipped blue and white like a cloud greets you with a mystical exclamation. "Are you from beneath the stalk? Are you here to be reborn? What's your story?"

The other:

"Those two creatures are poking around the buds. That one can ululate. Are they yours?"

[dextercorvia]

Romeo

Romeo shouts from the mound. I'm not anybody's -- not his, or even my own. I'm going to guess you don't drink the same as me, but that's alright. We just passed through the stalk place. We come from farther away. Can you tell us about this place? It seems different from the place we came. We don't have a sky light. Romeo points to the disk in the sky that some call suns.

[Exegesis]

It lands on a mound and nods.
This is Bahamut’s Waystation. Everyone’s coming here to be dragonborn.

Up close you can see it’s not much of a dragon at all, just has a dragonscale veneer.

This is the top of the flower. We live in the middle of the forest, around the portal. He lives way beneath, in the roots.
[Pause.]
Our goal is exaltation and partying. Away from all the mist of labor and violence. If that appeals to you, we can take you along.

Be careful on the petals [it gestures around] some pretty brutal things go on here. The only sentient natives live way down.

[dextercorvia]

So, the portal is in the center of the forest? Is it visible from above? Thanks for the help. Romeo lifts off, moving over the tops of the stalks, looking for the scope of this flower world.

[Exegesis]

Sure. You can see from up here that less than a mile off, in the middle of the pistil woods, is a towering stamen. Its tip glows faintly. On the pistil tops are large clumps of pollen. From up here you can tell that what looked like a mountainous horizon is just the petals curving upward at their ends--you can see a couple of the gaps between them, which widen the further out they go till they're like seas of dark green depth.

After you stopped talking you realized the sun was somehow in a different place, and the dragon explained to you one of the funny traits of this place: time flows differently while you talk. Poor Inik had been waiting for over an hour while Romeo and Urza spoke to the emissaries.

They also pointed your gaze to a couple of shapes that had looked like dark pieces of dust way up in the sky. Those, they warned you, are Feeders, and they have incredible vision. Spend too much time in the open and they're bound to notice you as prey.

Inik:

As you wait in the treeline, the company blink dog (http://www.yourpurebredpuppy.com/dogbreeds/photos-CD/cardiganwelshcorgisf3.jpg) dimension doors in at your side.

You never knew it could talk, but it does so in a rusty voice:
Found you. They know. Do you have a plan?

[dextercorvia]

Romeo notices that some of the others have wandered off. He shakes his head. I guess some of them were just looking for a different place to make a fresh start. I can't blame them, I'm just looking for a way home. He signaled to those left the direction of the portal, and took off in the direction of the portal. He flew close to the pistil tops, heeding the warning of the other creature. Romeo tried to fly slower, to better match the walking speed of his remaining companions, and occasionally circling back, and peering through the canopy to make sure they were still there.