All the Time in the World (IC)

[Nettlekid]

"We're out of time!"
This was the complain issued by the Material Plane's most prestigious scholars, mages, and astronomers to dozens of world nobles and governmental officials the world over.
"Well there's no deadline, I should hope. Work hard, find results."
"No, those ARE the results. We are literally running out of time."

The phenomenon was first observed when constellations began to appear out-of-season. Day and night each began to lose first minutes, then hours, as the sun and moon sped through the sky and colored it the permanent pale orange of repeating dawn and dusk. The seasons themselves started to appear earlier than normal, and summer's heat and winter's chill became more bearable as neither lasted all that long. While mortal creatures seemed unaged by the accelerating timestream, the lifetime of anything impermanent flashed by in moments. There was no stability to weather and the crops wouldn't grow when winter came every few minutes. Kindled fires burned out. Spells cast to last for hours terminated in seconds. Druids shifted into animal form lapsed in concentration immediately. Frenzied warriors felt unable to maintain their fervor for more than a breath. And assassins felt not entirely dissatisfied to find that their poisons' delayed effects were now taking effect instantaneously.

Despite the protest of the assassins, the consensus was that this couldn't continue. But this was an issue that no one knew how to approach. This wasn't a matter that a beadle would just slap up a few posters on a tavern door and hope that plucky adventurers would take up the challenge. World nobles agreed that they couldn't waste what little time they had. They would send notice to champions tried and true.

With the aid of three Gnomes looking to earn a degree, a system of ropes and winches, sextants, a chemical sprayer filled with Quintessence, and an abundance of Tindertwigs, the temporal dilation was more accurately measured. It was not by any means uniform, and the location of the greatest distortion was identified. An isolated island one thousand miles across, ridged with mountains risen from tectonic motion millennia ago. While all sorts of creatures lived in the mountainous region leading into the sea, the land within is barren and inhospitable for any creature that either cannot produce its own means of sustenance or is unhindered by physical limitations such as eating. Archaeologists and anthropologists have long studied the ruins in the island valley, reflections of an ancient civilization, but no report has (at least obviously) contained information pertaining to the current temporal dilemma. This is history in the making.

So there's the leadup. I'm thinking about starting a little "in medias res," assuming everyone's met to at least some degree and is informed as to why they're here, just to speed it up a little. Feel free to have whatever dialogue you'd like though, to establish character relations and such. You'll access the island by whatever means you like and so this can start as you're approaching, and you can spend as much time as you want in preparation. Like a checkpoint before a final boss kind of feeling.

OoC Thread Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?430071-All-the-Time-in-the-World-(OoC)&p=19581373)

[Business Scrub]

Lianna looks out across the sea at the mountainous island and, beyond it, the endless orange-purple blur of the days roll by. At first, Lianna had been apathetic to the increased flow of time: what did it matter to her if days lasted a few minutes less? Then as the days and nights became perhaps half as long, and she became excited. The nights of her exile were passing before her eyes, quite literally. Perhaps she would see home before long, and though she would never admit as much, the thought excited her. And then she had a horrifying revelation: the nights began to pass so fast that she couldn't actually see the moon pass. It was a technicality for her banishment, but she could live for millennium and not get any closer to the end of her sentence. And that would not do.

If no one would fix this problem, she would. After all, who better to do it than her? These thoughts and more crossed Lianna's mind as the boat made its gently rolling way to the island. She peered out from the front of the ship, watching the waves crash beneath her. She enjoyed the way the wind whipped her hair back, and not only because it made quite the heroic picture.
A lone traveller, sailing to the edge of the world to restore the very time itself. I like the idea. It will make a good story in a few hundred years.
Not that Lianna had the faintest clue what to do when she got there. She wasn't an artificer, nor had her magic come from a deep understanding of the arcane world. But it was horribly unnatural, and nature was something she understood.
She wasn't really alone either: there were other people on the ship of course. The deck hands actually working it, the captain, and some others. But she was confidant that it was really only her that could put an end to this madness.

I tried to make it a bit ambiguous, so others can be on the ship with her if they want.

[Renen]

Vivi was sitting on the deck, bored. She managed to find the mast only three times with her face so far, and no one stepped on her yet, so that was a good start. In addition, it was impossible for her to get sea sick.
She makes a show of looking around as she inspects those presents and homes in on one she finds slightly more interesting than the rest.

Lianna hears a voice in her head.
"Oh hello! Someone with some brains on board? A pretty Nymph? Well, good to have some civilized company, the sailors arent all that bright, though I suppose it is not their fault, they arent here to be great thinkers, they are here because they are good at manning the ship. I sure wouldnt be able to do it... Its good to see... oh wait...

[Business Scrub]

Lianna's home-focused daydream is interrupted by the sound of another thought in her head. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, this wasn't the first time Lianna encountered a telepath, but it was unexpected.

Oh, hello. Lianna thought back, looking for the source of the noise. But it couldn't be a sailor, and their didn't seem to be anyone else on deck. Two sailors near the main mast, a swabbie with a mop a few yards to her left, a cat sitting on the deck. Besides, the voice was distinctly female.
If you can speak in my mind, something tells me you can handle the intricate complexities that come with manning a ship. I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage: are you on this ship? I don't see you...

[Renen]

The cat is actually just sitting there. She doesn't walk around if she doesn't have to. She is fully blind after all.

The voice does a telepathic equivalent of giggling.
Sure you see me. But being smart doesn't mean knowing how to do every little thing. Or actually being strong enough to pull ropes. Or having opposable thumbs. " Now, an equivalent of a "you get it?" glare.

[Business Scrub]

Fair point, I edited my previous response.

I don't... Oh, Oh! The cat! I mean, hello! It's not every day you meet a telepathic cat. What on Earth are you doing on this ship? As I recall cats and water get along pretty infamously. And do you have a name, Miss Cat?

[Renen]

"Oh, I don't often get called miss. I quite like that. Feel free to keep doing that. My name's Vivian, but Vivi is fine. Now, just because I am a cat doesn't mean I hate water. Not all cats do. And certainly not smart ones. Though salt water... No one likes that... As for why I am here, we'll ships usually have alot of fish... Mmm... Fish... Oh, and saving the world. I remember they needed some folks crazy enough to go try doing that. We will surely end badly...
From the sound of her "voice" it was clear she wasn't actually worried about ending badly, atleast not any time soon.

[Business Scrub]

This time it's Lianna's turn to chuckle.
You don't say? I suppose that makes me crazy as well. I wouldn't worry though: the two of us will get to the bottom of this mystery. And you, Miss Vivi, may call me Lianna A'samra. Or just Lianna, if you like. I must ask: clearly you are no ordinary feline: do you have a lot of experience with this sort of thing? Saving the world, that is.

[Renen]

Hmm... Not myself, but I tagged along on occasional adventures. The first one failed spectacularly. Though the survival rate of adventurers is actually higher than some believe. Mostly I just need someone to help me get around. I hear I am a good companion to have anyways, as long as I am few often enough. Otherwise I get hungry fast. Hmm... I wonder, are nymphs plant or meat based... the last part was said in a lighter tone, clearly not meant to imply potential eating of nymphs in the near future.

[Business Scrub]

You must be travelling with all the right sorts of adventurers. That, or you're the common denominator of success. That questions might be one of the ones you never find the answer to. Lianna thinks with a similar humorous tone. But stick with me and you won't have to find out: I've been told I'm a natural in the fine art of culinary.

[Raunchel]

Below the ship's deck, deep in the cargo hold, there is a black box. It is a little more than four feet long, and one foot wide. It is well-secured in place, although the lid seems to not be sealed. Atop the box there is a sleeping black cat. The creature is quite large, more like a wild cat than a normal housecat.

But inside the box there is something far more curious. Between the red velvet holding her in place, there is a girl. About seven years old, with her hands folded across her chest. She is wearing a finely-made black dress, although that would be difficult to see in the darkness of the enclosed box. There is no motion in her, she lies perfectly still. But she does not seem to be dead, not long at least, there are hints of colour in her skin, and she might almost appear to be asleep, were it not for her lack of motion.

Without any hint of it, her eyes flare open, and on the other side of the lid, the cat leaps off the box. The girl then seems to fade, disappearing into a smoky mist, until she appears again, standing next to her coffin. She looks down at herself, and sweeps her hand over herself. She takes off her clothes, and places them in a bag tied to her led, withrawing others from them. Moments later she stands dressed in mere rags, belonging more to an urchin than the lady she seemed to be before. She moves her hands through her hair, and it no longer appears well-kept, but instead becomes wild and uncared for. She takes some of the tar that seals the wooden planks together, and smears it over her face. She sinks through her legs a little, and the blank face gains an expression, it turns sad, a little frightened even. The coffin is picked up with one hand, and hidden inside the skirt.

And then she starts to move, not soundless, like it was before, but instead she lets her feet touch the planks, even through she looks like she is sneaking. Yildiz vel Enas has a plan. She wants to go on this expedition, she is sickened of the lack of night, and wants to put an end to it. She alone can do such a thing, but her appearance might be troublesome, as might her nature. And so she has made her plan, she knows that aboard this ship there are those who will save the world, and she will be adopted by them. They will pity her, they always do, and she will travel with them, only revealing herself when the time is there.

And so she stalks through the ship, supposedly looking for food. She does not use her many tricks to hide herself, especially not those that help against magical detection of any kind. She opens her mind, but only a little, only the thoughts that she should be thinking, as the frightened orphan, who snuck aboard this ship, and now is hungry. The girl climbs up the stairs, leaving the hold behind, and then she does what she has to, to draw attention. She falls, letting her body slam into the wood. And she shouts: "Ow!"

[Renen]

Vivi looks over in the direction of the sound.

Ow? Do undead feel pain? I never actually quite looked into that topic...

At Lianna
Dis you say food? As long as you can cook seafood, it might be worth trying. She sounded quite happy at the development.

Vivi's conversations can only be heard by the recipient. Unless indicated that she is speaking to multiple people, she only addresses everyone individually, and can't be overheard.

[Raunchel]

Yildiz remains on the ground, faking that she is in quite a bit of pain. She can feel it, quite a lot of it actually, such as when there was a battleaxe in her head, and she could actually feel it with her tongue. It hurt a lot, and she doesn't want to experience that again. But this fall has not harmed here, it was planned after all. She replies, telepathically of course: "It really, really, really, hurts a lot!"

[Business Scrub]

Seafood? Ideas began flowing: it had been a while since she had been by the sea.
That I think I can do for such an adorable creature. Maybe Mahi Mahi chevice? Perhaps some coconut and--
Lianna's thoughts are cut off by the sound of someone stumbling around on deck.
A child on deck? Dont they know where we're headed? Hang on Vivi, some kid hasn't gotten her sea legs yet.
Lianna makes her way across her deck to the fallen child. With a small wave of her hand, she let positive energy run through her hand. In truth, the girl probably just banged her knee, but Lianna knew how they could cry and cry over the small things. A little positive energy would fix that right up and save everyone the headache. Lianna walked over to the girl and offered her hand to help her up with a smile.
"First time on a ship?"

[Raunchel]

Yildiz sees the strange woman approach, she seems nice. But then she feels it, as she touches her. That most terrible of forces, beloved by priests. Some scholars call it positive energy, but she calls it pain. But this is a pain that she is used to, and she makes herself smile.

She takes the hand, and her small weight is easily lifted back to her feet. She looks up at the stranger. "Yes. It is my first time at sea. I'm Yildiz, who are you?"

[Renen]

Assuming Vivi can feel the spell/hear some mental swearwords of Yildiz for being zapped:

"Well, she meant well... But I guess this is what happens when you act hurt in front of especially charitable individuals... And I see you have a companion! A fey too!"

To the side:

Mmm.... Mahi-mahi...

Speaking to everyone now:

"Anyone terribly mind picking me up? I promise I am very cuddly, but this deck really is meant to be walked on in shoes...

[Business Scrub]

"Hello Yildiz. That's a bit of an older name, your parents must be very old fashioned. You may call me Lianna. Is your mother or father around?" Lianna spoke evenly, even sounding appropriately concerned. Really, she just didn't want to wind up responsible for this clumsy child. She had a much more interesting conversation with a telepathic cat to be having.

[Thokk_Smash]

He had been on a mission, when the request had reached him: help find the source of this "temporal anomaly" before the consequences become irreversible. The strange phenomenon had been in full swing by then--seasons passing in days, trees dying while they trekked back to Urolledan. After making sure his second-in-command was briefed and the city leaders were informed, he was on the next horse out.

He has spent the days on the boat acclimating himself to the shifting deck. Practicing his katas and steps, armored and without, with the falchion into which he had poured part of his very soul. When not practicing, he walks among the crew, never without his custom-crafted full plate--an oddity of metal on a wooden craft sailing on water. He did his best to hide his features from the others, for the beginning at least. No need to subject them to his scars so soon.

He is walking the deck one day, decked out in his armor and helmet, when he comes across the odd gathering: an otherworldly woman and a small child, both flanked by cute little cats. The woman, at least, he has heard of--Lianna, he thinks, a bard of great renown. Now, what is a little girl doing on this boat, which is holding such great responsibilities?

He approaches the group, steps as light as he can make them. With a smile in his voice, he says, Well met, Lady Lianna. And hello, little one--what brings you to this ship? Our destination is no vacation spot.

Kan is speaking in deep sky blue, and is covered in his armor.

[Business Scrub]

Lianna walks over and picks up Vivi, putting her up on her shoulder, and gauges the goliath man. She had seen him around the boat of course, practicing some complicated looking combat each day. In fact, he was rather hard to miss, what with the enormous shining armor and all. He wasn't exactly subtle.
Clearly he knew her name: not exactly a surprise. But where did she know him from..? Wasn't he a guard captain or something?

Ah right, Urolledan. That had been a mess.

The memory of that night springs back into her mind: she had been on the road for weeks, and nothing frustrates her like being alone for a long time. Her arrival in Urolledan was much like any other, but she was itching to play for an audience. The innkeeper of the Dancing Fox had drawn in quite a crowd that night, and she arrived at the perfect time of the night: when the majority of the patrons in the huge inn were pleasantly drunk, but not too plastered to appreciate entertainment. She had been allowed to play (of course), but she didn't want to just entertain after weeks of travel. Oh no, she wanted to be remembered. Little did she know the Inn was like a powder keg that night. Someone's son had just stolen some heirloom from some rival family, the two families had been at each others throats for generations and blahddy blahddy blah. But between the drink, her music, and just a little bit of magic on Lianna's part to see where things would go, that powder keg blew sky high.
To call it a barfight would be like calling a dragon a lizard: technically true, but doesn't begin to describe the size of the situation. It was a revelry to make the gods cry, as the two uptight families looked for an excuse to break loose. Smashed furniture, robbed goods. Pilfered alcohol and love flowing up above as freely as the music and hateful words below. Someone lit the bar on fire.
Good times.

In fact, it was a miracle no one died. Or that's what Lianna let people believe as she carefully sewed healing magic into her songs. It had taken captain Kan and his men over two hours to stop the rioting and put out the fire, but really, no one had known for sure that Lianna was the one to have set everyone off. It wasn't until now that she realized that night was probably much less fun from Kan's point of view.

"Good evening captain. Morning, night, whatever it is nowadays. Our destination? Are they sending city watch to see what's what over here now as well?"

I hope I didn't generate too much previous history: just thought it would be a funny run-in.

[lonewolf1210]

Soaring through the air, Lothirlondonis still focused on the thing that happened a week ago: He had missed the ship.
It wasnt really like him to be late, but this wierd passage of time had confused him enough to arrive hours after the departure.
It took him a few days to find transportation to catch up with the ship in the pegasus he was riding now.

Finally, the ship came into view and the halfdragon let out a sigh of relief. The long flight had been taxing for his mount and he was glad this was about to be over. Landing on the ship provided a small challenge as two of the sailors only barely got out of the way in time, but Lothirlondonis was glad to have something beneath his feet again, even if its not ground. After dismounting, he pets the pegasus head. "Thank you dear friend. I will not forget the help you have given me this day."
It whinnies in response and then takes of again. Lothirlondonis cant help but wonder how much more help it would be if it would stay with them for this mission, but that was not what they had previously agreed on. But he wasnt on this quest alone. With that he turns to the others and finally greets them with a friendly and strong voice. "Greetings fellow heroes. I must apologize for my late arrival. I am Lothirlondonis, son of the great gold dragon Livezzenvivexious, and exalted herald of the heavens. I have been sent here to help you in this quest to ..." At this point his voice trails of as his eyes are fixed on Lianna. After 3 seconds of silence, he closes the distance and kneels in front of her. "My lady, is it really you?" His voice had become much more emotional and excited all of a sudden. "I didnt think I would ever see you again."

@Business Scrub: the last part is in reference to Lothirlondonis Feat Nymphs Kiss which assumes an intimite relationship with a fey(most often dryad or nymph). If you agree, I think it would be interesting if that relationship was with Lianna. For her I would assume it was not more than a short dalliance among many (although still unusual due to his halfdragon nature), but it affected my character greatly. I would suggest this relationship happened about 8 or 9 decades ago, when Lothirlondonis was still in his equivalency to teenage years.

I even would have suggested the possibility of a more central connection to liannas history(like him beeing the reason for her banishment), but for that the timelines just dont fit.

If you dont want this close of a connection, simply assume that Lothirlondonis mistakes Lianna for a different Nymph

[Raunchel]

"Hi Lianna!", Yildiz starts, before her face becomes sad. "Mommy and daddy are dead. They got really sick. And I had to go away. I hid in the ship. I'm sorry."

She sees the others approach, all of them with their own reputations. The city guard, she has hidden from him before. And the great hero. Everyone knows him, and she knows that she should be afraid. He is not the kind of man that sees her existence as something that should be tolerated. However, her path has been chosen, and she will not give in.

"And this is Kedi. She is my cat, and she is really nice!"

[Business Scrub]

She didn't know what she expected Yildiz to say, but Lianna wasn't expecting 'orphan stow-away'. "Oh. That's um... I'm sure the crew will let you stay on the ship while we're gone."

It seemed there was no end to the surprising arrivals today. Lianna watched the speck in the sky grow, wondering. Was it just a bird? No, it looked someone riding on a creature. A man in brilliant armor, riding a pegasus. Whoever the man was, he knew how to make an entrance.

The half-dragon lands, all shimmering gold, and says some words to the beast that carried him here. Even though his back is turned, it gives Lianna a moment to think about where she has seen him before. When he turns around, it comes back to her. Oh my gods, is that Lothirlondonis? It has to be: how many gold half-dragons are there running around this world. What a difference a few decades makes.

Lianna quite didn't know what to do: she lived on the move so much that this situation had never come up before. Well he certainly remembered her: there was little point in playing dumb, and she wasn't sure yet if she even wanted to. She put a gentle hand under his chin and smiles genuinely, the flattery not entirely lost on her.
"Lothir? Well this is a twist of fate. Rise my Herald of the Heavens: I don't believe I've done anything deserving of such a gesture."

[Thokk_Smash]

Ah, yes--that riot. Two rival merchant families had arrived in Urolledan at the same time and their rivalry sparked a riot, or so he had been told after the fire had died down. Strange, that they had been in the city several times before and not caused nearly as much trouble. Thankfully, they had been able to contain the riot and fire, all with Lianna's lovely voice providing background music. What would they have done without her music as accompaniment?

He smiles evenly at her question. The day does seem to all blend together, doesn't it? From the message I received, I was requested to be on this journey by four mayors, two counts, an earl and a duke. So I suppose when so many request, they send the captain of the city watch. To be fair, Kan is quite overqualified to be simply the captain of the guard. In the years after Urolledan's conception, he spent his time clearing the surrounding area of the monsters that had taken up residence there. And when the area was made safe and Urolledan was thriving, he was sent whenever a neighboring land called for aid. It is only his humility and loyalty to those he helped save from slavery that keeps him as "just" a city guard captain.

He is a tad surprised that a child was able to sneak aboard a ship that is holding the fate of millions in its hands. It's alright, little one. It would be best for you to stay on the ship when we reach the island, though.

Kan gives the new arrival a respectful salute. It is an honor to be working with you, Sir Lothirlondonis. Together, the three of us will be able to find the source of this disturbance.

[Raunchel]

"Maybe they will let me!", Yildiz replies enthousiastically, "But the ship should really stop shaking, it is making me sick."

She then turns her head, to look up to Kan: "But can't I come with you? You are going on a great adventure! And I promise that I won't get in your way. And Merwyn says that I bring luck."

[Renen]

Hanging on to Lianna's shoulder, Vivi noted the new arrivals.

Talking to all:
"Ohh, gold dragon blood! I think dragons are really cool! They have these big wings, and fancy scales!"

After Yildiz's request, she waves her tails a few times.

"I don't see why she cant come, but the part of the group's lucky charm is already taken. But maybe you are really good with combing hair! That's an important task!"

[lonewolf1210]

"Of course my lady." While standing up again he clearly takes a moment to gather himself. This is clearly not what he was expecting to find here. "I hope that you are pleased to learn that you have inspired me to pursue music as well, although in my own style of course." Even though he doesnt realize it, Lothirlondonis seeks Liannas approval. When they first met he was still very young and lacked proper parental figure. His father, no matter how good and pure he was, could never truely give his halfbreed son the same amount of respect that he showed to his trueborn dragon children and his mothers mortality showed before he slowly reached adulthood. So Lianna was some kind of parental guiding figure to him despite their romance.

Finally loosening his focus on Lianna, he turns to greet the rest of the group, starting with Kan(who I assume introduces himself). He reaches his hand out to the goliath and shakes it firmly. "Greetings captain. The honor is all mine."

He ignores the girl for now, not knowing enough about her situation but reacts curiously to the telepathic connection. I do have scales, but no wings unfortunately. I am only a halfdragon, you know?
"Lianna, you must tell me how you acquired such an interesting telepathic cat as companion. Im sure it is an interesting story."

[Renen]

"Close enough. I bet its pretty!"
Says Vivi sniffing in his general direction.

It's actually quite obvious at close range that Vivi is blind as her eyes are completely white (ignore the picture in this one instance), whenever she has them open.

[Thokk_Smash]

This journey will be dangerous, a trek into unknown territories with unknown dangers. I do not believe that it is a proper place for a child, no matter how lucky she is.

I am Kan'nanckeki Brightblade, but call me Kan, he says to the golden-scaled hero.

He blinks at the telepathic contact. It seems you are more than just fluff, then, he thinks to the cat. What is your name?

[Renen]

"My name's Vivi."

She purrs in greeting.

[Business Scrub]

Lianna laughs merrily hearing Lothirlondonis' pursuit. "The allure of song is hard to resist, regardless of where you come from. I am interested to hear your style then, provided you have something to share. It's been, what, ninety years? I'm interested to hear what you have been up to all this time. As for this adorable creature? Well, she found me, and only moments ago. I have stories aplenty, but this one" She indicates Vivi, " is a bit of a mystery."

She looks around at the people assembled on the bridge.
"We make quite the crowd the four of us. I agree with Captain Kan: Yildiz, you should remain here on the boat. You may bring good luck, but this island is fraught with danger: the crew may need luck as much as us."

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis is a bit unsure wether to address the next subject, but after a few seconds of hesitation goes with it anyway and sends telepathic message to Vivi.
Vivi, I do not wish to intrude, but I feel I have to at least offer my help. Feel free to refuse it, I wont take offense.
May I ask if your blindness is natural or magical in nature? Because if it is magical, I might be able to cure that condition, if you are interested that is.


Turning to Lianna he smiles broadly. "You should know that you dont have to ask an artist twice to perform."

With that, the Halfdragon starts a celestial hymn, praising the beauty and glory of the heavens. While the song is written in celestial, somehow you dont have to understand it to get its general meaning. And it is not the text that is important, but the enthralling and captivating music that comes out of the halfdragon. Even though he doesnt use any of his magical bard songs, he still weaves the words of creation into the song, enhancing the music even further.


come on big roll:
Perform: [roll0]
;)

[Raunchel]

Yildiz folds her arms: "But I really, really, really want to come. And I can cook, and can help with lots of things! And I could be your squire! All great heroes have a squire!"

She is thinking about just forcing them to take her along, but that might be found out, and could lead to a lot of trouble. "And I can translate for Kedi. I know what she means, and she also wants to help!"

The black cat walks up to the deck as Yildiz mentions her, and she adds: "Meow!"

Yildiz asks her telepathically to turn herself invisible, just to demonstrate, and the large black cat does so. "She knows real magic tricks too!"

[Business Scrub]

Lothirlondonis suddenly bursting into song surprises her. Clearly the newly practiced bard was
eager to show off. Well, Lianna could understand that feeling well enough: that eagerness to reveal a new talent. So she closed her eyes and played the role of a good audience, listening attentively to the half-dragon's velvety voice. The Celestial song was undeniably wonderful: significantly better than she was expecting. The foreign language didn't prevent that. And though it wasn't as technically complex as what she could do, there was something about it that was unnervingly familiar. Like an old tune that she couldn't quite remember. But Lianna was quite sure that she hadn't heard it before, and that was very interesting. Halfway through Lothirlondonis' song she looked up, a burning curiosity in her eyes. How many heavenly songs did this man know that were missing from her book?
"Lothirlondonis... that was excellent. Truly. Where in the world did you learn to sing like that? Surely you will teach me that song later?" The last bit is phrased like a question, but only out of politeness. Clearly, at least in Lianna's mind, it's more of a command than a request.


Lianna begins to grow frustrated with the child's persistence. Great, she thinks she has a magic cat, too. Ok, ignoring the fact that I actually did just meet a magic cat, she's just being insufferable.
But then the cat vanishes, and that was very strange. Very strange indeed, as typical invisibility spells wore off in an instant like anything else.
"Yildiz, did you do that? What did you do?"

[Raunchel]

Yildiz knows that she isn't entirely wanted, also because these people have a sense of responsibility, and it isn't exactly responsible behaviour to let a child accompany them, but she persists. "She did that herself, I only asked her to. And she really wants to come to help save the world. But she can't talk to anyone, but I can hear her voice in my head. And she tells me that she really wants to come. Can we, please?"

[Nettlekid]

The discussion between the various envoys of world powers is cut into by the booming voice of the captain, an old salt of a Darfellan Favored Soul of Valkur, magnified by the Admiral's Bicorne he received as compensation for chartering his ship to this mysterious and in all probability dead and deadly island. That and the Unguent of Timelessness which was nonetheless rapidly peeling off the side of his ship, keeping it held together just long enough to get to the island and about halfway back.
"Land ho! Our equipment is working even worse than it was, that has to be the place. As agreed we take you to the shore, but I don't so much step onto the land! You're on your own from this point out!"

The boat comes to a halt at the shallowest of waters and each chattering patron is hurried off the ship by the Darfellan, tossing out Mendings and Make Wholes to repair the splintering ship. Showing no concern for the physical qualities of the passengers, armored warrior or child and cat alike ("ye know what ye'r doin'!") and uses Control Water in one jolt to push the ship back into the ocean. The party is left on the beach on this continent-sized island, ringed in mountains but positioned at the edge of a pass which leads into this cursed land.

The desert valley is eerie in the orange light of the eternally rising and setting sun. From your position, you can see the crumbling columns of old structures, sandstone and quartz reinforced with rusted metal rods within. Faint umbral cones flicker at the base of these pillars as the shadow moves from the sun crossing the sky in these one-second days. Apart from these structures, the land is perfectly flat like salt plains and you can see the silhouettes of creatures who are not deterred from "living" here due to their own lack of life. There are a few Allips babbling in the distance, their madness sparing them from boredom. A circle of Wraiths are flocking from ruin to ruin, unsure if they're really all that uncomfortable by the repeated moments of sunlight but trying to find the persistent shade nonetheless. Upon closer inspection, many of the ruined pillars are covered in Clockroaches. The infrequent break in the perfectly flat land is a trough made by the dragging arms of a Slaughterstone Eviscerator that occasionally digs in the compacted earth. A patient Quarut marches after it, looking at its hourglasses and picking at the dirt left in the Slaughterstone Eviscerator's wake. In the distance, the towering figure of an infernal Retriever strides the land, searching for some unknown target.

The Gnomes have detailed the means by which you can hunt down the general direction of the focus of the anomaly, using timed Tindertwigs burning down, and they've given you a supply of Tindertwigs for that purpose. But the government officials hiring you have made clear that each of you has autonomy, and may take action as you see fit so long as you strive to solve this dilemma.

[Renen]

How's it look? mumbles Vivi telepathically.

So, where are we going?Anyone wants to go first?

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan obeys the captain as he hurries them all off of the ship. It does not escape his notice that the good captain did not blink at the inclusion of a small child in the group. As has been growing in his mind, the thought that this "little girl" is more than she seems springs to the forefront. If a tiny cat can talk telepathically, there is an untold number of things this child could be.

But if she is skilled enough to sneak onto this restricted boat, or powerful enough to have actually been requisitioned for this mission despite her looks, then Kan is willing to drop his protests, at least outwardly. Now, this island, on the other hand...

A marvel of natural beauty. The rangers in Urolledan's guard will love to hear of this place. As for Kan himself, his appreciation lasts for just a few moments. Eyeing the inhabitants with mild wariness, he says, I think we should follow the directions the gnomes left for us, he says, taking out his copy of their directions. They spent days working on it, so they would know better than us how to best get to the source of this anomaly. I can take the lead, unless one of you would prefer the honor.

If no one objects, he takes out his tindertwigs and strikes one, beginning the trail that the gnomes outlined.

[Business Scrub]

Lianna looks back at the sailing away ship as they depart, then at Yildiz, who somehow remained with them. "Really? We're letting her come with??"
She sighs. "Alright, fine. But for the record if one of these things sees you as a snack, it's not my fault. Just stick close to us and try not to die, ok?"

She watches as Kan begins lighting the tindertwigs, and pulls out her own copy of the instructions. In a much less irritated tone than before, she says,
"By all means Kan. You're the one who does this for a living. Or the closest thing to it. Lead on."

She takes a couple of paces away from the shore and listens for anything abnormal. There were quite a few abnormal things here, but none that seemed to account for the phenomenon.

Listen is rolled in OOC cause I can't edit in rolls.

[Raunchel]

Yildiz hops from the ship, closely followed by her cat. She looks with her eyes wide open, as if in amazement, even though she is sizing up the potential enemies in her head. She never really studied all that many of them, but she can easily see the weak spots. They are always easy to find. But her focus is on her companions. "Kedi won't let me get hurt. She promises."

She then looks at Kan, taking out his instructions: "Can I read it too?"

[lonewolf1210]

before landfall:

Lothirlondonis smiles at Liannas praise. "Thank you, Lianna. That means much to me. The music of the angels is really something different from the tunes that mortals create. I had the fortune of having a trumpet archon who introduced me into this wonderful world. They are as timeless as the fey and some of them composed and refined their music for millenia now. It really is overwhelming joy to learn their art.
I will gladly teach you all I can, but I must warn you that some of their songs require a special technique that required me years to master." (ooc: implying the words of creation here)


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

While he also wasnt happy to lead a little girl into this area, Lothirlondonis accepts it without protest.
As his companions start readying their tindertwigs he interjects: "While I am sure the gnomes have thought this through, I believe we should first try something different: Do you see this Quarut over there? The Quaruts are the guardians of the Laws of Time and Space in the Multiverse. Its presence her cannot be an accident and I believe we should talk to it. I am sure that it must have at least some insight about the situation here."

If noone disagrees, he starts moving towards the inevitable and greets him in celestial.

[Renen]

Previously:
"My blindness is magical in nature, but I'm afraid you can't solve the problem with a simple spell. I'm quite adapted by now though. Can even see some things better than you. " She gives a wide telepathic smile.


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

"Quaruts? I heard of those guys... Just be careful around it."

At Yildiz:
"Really? The cat is what's keeping you from being hurt?"

At Cat:

"Hello! She says you are a cat, but unless disappearing fey are now cats... Why are you following an undead girl anyways?"



Knowing about Quarut: roll of 32
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19599967&postcount=1236

[Raunchel]

"Yes. She has a lot of magic tricks.", Yildiz replies telepathically, "And she says that you are asking her why you are following me. And she says that you think that I am dead. But I'm not. Dead people can't walk, so, I'm not dead. And I have a beating heart. So I am really alive. And she tells me that she is travelling with me because I am really nice, and I can talk for her."

[Renen]

"The others think you are a little girl. But even though I can see you, I can tell you arent just a plain human. Just as your pet is a fey. Hmm... What fey do I know that look like a cat, know magic tricks and disappear at will?" Vivi looks as thoughtful as a cat can.

"Nope, don't know any. But I'm sure there are some... " She sounds disappointed at her shortcoming.

[Thokk_Smash]

Before he strikes his first tindertwig, Kan listens to Lothirlondonis' suggestion. That sounds like a solid idea, he says with a nod. It would be best to get an idea of where to look before beginning to use the tindertwigs, as we only have so many. I'll follow your lead, as you seem to know more of these creatures than I.

Kan follows Lothirlondonis by a few paces, looking as unthreatening as an eight-foot tall man in full plate armor can. To be fair, he's had plenty of practice in doing so ever since he started going to conferences in his armor.

[Raunchel]

"Really? Nobody told be that. But I am human, I know that for sure. Everyone says so. And if everyone says it, it's true!", Yildiz replies, "But kedi is a fey? And not a cat? Like in the stories? That is nice. I want to be in a story when I am big. I love stories. Especially if they are good. With a happy end and when everyone is friends. Do you like stories?"

She speaks up: "What is a quarut?"

[Business Scrub]

We have a very colorful group in terms of speech. I'm the darkest among us and that's still a vivid purple.

Before Docking
Lianna shrugs happily. "That is fair, but all the more reason to learn. Don't worry, I'm a quick study. I'm curious how you came to be in the company of Archons. But I suppose that will have to wait until all this is over as well. For now, let's see what awaits on the gods forsaken island, no?"

She picks up her bag as they land and heads to the shore, not too concerned with the time it would take. She was fey after all, and with years aplenty. Once they got this phenomenon resolved, she had all the time in the world.

Boom.

On the Island
Lianna stares out at the island and scowls. It didn't pass her notice that nothing here really lived. There were the undead, worst of all: the allips and wraiths, abominations on life itself. She was itching for them to pick a fight, if only so she could purge them from the world. There were machines too: the clockroaches, Quarut and Eviscerator. Those were not as despicable as undead, but were unnerving nonetheless. Cold dead things on a cold dead world.
She nods silently as Lothirlodonis explains his plan and follows behind with Kan: far enough back so that they didn't look like they were going to aggravate the machine. Be careful...
She speaks to the rest of the group assembled in a quiet tone. "If we figure out where we're headed, I can help us cross some of these mountains quite quickly."

[Renen]

Vivi mentally glared at the little girl, but decided to continue the conversation later. Afterall, she didnt care all that much as to why the girl was being so secretive. She was just mildly curious.

[lonewolf1210]

While walking over, Lothilondoris educates Yildiz. "Quaruts are one type of ineviteables. Those are extraplanar beeings of pure law and order that punish Lawbreakers all over the multiverse. Quaruts are among the more powerful ineviteables and protect the Laws of Time and Space. So it isnt all that suprising that we are running into one here."


Once he comes into shouting distance the the Quarut he calls over in celestial: "Greetings Quarut. May we approach to discuss the temporal disturbance here? I assume you are also here to find a solution."

[Nettlekid]

"I do speak Common as well," the Inevitable clicks at you, crushing a piece of quartz to sand between its fingertips. "I've had the time to learn."
For a few heavy seconds the Quarut pauses, the silence broken only by chattering Allips and its own ticking.
"You are partially correct. I am not here to find a solution. I am here to ascertain the problem. I have done so. I am also here to find who will find the solution. I have done so. But still I remain here. This is your first time meeting me. Then this is not the right time either. Come back when you remember me. I think it will be the next one."
The Quarut's gaze, as much as it falls anywhere, lights on Kan and the Tindertwigs. The twigs, struck and then left to die down, do indeed take differences of fractions of seconds.
"You are wasting time, and that is a sin. You find what you seek at the dead center of the island. Sooner or later. It is a long journey, but you come across no threat foolish enough to stand in your way. You recognize your target when you meet him. Don't waste time there either."

[Renen]

Vivi looks very pleased at Quarut's speech. As pleased as a cat can.

"You make me happy indeed. It seems like this will definitely be a great adventure. I look forward to our... previous meeting I suppose."

[lonewolf1210]

Twice Lothirlondonis looks as if he was about to respond to the Quarut, but both times he stops himself. Arguing with an ineviteable seldom leads to anything. Instead he just sighs and turns back to his companions. "I guess this is all we are going to get out of him for now. Lets go to this center of the island. Lianna, you said you had a fast mode of transportation?"

[Business Scrub]

Lianna crouches down, feeling the cold stone and sighs. "I have several. But the only one that will work nowadays is one that relies on the natural magic in plant life. But this..." She gestures around at all the machinery and stone with a sad look. "I can't do anything with all this. Unless one of you has an exceptional means of movement, I think we're walking"

[Raunchel]

"Kedi says that if she knows what it looks like, she can poof us there.", Yildiz suggests. "But it has to be really precise, otherwise we can end up in the wrong place."

She turns to the Quarut: "Ehm, do you know what it looks like? Or perhaps if there is anyone there you could describe?"

[Nettlekid]

"If it's any consolation, you've already been there. Or will have already been there," the Quarut replies cryptically, seeming at this point to be thoroughly uninterested in discussing with you.
"There is one there, though to my eyes he is beyond description. You will know him when you see him. That is fact."

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis stares in disbelief at Yildaz, then Kedi, then back at Yildaz for a couple of times. "Wait, you are telling us your CAT can teleport?? Seriously??"

Then a realization comes to him. "Ah I get it now. This is no cat. Its a gold or silver dragon in cat form." He bows towards the cat and continues in draconic. "No need to decieve us any longer oh great one. I am sure we have similar goals in this adventure."

[Raunchel]

Luckily for Yildiz, she can understand draconic, although her grasp of it isn't perfect. Kedi however has no clue about the language. "Kedi says that she is not a dragon", she replies in the common language, "She only knows magic tricks. But she says that it is funny that you think so. And ehm, was that the language of the dragons? Can you teach me? Please?"

[Business Scrub]

Lianna, for her part, ignores the lunatic child. The cat could turn invisible: there was clearly more here than meets the eye, but the idea that the cat could teleport them around was still one she seriously doubted. She puts her hand on Lothir's arm and whispers to him so that the Inevitable can't hear.

"You said that thing is supposed to protect the laws of space as well as time? Is teleporting in front of it really a good idea?"

Pulling lightly to motivate Lothir to follow, Lianna starts walking in the direction of the center of the island.

This is why bards edit stories before they tell them... She thinks, shaking her head slightly.

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan bows his head in thanks to the Inevitable. Until we next meet, he says.

He follows Lianna's example, striking a Tindertwig every so often to gauge their progress. If he finds it takes longer than before on one twig, he backtracks until he finds the right path. He doesn't comment on the little girl or her cat; as far as he's concerned, she's more powerful than her appearance would imply, and as deceptive if she got onto the ship without anyone's notice. Although it is still disconcerting to him to have a little girl in such a potentially dangerous place.

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis straigthens up again, feeling more than a little foolish, but still doesnt trusts in the true nature of the girl and her cat and eyes them suspiciously.

When Lianna whispers to him he is also caught on the wrong foot. He hadnt actually considered that. He had heard that Quaruts mostly concerned themselves with magic-users that recklessly used magic that altered time in some way, but the possibility that they also didnt like magic like teleportation is something he couldnt deny. But 500 miles is a LONG way to walk, so he whispers back:
"Do you really believe we have the time to spend weeks walking towards the centre of the island? We have no idea if this phenomenon will get worse in that time."

[Raunchel]

"If we can't use magic tricks, and don't have horses, we have to walk. Unless you can all fly of course, and carry me and Kedi along.", the girl adds, "Shall we go then? The more we walk, the sooner we are there!"

[Business Scrub]

Lianna shrugs at Lothir's comment, remembering her many long journeys in the past. This time at least, she had some company. And even if it was the strange company of two magical cats, a little girl, a watch captain, and an ex lover, it was better than walking alone. The edges of her mouth curve into a smile that's very convincingly forced. "I've walked farther for less."

Unless someone comes up with a better plan, she follows Kan's lead, taking her turn lighting tindertwigs to make sure they're on the right path.

[Renen]

Vivi purred as she wound into a small ball, carried by the nymph. While she didn't mind the trip as she was getting a ride, she figured it would go faster with some help. In the end she decided to atleast find out where the destination is.

She manifests Scry Location. It takes her an hour to do it, and she only sees the location for one round before the spell ends. But she should have a general picture of where it is.

Mandatory Caster level check:
[roll0]

[Raunchel]

Yildiz hates walking long distances, for someone who cannot physically tire, she is exceptionally lazy. "Uhm, Kedi has a plan. She can poof us all there, if she can see the place. So, she wants to poof up into the air, and then she can bring all of us right to the middle! But, she can only bring three other people. She asks if any of you have a bag or something like that where there is, ehm, extraminensional room. Vivi and I can climb in there, and then we can all just go. And we don't have to walk!"

[Business Scrub]

Lianna pauses her walk to turn around listen to Yildiz.

"Alright, this I've got to see. Very well, if your cat can fly into the air, and come back down and survive, we can use my bag to teleport there."

[Raunchel]

Yildiz nods, realizing that she will have to fly up herself. "Yay! She wants to take me with her, so I can tell you all about it. So, ehm, see you later!"

Yildiz takes Kedi in her arms, and the cat says: Meow!

And off they are, without any visible source of their ability to fly, they soar upwards faster than a horse in full gallop.

The sight is beautiful, and Yildiz sometimes likes just being there, high up in the sky, watching the stars move and little ships moving as though they are just specks of dirt. And of course, dropping rocks and the like from that height also is a lot of fun.

But the time is there to go back down, Kedi has seen what she needs to see, and Yildiz meets the one thing that she hates the most about being miles away from the ground, it is very cold.

Some time later she reaches the group again, landing on her feet as though flying is nothing special, although she is shivering. "It's really, really, really cold up there! But Kedi could see it, so she can poof us to the middle!"

[Business Scrub]

Lianna opens and closes her mouth a couple times, as if she wants to say something but isn't quite sure what that is. When the child and her cat return, she just opens her bag quietly.

"Alright, get in."

[Nettlekid]

(So you flew rather than teleported?)

Climbing miles into the sky you pierce above the clouds, which whirl and sway as they precipitate and the rainwater is evaporated before it hits the ground. Although the cloud cover is thick it's evershifting, and you can see anything on the ground, although not all at once. Of course, being miles in the air makes it difficult to make out anything smaller than the mountains you've passed; fine detail of any sort is impossible, and so you cannot see what you're actually looking for. But what you can see is the strange pattern of the clouds hundreds of miles to the northwest, at the center of the island. While the clouds around you move swiftly, those in the center seem to thicken and bunch up, as though they're moving slowly and unable to leave from where they gathered. The light too is dimmer in that direction, and like inverted rays of sunlight patches of darkness are breaking the thick clouds. Though you see nothing on the ground you do see the ground, sufficiently enough to mark it as a destination at least.

[Raunchel]

Yildiz crawls into the bag, smiling: "You should all touch Kedi! And it's really nice and big in here!"

[Renen]

Vivi crawls into the bag.
She glares suspiciously at Yildiz, but says nothing.

[Raunchel]

Yildiz smiles at Vivi as she comes in, as nicely and innocently as she can.

And as soon as the bag is closed and everyone is touching her, Kedi teleports everyone to the place she just saw.

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan had stopped to listen to the girl as she spoke. And he raises both eyebrows as she shoots straight into the air. Well, it seems she is indeed more than she seems, he says with a nod. To pass the time he tries to strike up a conversation with the others who remain.

When the girl returns, he seems to appear considering something to say. Ultimately, he shrugs and takes off his gauntlet before placing his scarred hand on the cat's head. He gives the cat a little scratch while he waits for the supposed teleportation.

[Business Scrub]

Lianna touches the black cat in the bag and puts her hand on Lothirlodonis, completing the chain.

"Once this is over, you and your cat have some things to explain. And don't you dare let him get black fur on my clothes! Right, let's go meet this horrible creature the inevitable spoke of."

[Nettlekid]

(If you'll forgive me the gross impertinence of assuming you all touch the cat.)

Kedi casts Teleport, and at once the party is whisked away to the destination point. The warp is on-target, and you are taken not to the exact center of the island but the last visible spot before it, perhaps a hundred feet away. And once there, you realize why it was so difficult to actually get to or so much as look at the center. That space is occupied by an enormous black sphere hovering maybe ten feet off of the ground, a spot of pure void. Like a Sphere of Annihilation or an Umbral Blot there is something unnatural about its darkness and a small lensing on the event horizon where darkness gives way to the open sky behind, but unlike these objects of disintegration you do not feel the rushing of air toward the object that the disintegrating effect of these usually has. Instead, as you can see by the clouds moving overheard, there is some kind of temporal dilation effect as matter near the orb slows down and becomes bunched up as faster matter keeps coming toward it, only to slow down itself. Similarly, on a second glance the lensing around the ball seems to be due to light moving toward the ball and then being stopped in time, creating a shell of frozen photons around a ball whose darkness is only because no light is escaping off of it. It is a black hole without gravity, and instead of a coalescence of matter it is one of temporal energy.

But perhaps even more curious than the dark sphere is the creature underneath it. It's hard to see because portions of its body continuously fade in and out of a visible dimension, and it is wreathed in a dark vapor which cloaks its similarly pitch-black body. It is shaped like a centaur, with a humanoid torso but the forelegs and body of something more like a puma. Its torso seems muscular, and its strong arms end in jagged claws. It has a long neck with a ridge of spines running down its back, and its face is covered by some kind of bone plating through which two piercing white eyes shine through.


http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/327/0/6/phane_by_klausmasterflex-d33h8bx.jpg

Its sleek, catlike body is gracefully darting around the sphere, flying to its top and darting beneath it, while its muscular arms press against the sphere's surface as though it were kneading dough. Like an electron orbiting an atom, although you are certain of the creature's presence it is next to impossible to actually point out where it is, you can only tell that it's moving very fast.

And then it appears before you. It is still moving around the ball, but it is now also still and standing in front of its sphere, while its sharp white eyes pick out each of your locations. It is not at all surprised by your appearance. It looks at you piercingly, and with a sense of familiarity.

"The circle turns. What you have just been about to see is what has always been forevermore. The first time you will come here is also the last, and every time inbetween. I've been enjoying hour game together, though I'd appreciate the second opinion on the minute variations between iterations. Every pass through, something's a little different, but it's all the same in the end. You are far too weak. You could come here a million times more, but you have never stopped me and you never will. I must take heed of my work. We must take heed of hour work. Your anticks and antocks have forced hour hands, and I grow impatient. This will be the last time we play. This time you will remember. This time you will remember why you will not come again."


Map (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12fGEJdnIG3eYwq0xMM0thSyJug_9qcpcWgdRnFIlJK0/edit?usp=sharing)
Here's a link to the map on a Google Doc. Each person is the color of their voice, and the brown square is the Bag of Holding which Vivi and Yildiz are currently within.

[lonewolf1210]

While Lothirlondonis first instict is always to talk rather than strike, it seems obvious to him that whatever this thing is it wont be talked down from its whatever its plan is. So he grips his crystalline sword tighter and charges the creature while singing a battlehymn that merges the celestial music with his draconic heritage and all the weapons of the group blaze aflame.

Actions: swift action start inspire courage with words of creation and Dragonfire inspiration. => everyone deals an extra 8d6 fire damage with every attack
nonleathal damage dealt to Lothirlondonis for using words of creation: [roll0]

Full round action: charge and smite evil
Attack: [roll1]
(potential confrim crit )[roll2]
(subtract 10 if its not evil)
damage: [roll3] slashing + 7 sonic(crystal echoblade) + [roll4] fire(dragonfire inspiration) + [roll5] if its evil(saint, holy weapon, smite evil)

[Business Scrub]

Lianna's eyes narrow as the centaur-like creature steps into view. So this was monster responsible for the breakdown of the Sun and Moon? There was no question: it had to go. Clearly Lothirlondonis felt the same, as he drew his blade and charged forward, starting a battle hymn that awakened some kind of celestial fire in her.

She takes a confident step forward, cradling her lyre in her hands and beginning an unsettling song of desperate confidence: a beautiful harmony to Lothirlondonis' celestial hymn. She may not know the song the half-dragon sings, but she can flawlessly weave her Undercommon lyrics in all the same. As her fingers dance over the strings, a divine spark catches and soars into the air. As it crosses the Sun, however brief that is, it grows into a column of white fire that rains down upon the creature, burning it with the energy of the divines.

Perform check! [roll0]

Move action to get in range for Haunting melody, swift action to use Inspire Courage and activate haunting melody at the same time. Standard action to cast flame strike, centered on the Phane.

Flame Strike damage: [roll1] Half fire, half divine. Reflex DC 23 for half damage. I'm not sure if DFI or Inspire Courage apply here, but if they do add [roll2] fire damage or 3 damage, respectively.

Any chance I can roll a Knowledge to know more about this Phane? If so:
[roll3]
[roll4]
[roll5]

And using Haunting Melody, so he needs to make a Will Save DC 27 or is shaken.

[Renen]

Vivi sticks her head out of the bag she is in and just stares. She sees no way to be useful at the moment, and she is concerned with what the monster said to them.

Shell manifest Synchronicity though, to get that "any" readied action

[Thokk_Smash]

Talking would not be an option, it seems. Although perhaps it had been in the past--or was it their future? All this creature's talk seemed to be devoid of normal senses of time; a consequence of its otherworldly nature, no doubt. Still, he gathers the vital essence of law around him in preparation for the battle. He clicks his heels together to bring his body more agility and quickness. In the eye of the universe, he burns as a bright beacon of law and order as he thunders across the ground, his black-bladed sword flashing in the stolen light. He goes through the stance flawlessly as he slams his feet in front of the Phane--and in one powerful swing, aims his blade at the monster's heart.

Free action activate Boots of Speed--double his movement speed, +1 to-hit/dodge/AC
Swift Action: Activate Law Devotion, +7 sacred bonus to-hit for 10 rounds
Full-round action: use Law-Bearer maneuver: Charge attack with +8 to-hit (on top of charge bonus) for +4d6 damage and +5 bonus to AC/saves until my next turn.
Currently in Aura of Perfect Order stance: Allows me to "take 11" on any roll once per turn.

To-hit: (1d20+51)[68]
[roll0] slashing, adamantine, good (from Lesser Fiendslayer augment crystal) + [roll1] Lesser Fiendslayer (for being an evil outsider) + [roll2] (Law-Bearer) + [roll3] fire damage (Dragonfire Inspiration)
Critical threat: (1d20+51)[65]
(2d6+14)[20] good, adamantine, slashing

AC: 37 (Assuming it hit)

[Nettlekid]

The first strike is Lothirlondonis', the Half-Dragon lashing out with holy fury against this abomination, celestial music infusing his weapon with Dragonfire. Upon stepping within twenty feet of the Phane though, Lothirlondolis' voice is abruptly cut off, as the Phane teases a crimson oak wand in the dragon's face, twirling between its fingers where it wasn't before.
I held this wand once many years ago. I choose to make that time now. Only a simple Silence spell, and yet you find yourself utterly castrated, wretch. The same goes for your strumpet, by the look of it. The Phane's joy shines through its eyes as its telepathic voice echoes in your minds, as no sound permeates the range of its Silence spell, rendering both Lothirlondolis' Words of Creation and Lianna's own inspiration without effect. With preternatural speed the Phane evades Loth's sword strike, knocking the blade out of the way. The wand is gone from its hand.

Lianna's Haunting Melody is held at bay by the Silence, although with the unnerving alien gaze the Phane casts upon you, you suspect it might have been inured to mental assault to begin with. It casts its eyes to the sky.
Such weak fire is no concern to me, but divine energies do sting. However...I may wear thing ring one day in the future. I choose to make that today.
A silver ring flashes on the Phane's finger. As the Flame Strike crashes down, the Phane seems to flicker ever so slightly, its Ring of Evasion narrowly picking out the faintest spots of the flame and protecting it from harm. The Phane tosses the ring into the air like a coin, and it doesn't fall back down.

Kan's strike is true, and his path just. Lunging out, the Goliath drives his sword right through where the Phane's heart was only a moment ago. The Phane is now behind them, and it lets a Shadow Cloak flutter away into the breeze before the cloak vanishes into time.

If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times...

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan blinks in surprise at the nonchalant evaluation of his stance. It is true, between the dueling melodies that Lianna and Sir Lothirlondonis are expertly weaving, and the gravity of the situation, his entire body is flowing even more freely than normal. For a creature tampering with the very fabric of reality, you seem exceedingly calm about this whole thing. What do you call yourself? How many times have you met us? He shifts on his feet slightly as the creature finishes his speech, readying himself for an attack.

His tensed muscles reflexively loosen when the Phane disappears. He whips his head around to try and pin down the agile enemy. As he does so, he can feel some of his power leave him--that cursed temporal anomaly stole the power of Law from him. He spies his enemy assaulting Lianna, and leaps into action. Sir Lothirlondonis, to the right! I'll try to stop his movement for a time!

He runs forward, stopping just within where he thinks the being's range is. With another click of his heels, he jumps from ten feet away to right in front of his face. By the power and fury of Heironeous! he roars. His body moves, and it is almost as if he moves on preset tracks--neither too powerful nor too weak, but with measured cadence does he bring the blade of his soul down on the Phane. If he hits, the Phane finds himself unable to do anything but stand, stunned.

Is it possible for me to have used a free action to dismiss the Boots of Speed last round? It would've used up a round, but left the next 9 to be used later. If not, then his move speed's stuck at 20ft. All numbers are assuming the ability to use a round of the Boots at a time.

Move to 10ft before the Phane, and then Swift action Anklets of Translocation adjacent to the Phane.

Standard action White Raven Hammer; "take 11" on the attack for a total of 48. If the attack hits, the Phane is stunned for one round.

+15 BAB
+6 Strength
+5 enhancement
+1 WF (Falchion)
+3 from being in a DS stance
+3 from using a DS maneuver
+3 Inspire Courage
+1 Haste
=+37

AC: 34; FF: 30; Touch: 17

After his attack, he calls out to Loth: I can heal Lianna slightly, but I need your help to do it quickly--your song's effect should last long enough for you to resume it later!

This is all assuming Kan knows that Loth is able to use White Raven Tactics--a fairly significant point to make in a discussion of one's battle abilities. The Inspire Courage lasts 1 round after they stop singing, so as long as he spends a swift action every other round to start the DFI then he can use a swift action every other round to initiate White Raven Tactics. And then Kan can use WRT to make Loth go, and we go round and round like that :smallbiggrin: Just my thoughts.

[Business Scrub]

Witty retorts bounce through her head, but when the creature holds out its hand and distorts the very fiber of her being, all that comes out is a shriek of pain. What did it feel like, for a being immune to the ravages of time, to suddenly have the wear of age brought down upon her? Something no mortal could understand at least. Though it was gone in a moment, the pain lingered. Was it really just a moment? Or had millenia passed in the blink of an eye? In Lianna's state it was impossible to tell.

She takes a defensive step backward away from the creature and continues the battle hymn. With a wave of her left hand, her body is covered in vibrant positive light, restoring much of the damage done by the Phane's attack.

Free: 5-foot step backward
Standard: Burn Baleful Polymorph for Cure Critical Wounds, using a perform check in place of concentration, which automatically succeeds.

CCW Heals for: [roll0] damage.

[lonewolf1210]

While continuing his battlehymn, now wonderfully augmented by Liannas song, Lothirlondonis dances next to the Phane again and strikes at it with his sword, creating an opening for Kan to act again

move action: accelerated tumble into position
tumble:[roll0]
Standard Action: attack
attack: [roll1]
potential confirm crit: [roll2]
damage: [roll3] slashing + 7 sonic + [roll4] fire + [roll5] vs evil

swift action: White Raven Tactics on Kan

[Nettlekid]

Kan's hammer-like sword whips around, and the Phane lashes its hand out at the same time. Both Kan and Loth can recognize this technique, it's a perfectly executed Wall of Blades. The Iron Heart Vest looks a little odd pulled over the Phane's centaurish torso, and it's only there for a short moment to aid in that technique. Nonetheless, Kan's sword is knocked back by the Phane's counter.

[Renen]

Vivi just stares at the spectacle. The things seems to be getting beaten quite badly, but doesn't quite care.

"So we dome this before then... Have we tried to surrender? Well, I surrender."

Manifest Control body on it. Fort save or be immobile. DC 22

[Business Scrub]

"Oh yes, I can't possibly imagine how it must feel to have someone using time against you. My heart goes out to you abomination." Lianna retorts, her voice dripping sarcasm.

She continues playing as she speaks, and keeps a careful eye on her allies, ready to intervene if the Phane attacks them.

Readied action to move to an ally and heal them if they take damage.

[Thokk_Smash]

Okay, this creature's nonchalance is beginning to disconcert even the stalwart goliath. Feeling the rush of Loth's actions, he steps cautiously around the Phane and takes a moment to focus. He feels his muscles bulge under his armor as he unlocks some hidden portion of his body's strength. With renewed strength, he calls upon the holiness of Heironeous to smite the evil creature. Divine power rushes through his body as a conduit, and he grits his teeth against the pain of so much energy coursing through him.

Free action: 5-foot step to stay within 10ft of Loth and Lianna.

Move action: Power Surge. Auto-make the DC 15 Concentration check to get +8 to Strength for one round.
Standard action: Divine Surge with Crusader Smite: [roll0] (the feature points out Charisma bonus (if any), so I don't believe I add a penalty)
Possible critical threat: [roll1]
[roll2] good, slashing, adamantine + [roll3] Divine Surge + [roll4] Lesser Fiendslayer Crystal + [roll5] Fire DFI
Possible critical damage: [roll6]

With the Phane immobile, he continues his assault. His blade flashes out in a quartet of dangerous strikes, forgoing his more specialized attacks for a large number of strikes. The final strike bolsters Loth's abilities, allowing him to move again.

Full attack: [roll7]
[roll8] slashing, good, adamantine + [roll9] Fiendslayer Crystal + [roll10] fire from DFI

[roll11]-Haste
[roll12] slashing, good, adamantine + [roll13] Fiendslayer Crystal + [roll14] fire from DFI

[roll15]
[roll16] slashing, good, adamantine + [roll17] Fiendslayer Crystal + [roll18] fire from DFI

[roll19]
[roll20] slashing, good, adamantine + [roll21] Fiendslayer Crystal + [roll22] fire from DFI

Even though I posted before lone, Loth technically goes before Kan in the initiative because he used WRT on Kan last round.

[Nettlekid]

The Phane seems to sigh, and starts wringing its hands.
"Seen it before, seen it before, once and a thousand times played over again and again. When you all first arrived I was so hopeful. Even each of you can understand how agonizing anticipation is. All that I've done, and what I'm about to do...It's right on the edge of my existence, but not yet, not quite yet. I needed time to prepare. I need it to hatch. And in waiting for the glory of my coming, how I longed for a diversion! You appear, you distract me! Fantastic. And then...it gets boring. I let you remember, I make you forget, I goad you, I ignore you, I give you hints, I give you false hints, I pray for variety and it's the same flavor time after time again. I've had enough. Leave me in peace. Do not return. You will know of the triumph I see on the horizon soon enough."

The clouds in the sky stop moving, and then begin to drift away from the central spot above the black sphere. Kan and Loth pull their swords from the air, then trot quickly backwards as they sheathe them. Fire collects out of wisps of smoke from the sand, before a radiant fireball flies into the air and back into the divine nether from which Lianna had called it. Each of you walks back, places your hand on Kedi, and the scene before you vanishes as you find yourself in dull land. Kedi and Yildiz fly into the air, then return to the ground. The party strides backwards for two hours. And before you know it, the grouchy Darfellan is tossing you ashore before getting ready to head back on his rapidly deteriorating ship. The Quarut is waiting for you on the beach. The eagle-eyed among you notice its gears running in the opposite direction as time is reversing, and then returning to normal along with the passage of time. Despite being as affected as everything else by the Phane's power, it seems to retain its memory of the erased timeline.

"Welcome back. I trust you were successful? And that you managed to do what you could not do 31,536,000 times previously. If not, I daresay you intend to hurl yourselves right back into the fray. Who am I to stand in the way of tradition?"

[Renen]

I remember that number (or some number roughly around that much) from the hypothetical question about:
"If you would get paid a dollar for every number you counted up to, would you do it?" No stopping to eat, sleep, etc. And the joke was that even if you could for one year without sleeping, pausing to eat, etc. You still only get like 31. 5 million, while bill Gates earned that in a few minutes.

Vivi makes a show of looking around.

"It said it tried every possible thing in the apparent millions of times we did this. Has he tried... dying and not reversing time? Because I think that would be kinda cool to try... "

She sat in the Nymph's hands batting her tail around. The Psychic cat hated having her memories messed with. And apparently she was missing an awful lot of repetitive battles that she should remember.

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan stands speechless for a long minute after their...return. The creature's speech--his rant, rather--had been unnerving to begin with...and all those methods he had used to render their attacks useless. He knew exactly what they would do, and the perfect way to defeat them. And yet it hadn't! This doesn't make sense!

But this mechanical being from another plane...he seems to be unaffected by the changed time. Despite all that you've said, this is our first time coming here. We had never met that creature before, and yet it seemed to know us and our skills inside and out. You seem to know details we do not--over, uh, thirty-five million times our knowledge, it seems. Please, help us to understand what is happening.

Diplomacy, if needed: [roll0]

[Business Scrub]

Lianna blinks and looks around, piecing together what just happened.
"What did we do wrong..?" She thinks, mostly to herself. This was infuriating: somehow not remembering. Millions of moments forgotten? Was is possible? Wouldn't she be tired of fighting for decades?
"No! We're not going to screw it up this time. There has to be something we're not trying. Why did he let us remember this time? What was that thing behind him..?"

Lianna begins pacing back and forth, certain there was an answer in front of them.

Any chance of a Bardic Lore check helping on this specific Phane or the thing behind him?
[roll0]

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis is also frustrated about these events and their apperant powerlessness against this creature, and he is also a little bit annoyed at the Quarut making fun of them. But he is a trained herald and diplomat, and knows not to let those emotions affect him when he addresses the ineviteable:
"You told us to come back when we remember. We do now. We were unable to defeat this creature as you knew we would. I believe you are the one wasting time now. Tell us what we need to know to stop this menace."

[Nettlekid]

"A dragon after my own heart, if I had one," the Quarut remarks. It ponders its next words to be as unambiguous as possible.
"You were never victorious. You had not succeeded. You did not kill it, not by any meaningful definition of the word 'dead.' You have not been teleported back to your previous position, you are not 'back' anywhere, you are 'still' standing where you were. Whatever battle by your perception just ensued did not actually happen, not yet. And as such, no result is set in stone. If the end result is that the Phane was not defeated, then you will not defeat it. The Phane can look to the past and future and draw from them as it pleases to shape the present, which shapes the past and future. If you say you killed the Phane, then it truly was dead. But it has the power to affect itself in the past and future, a power granted to it by its schemes and only a shadow of what its strength will be. A past or future version of the Phane changed the conditions of the Phane as it fought you, tipping the scales to its favor, and preventing that death from ever happening. As long as it has ever had power like that, it cannot die.

Unfortunately you are fighting the Phane where it has the greatest advantage, in matters of temporal and causal manipulations. The questions I am hearing you ask prove that you do not understand that which the Phane has mastered. The gravity of the matter is that once those goals have been achieved, whatever the Phane becomes will not be limited by words like 'yet' and 'until.' In your perception of the present, the Phane waits for its plan to bear fruit. In the future, it will. What the Phane becomes will be unbound by time, and can bequeath its power through all iterations of itself in the past and future. Because its plan will eventually succeed, it effectively already has. That is why it is so strong now.

And yet, we are not at the moment under its rule. Tell me, I imagine that you experienced a moment of peace and calm when you believed you had defeated the Phane. There was no assault, nothing to fear. That time is gone, it never happened. The only remnant of it is in your memory, and even that is unnatural, granted only by the Phane's whim. Those 31,536,000 times, you stood at this point with no memory of that rest, and it truly was erased. You can consider this age we live in now to be just such a period, a point in time that will be erased when the Phane rises and rewrites all of history to its liking.

To you, it began waiting when you began perceiving flaws in the Material Plane's timestream. Chronologically, that is true. But it has been only a few months by your perception that have passed between then and now. With all the time that has drained, the Phane has been waiting centuries. It can be as patient as it pleases, time is not an issue. However, you've been stalling effectively. Every time the Phane returns you to where you stand now, it undoes time and thereby undoes the work it has been doing. In these 31,536,000 attempts, you have been pausing the Phane's progress, for no less than 180 years considering you took at least two hours in each attempt. Good job you. However, in each attempt, one single second slips through the cracks. In all these tries, one full year of real time has passed. Now, compared to 180 years or the centuries prior, one year is little. But the Phane can wait. It can let those seconds build to eons, when its plan forms. Of course, the Phane is temperamental too, and even if it can, it doesn't want to wait all that time. You were entertaining it before, but it looks like its patience with you has run out. I think it previously wanted to test elements of chaos in time, that each iteration wasn't quite the same, but it's bored itself with that endeavor. I don't think it will be as merciful if you return.

Your two options at this point are to either wait out the rest of your lives and enjoy yourself before all that enjoyment is erased from history and it never happens. If that is unsatisfactory, then your other option is to retroactively stop the Phane from coming to power in the future. The secret to this is the sphere, naturally, the orb from which the Phane is drawing its powers. But the orb is flawlessly guarded from the outside, as you've seen. The Phane, fueled by its future self, is unbeatable. The only weakness of the orb is from within. Have you figured out what that orb is? The hint is that time passes for living creatures more slowly than the rest of the world, which is the exact opposite of what a Phane can normally do. That is because the orb is an extension of the Phane's Stasis Touch power expanded to cover a wide area, and in draining the time from that area as it normally does it is having the inverse effect on the rest of the world. How wide is the area it's draining? One thousand miles in diameter. This island is inside that sphere. A civilization of ageless creatures lived here for thirty thousand years. The Phane encapsulated the entire history of these people and draws upon it continuously for energy. What you stand on now is a wasted husk, the old corpse of the island. It exists here, now, because the Phane is already done with it. But the living island lasts within the sphere until the end of all time while the Phane continually harvests it. It harvests it only once, but that 'once' must be eternal. That's where the Phane gains its power. You cannot defeat the Phane now because you have not ever defeated it. If it wins, and it has, then its future is secured. It can laugh at any offense because there was a time when it was unharmed, and it can always return to that time. Because it once was, it will always be. But if you prevent the island from being harvested, it never will have been. And the Phane will never come to power. It will be defeated before it can be a threat. That is how you win. Any questions?"

[Renen]

"Assuming you have some way to gives us the chance to stop the island from being harvested, what's to stop IT from killing us once it realized what we are doing? With the power he got, I don't see why he can't squash anyone who tries to mess with his precious Island. "

[Business Scrub]

Lianna stops pacing and listens to the inevitable. It was hard to believe, but was there any better explanation for what was going on. Thirty million times... Lianna suddenly grows furious.

"And you are just telling us now?? We've done this millions of times, and you only speak up now?? Why not tell us after the first hundred?

Let's say we go back to when the island was being... Siphoned. What is to stop a future version of the Phane, one where he has succeeded, to come back and stop us from preemptivly stopping him?"

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan sheathes his sword as the Quarut beings his protracted explanation. The import of his words settles on the goliath, and he takes off his helmet. Rubbing his bald head, he closes his eyes to gather himself. It is all so much to take in--over thirty million times have they repeated this, fighting that creature. It was toying with them all along.

So...that sphere he was manipulating holds the civilization upon which he is feasting? he asks, brows furrowed in thought. How are we to prevent it from beginning its plan, when we have no way to travel through time ourselves?

[Raunchel]

Yildiz feels her anger welling up. She wants to hurt someone, destroy something, or just say something really mean, like that someone looks like a frog. "That is really mean of him. But is there a spell for it? I can't just hop back in time. Not even Kedi can do that."

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis ponders on all this for a while before he responds.
"So what you are saying is that the only way to stop the Phane is to stop it from ever harvesting the time. And we can only do that by destroying that sphere. But it is impervious from the outside and can only be attacked from within. Correct so far?

Now all we need is a way inside that sphere and a way to destroy it from there. Although I would expect its not as easy as simply teleporting inside it and throwing a couple of disintegration spells, is it?"

[Nettlekid]

"Certainly not. The sphere doesn't truly exist, not as a physical construction in any sense. It's an abstraction formed from the coalescence of time. After all, this enormous island is within that sphere, so it doesn't map out 1:1.

As to why I didn't mention this before, this is the first time the Phane has let you remember your battle. I expected it would be this time, if any. You would not have been mentally equipped to deal with this threat had you not seen the Phane's power firsthand, and until this point right now you had not. It was imperative for you to experience it. Besides, as I mentioned, you've been stalling at an excellent rate. It's given me plenty of time to think things over. So it certainly wasn't for naught.

Your other questions and concerns I could field, but I expect my current employer would be better suited to the task. I am little more than an envoy, and I am to take you to him once you understand in the vaguest sense the task at hand. I have the means here, though I am actually unable to make use of them."

The Quarut reveals to you a scroll, and hands it to whoever takes it. Anyone with Spellcraft (a few of you) can identify it as a scroll of Word of Recall, designed to take you somewhere far to the west and pretty far straight up.

[Business Scrub]

Lianna casts an untrusting gaze at the Quarut. She didn't like the creature on principle, and something of this still reeked. Still, there didn't seem to be any other options. She snatches the scroll and reads it skeptically.

"I'm glad our one hundred and eighty years of fighting has given you time to think. Fine, shall we go to see this 'employer'? As I understand it, the longer we stand here and don't fight the phane, the more powerful he gets. Quarut, are we to take you with us?"

Provided all are fine with going with her, she reads from the scroll and casts the Word of Recall.

Spellcraft check for the scroll: [roll0]

[Nettlekid]

There is a flicker of bright yellow divine energy radiating out from the scroll, which reaches out to the five party members and the Quarut (assuming Kedi's in a bag again or something). In an instant they are plucked from the Material Plane, passed through the Astral, and deposited somewhere presumably on the Material Plane. You come to a rest standing on a large stone pedestal with stairs carved down. You are in a large hall with a high ceiling, and a brisk wind blows through to the holes carved to form doors in the outside. The entire building seems to be just a cave carved into the side of a mountain, because as far as you can see there are no breaks in the stonework, even around the tall stone columns rising along the center of the hall. However it is clearly not naturally formed because the masonry is highly defined and the architecture is evocative of a cathedral.

This monastery is far from uninhabited. The majority of monks are tall, slender, robed Githzerai discussing with one another, meditating, and writing in journals. By the presence of insectoid Dromites and glittering Maenads, there are many other naturally Psionic races who seem to be in an acolyte position. An humanoid creature whose off-putting piercing green eyes and bright red hair give him away as an Elan strikes toward you as the Quarut descends from the pedestal.
"Back so soon? Did you forget something?" the Elan asks.
"I've found suitable travelers."
"Oh, haha! Brilliant! That didn't take you long!"
The Quarut does not reply.
"Well, good, good, this way please, thusly, thusly." the Elan continues, and beckons to you four. He walks through the hall toward an area of bookshelves and tables, and a large object covered by a sheet.
"My name is Rasa, acolyte of the third hour to the order of Zerth Cenobites. I trust you know why you're here? Our order commissioned the use of the Quarut to locate the temporal disturbances and seek their rectification. We had had a suspicion that the ancient island would be the source of the problem, mainly due to THIS!"
With a flourish, Rasa grabs the sheet and pulls it off. It falls away to reveal a peculiar metal machine made of large rings and a wide metal dais. The dais is large enough for perhaps five people to stand on if they squeeze, and metal poles rise from the sides up to a dome ten feet above the platform. It's slightly raised and there's a set of stairs leading up to the dais, and on the far side there's some kind of panel.
"This is a relic we uncovered from the island, in a cavern deep underground untouched by any other developments which may have occurred on the surface. Now to be honest...we don't entirely know how it works. But we believe that it represents a fixed point in the incredibly long, contracted timeline of the island. It can take you onto itself at one of three different eras in the island's history, as indicated by this dial. See, there's a symbol of a leaf, an eye, and a hammer. Those are the three key periods of history of the island, and this machine can move forward and backward between them. There seems to be the capacity to fine-tune the travel to literally any single moment in the thirty thousand years from beginning to end, but um...that piece is missing. But still, it can take you to the beginning, middle, and end of the island's timeline. Also, while you return to the device you'll be able to communicate with us on the outside if you need suggestions, guidance, or clarification and would benefit from our research. The only time that will pass for us will be the time spent talking to you - your travelling and adventuring happens within the timeframe of the black sphere, not our world.

Now, I have to warn you. It can take you into the island's encapsulated time because it existed at all points in that time. It can't do the reverse and take you out of the timeline once you're in. The only way to return to this world will be to somehow break the Phane's black sphere from the inside, destabilizing it such that the sphere dissolves and the Phane never had the power it now has. I don't entirely know how to do that, but I would imagine that interfering with the timeline will damage it. Beware, as the timeline becomes less stable the Phane is more likely to take notice and start acting against you, like antibodies fighting a virus. I understand if it's too daunting a task to undertake. It would be asking a huge amount from you."

[Business Scrub]

Lianna takes in this strange place carefully. She was mildly aware that this monastery did not typically take in outsiders. This place was like a breath of fresh air, literally, from all the deadness of the island. The Elan here seemed much more agreeable than the machine that had brought them.

"So this is where the worshipers of Zuoken train; a marvelous place. A pleasure, Rasa. I am Lianna."

Lianna listens to the Elan's explanation, understanding the situation more and more. She waits until he's finished speaking up again. "No task is to dangerous for me: at least not one this important. And I know little of the others, but I believe they're not so quick to shy away from danger as well." She glances over at the others to see if she was right.
"So the phane will be in the past, of course. What stops this present-day phane from coming back to fight us, or to stop him from regressing time once we begin undoing his plans?"

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis is also a bit sceptical about this whole situation, but he is most curious about the methods this Elan is suggesting within the presence of a Quarut. Turning to both of them, but mainly addressing the Quarut he asks:
"So you literally want us to use time travel to create paradoxes, ... or is it paradoxi? ... Whatever, create those things to weaken and damage the timeline to ultimately destroy the sphere?
While we can easily agree that the goal is something we can all agree on, I would have never guessed a Quarut to suggest such methods. Or is your argument there the old "end justifies the means" thing? Because I am not sure I can subscribe to that kind of argument."

[Business Scrub]

Lianna furrows her brow, not really sure where Lothirlodonis was coming from.
"What do you mean? That's a perfectly valid argument. The solution might not always be petty, but if it's what is needed to save people then it's worth it.

[Nettlekid]

Rasa considers your points.
"Well, to start with, not much damages the timestream more than the Phane's actions. If you must make an incision to cut out a tumor, so be it. But more importantly, and I think this will assuage your fears, the entirety of the island's timeline is within that sphere. Think of it not as another point of time in a specific location, but as a pocket universe, a demiplane if you will. The Phane is reaping it and draining it dry with the intent of using its newfound power to exert authority over the cosmos, but the pocket world it created is its own, separate from the rest of time and space. That's why you can't just Teleport or even Plane Shift into it. I don't believe the Quarut has any qualms about interfering with that separate dimension, any more than a Druidic champion of nature would object to you trampling your neighbor's flowerbed."
"Incoherent analogies aside, Rasa is correct. The more egregious crime is the creation of that mockery of a timeline in the first place," the Quarut affirms. "However, your concerns about ends justifying means does hold some merit, especially given what you may have to do once inside that world. The pocket universe is self-contained, and so to break it apart you must reject the very core of its foundation, it's basic blueprints. This is a task suited more in the field of chaos than law for the sake of a greater law, and I understand your hesitation in that respect."

"Yes, quite, your task is far from straightforward. Right now, there's a set timeline within the sphere. Predetermined events that play out and have played out, perpetuating the society and the future of which is being drained by the Phane. Your role is to act as a rogue element, something unanticipated by the Phane and by whatever nature of 'fate' it has scripted into the sphere. By changing history, you can change the path that the future takes and make it...indigestible, for lack of a better work? If it's too far gone the sphere will destabilize, and the Phane will never come to power.

There's a fine line to be walked. Too subtle a change, and the timeline will rectify itself, ironing out minor paradoxes. Too extreme a change, and the Phane has nothing to lose by taking direct action (which it would initially avoid). It's almost like you have to trick the timeline into staying the same until it realizes it can't. For example, let's say you find that a tyrant will rise to power and destroys the land. You might be tempted to kill the tyrant as a child, but the timeline knows that a tyrant must rise to power and so another child will just take its place. But if you kill every child, or all the people of the civilization, then at the point of the tyrant's destruction the timeline will see that all are dead, and this is acceptable to it. Only if you allow the tyrant to come to power and then defeat them would you manage to confuse the timeline to a point where it can't rectify itself. That's the part where communicating with us on the outside is essential, because we have no data from within the sphere at this time. I'm sure we'll be able to locate key points for you once we're made aware of them, but until that point there's not a lot we can say. The most we can ascertain about the culture is what's left of the island, which is to say that it was stripped bare of all natural resources including minerals in the ground, and is for some reason particularly hospitable to Undead and other creatures without a link to the Positive Energy Plane. What kind of civilization results in that outcome after thirty thousand years, well, your guess is as good as mine.

The Phane's interference won't be as direct as I expect you're imagining. For one, because you're infiltrating the captured civilization before its termination, the Phane won't be at its full power. It'll be a prototype of its future self, powerful but as weak as we're hoping to make it. But you won't even have to concern yourself with that; the Phane won't risk interfering with the civilization's timeline for the same reason that you want to. Since the Phane was not a part of the timeline, its addition will risk paradoxes. If anything happens that could not be caused without the Phane's interference, the pocket timestream won't know how to deal with it, and that's bad news for the Phane. It'll interfere in other ways, manipulating authority figures to target you or inciting predestined wars. It's by deviating from that blueprint that you can make a difference."

"In a word, chaos. Bring chaos to the natural order," the Quarut summarizes.

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis looks sad as he has to argue against Lianna.
"No my Lady. "The end justifies the means" is an argument used to justify vile acts to reach some percieved greater good. But the argument is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that this vile act is the only way to reach the greater good and one doesnt have a choice. But almost always, this is not the case. Looking at this tyrant example, one might argue that killing a child that will once become a cruel tyrant is better than not killing it. That creates a false choice between a vile act and a even worse end. Killing the child, or even, god forbid, kill all the children, is the easy way to prevent the tyrants rise to power." Here he glares chastisingly at Rasa. "But there are better, harder ways to prevent that child to turn into a tyrant. One might take it upon himself to raise the child in a way to prevent this sort of thing. Or work to help changing the society in a way that prevents a tyrant from rising. Or at least give the child time to grow up make its own choices in the world and then oppose it, violently if necessary. Killing the child is only the cheap and easy way out. That doesnt make it any less vile.
The path of the righteous is clearly the hard one, but its rewards are also infinitely higher."

He sighs deeply before continuing.

"Now unfortunately there are those rare moments where there truly is no other choice, and I am open to the possiblity that this here might be one of them. However I am not yet totally convinced of it."

[Business Scrub]

Lianna shakes her head in opposition.
"No... That only makes sense if actions are holistically 'good' or 'bad'. But they're not. People can do bad things for good reasons and good things for bad reasons. All that really matters is what the end result that people have to live with is.

Yes, there are lines, and crossing them means you're doing too much for your goal. But that line moves based on the goal. Imagine there is an evil ruler, and every day he slaughters people by the hundreds. There are two ways, at least, to stop him: you spend days and days to change his mind, or you kill him. You could spend weeks taking the 'high ground' and change his mind, but how many good people died in the meantime? Whereas if you just kill the vicious ruler, it's over in a day and more people survive.

I know that's just one example, but the idea is the same: There is more than one way to reach a goal, but they have different costs. The 'good' way is the one that costs people less. It's not about justifying evil, or avoiding the easy path, or some kind of high ground like that. It's about solving the problem and keeping as much good in the world."
She shrugs. "I guess you can argue about what 'good' is, but to me that's all that really matters when you decide if you should do something or not."

[Renen]

Vivi lounges around on the table, near a warm candle, happy knowing that it has atleast a few million more lives than any other cat... apparently.

"You are so scared to mess around with time, but you dont present a better alternative. We have the Quarut telling us its probably going to be fine, and while I understand your apprehension, you have to propose a better plan if you are opposing this one. Otherwise, I am not sure that waiting for the Quarut to finish would produce a better outcome than the one you fear. In this case inaction is worse than the action you are afraid of, and the only way out is to propose a better action or to explain why inaction is infact better."

[Raunchel]

Yildiz listens to all the talking, taking in every last word before she adds in: "Kedi says that doing bad things isn't always bad, but it depends on circumstances. Hurting someone is bad, but if it's a baddie who is really hurting others, hurting the baddie can still be the better thing to do, even if it is bad."

[lonewolf1210]

"There are 2 parts of this discussion: One is a specific one about if the plan proposed by the quarut and the Elan is a good one, and one about the general morality of the argument "end justifies the means". Honestly, I dont believe that I would have brought up the first part if the quarut wasnt here. I was just assuming that he would take a much more rigid stance on this issue, rather than advocating the use of chaos as a weapon. Personally I believe Law and Order are powerful tools for the forces of good, but one should never hide behind laws to what is right. So if noone here can come up with an alternative, I will accept this plan.

The second discussion however on the general principle of "end justifies the means" is one I do stand strong on, even though discussion about it right now is not neccessary to advance in the mission right now.

Of course there are shades of grey, but in general the gods have taught us that actions are good or evil. Killing the ruler in your example is not an evil act. Violence itself is not evil if it is justified. Killing a child that we know will one day turn into that evil ruler however clearly is. Killing the ruler and his family to avoid any possible revenge is as well. As is burning down the whole keep with no regard for the collateral damage.

People doing bad things for good reasons or good things for bad reasons are doing just that. The good doesnt outweigh the bad. Doing both good and evil things is mortal. But one should not make the mistake to call a vile act good, just because it serves the greater good."

[Business Scrub]

"Don't you see though? You keep catching yourself. 'In this example it's ok.' 'In that case it's not evil.' But actions don't exist without a context. So in some context, actions you labeled as evil become 'acceptable'."
She smiles a bit. Her fey mind was used to seeing the world in shades of grey and situational encounters. Perhaps she could get Lothir to see things her way as well.
"How far does that morality stretch Lothir? 'Killing the ruler's family' is bad... unless it's in the right context. Burning down his keep is evil... unless it's in the right context. Doing bad things is bad... unless it's in the right context."
Lianna laughed merrily, hoping the half-dragon was taking the argument as lightly as she was. Especially when he mentioned that doing good and evil is mortal.

"This conversation isn't over, but we should probably have it when the fate of the earth doesn't hang in the balance."

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan shakes his head. It is true that no situation exists within a vacuum, Lady Lianna--however, I daresay you and Sir Lothirlondonis differ greatly in how far your morality "stretches", he says with a wry grin.

To Rasa, he says, Is activating the machine as simple as pressing the correct button? And can we transport between those three points in time freely--that is, if we attempt to make a change after the "eye" and dislike the results, can we return to the "eye" time before we made the attempt? Although I'm not sure of the ramifications of doing that too many times, it seems we may run the risk of seeing other versions of ourselves if we do that?

[Nettlekid]

Rasa allows the dragon and the nymph to discuss the issues of ethics, pleased that they're having such an open discussion in the temple. It's a place of learning, after all. While they discuss, and a Githzerai has a very similar argument with a Maenad behind them, Rasa turns to Kan.
"Yes, the operation of the machine is quite simple. The dial has three pre-set locations, so all you need to do is switch it to one of those three and the machine takes you to that time within the sphere. And yes, that is a crucial element of the creation of these paradoxes. You will be able to travel between eras as you like, but be aware that you will return to the same starting point within each era. If you go to the era of the Eye, then to the Leaf, then back to the Eye, I expect...well, actually, I don't know what to expect. Perhaps there will be more than one of you as you start at the same time, or perhaps you'll merge and...erase your former selves' previous actions? That doesn't sound very likely. But I'm afraid that because we don't know how to retrieve someone from the sphere, we haven't sent anyone inside yet, so we can't say for certain the results of extended use."

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis nods solemly. "At least on the last part I agree. Lets save this discussion for some later point."
He makes no secret that he doesnt take these questions of morality lightly, but still there is not a hint of aggression within him. He is rather serious and passionate about it.

Turning to the machine he asks: "Now where do you all think we should go first? To the start to see the beginning of the world, the middle to see how it developed or to the end to see how it will decline?
I personally have no strong opinion on that."

[Business Scrub]

Lianna watches Lothir turn away seriously, and felt a bit bad. Not with what she had said certainly: she had meant every word. But the gold knight was clearly very passionate about this. Indeed, it was one of the things she liked about him. Her aloofness to the whole debate could well have been misinterpreted as not caring, and she didn't want to leave it on a sour note. She put an empathetic hand on his arm and was about to say something, but Lothir had already moved on. She lingered for a second, then changed her mind and brought her hand back by her side, focusing on the task at hand.

"It seems to me that we should start at the earliest chronological point, no? If we change something in the past, it may invalidate future changes we make. Best to avoid all that and go chronologically. At least on our first go around, don't you think?"

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan crosses his arms in contemplation. Will we experience time normally while inside of the sphere? he asks Rasa. If we age normally, then we may not have the time to go to the beginning in order to see what happens over the course of thirty thousand years. Well, you may, Lady, but for all we know I may not live to see even the first major turning point.

If we go to the end and are able to get some kind of accurate report on the island's history, then we would know which areas to focus on to begin with.

[Raunchel]

"Always the end. Everything ends, what lis born dies, what is built is ruined and what is written fades.", Yildiz whispers, "He has it right
I guess, in the beginning we won't know what to do. And maybe they have history books that we can use!"

[lonewolf1210]

"Accurate reports for a history spanning tens of thousands of years will be hard to come by. A civilization of ageless beeings could do a better job in writing down history than humans for example, but still any reports more than one or two thousand years old would be unreliable at best. We would be dealing with myths and legends concerning the other 2 points in our timeline.
I am not saying that this would be worthless, but we should be wary to trust in that information too much.

Personally, I believe that one of our medium-term goals should be to look for the missing piece on the artifact that lets us fine tune the settings. This could be a wild-goose chase, but it would expand our options significantly."

[Renen]

"Might be best to start at the beginning. Though who knows how this all works. Might as well pick something, because unless you are all secretly experts in temporal magic then none of us really know what will happen. And I'm getting hungry! I bet they have fish over there! "

[Nettlekid]

"It seems that you're divided, two for the Leaf and two for the Hammer, with sir Dragon undecided. Take your time, it is a significant choice. After all, once you go in you won't be able to come back out. If there are arrangements you need to make or equipment you want to gather, this would be your last chance to do so.

To answer your question yes, once you enter into the sphere you will be aging normally with respect to the time you experience, not with respect to the minimal time passing in our outside world. But on the bright side, the temporal dilation effect we're experiencing which is shortening all our spells and powers won't be affecting you either, so you'll be able to operate normally. "

[Raunchel]

"Maybe we could flip a coin? That's what I do when I'm undecided!", Yildiz suggests, already planning on cheating, of course.

[lonewolf1210]

"well, if I am to be the tiebreaker then so be it. Lets go to the end and try to learn about the past there as well. But I would suggest not staying at any point in time for too long for now before we understand more about how this thing works."

Once again he sighs deeply and turns to do something that he feels needs to be done.

"Now there is one last thing that needs to happen before we can start this time travel adventure." He turns towards Yildiz and kneels down so that his eyes are on the same level as hers. "I would never allow an ordinary girl to put herself into danger like this. But your understanding of the situation has made it obvious that you are no ordinary girl that can take care of herself, with the help of a cat that is also anything but ordinary.
If we are to succeed on this mission, we need to start working as a team right now. I am not asking you to reveal your deepest personal secrets, but what I need from you is some measure of honest sign of good faith and reveal at least something about your nature to us. We need to be able to trust one another and trust only works both ways."

[Raunchel]

Yildiz sees that this is the moment where she must choose. Either she leaves, or she says something. Vivi knows something and might already have told the others. And so she begins, a sad look on her face: "Well, ehm, how do I say this? I was murdered by a really mean man. But I got better. I just can't grow up anymore, so I had to learn some tricks. And for some reason I am really strong. And I can run really, really fast, even through the air. But I can't eat candy anymore, and I love candy. Now eating just makes me a little sick. Or really sick, depending on how much it was. And I can't drink my milk anymore, which must be why I can't grow up. And oh yes, I can make things float, and have my swords."

She lets her swords fall into her hands. "And I can use these a little, but I'm a lot better at hiding."

[Business Scrub]

Yildiz's explanation leave Lianna a bit stunned. She had heard a lot of strange things in her time, but was the child trying to say she was... a vampire? Lianna had met vampires, of course. Not all of them had been terrible, but undeath had driven many of them mad. This girl though... she seemed downright innocent. Could it be that pausing her growth as a human also paused her childlike mind? If so, she couldn't be bad, just... misguided.

"Yildiz, how old are you? And erm... how long have you been that old?"

She gave Lothir a look as if to say 'what do we do', and readied herself to grab him. She knew the half-dragon had no love of undead, but Lianna prayed to Ehlonna he wouldn't just start smiting.

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis was prepared to smile at whatever her explanation was, but with this one, his smile seems a tiny bit forced. His tone stays friendly though: "Thank you for beeing honest. This and your intentions to help us are enough for me for now." He nods and stands up again, then reconsiders for a second. "Although we WILL have to find a suitable solution for your ... dietary requirements."

[Raunchel]

"I'm seven, but I don't know how long I've been that old, but it is for at least twenty years, I can remember celebrating my birthday a lot of times. And don't worry about things like eating and such, I can do that myself, and I only use meanies, who are really asking for it.", the little vampire replies, putting her swords away again.

[Business Scrub]

Lianna nods, both in agreement with what Lothir said and accepting Yildiz's explanation for now.

"Either way, this isn't something that should stop us from going into the bubble. And time is of the essence."

[Renen]

The group hears some strange sound, after a few seconds you realize that it is in fact the sound a laughing cat makes. However no clever mental comments are made.

[Nettlekid]

"Excellent, no time like the present. Well. I mean. The past and future's alright too."

Rasa ushers the party onto the dais, pushing you slightly so they all fit in the enclosure of the ring. He pulls a few levers in the device, ending with the one he had gestured toward which activates the machine. He quickly hurries out as the bulb on the top of the enclosure opens and allows yet another metal ring to expand outward. Once it has extended fully, out to the edge of the dais, the ring segments into three concentric rings, the center of which slowly descends to the bottom of the platform. It houses a thin clear panel, filled with a silver-white fluid no thicker than the soap film forming a bubble. When the descending ring connects with the circumference of the dais, and the silver-white fluid forms a cylindrical wall around you, the sounds of the monastery outside vanish in an instant.

A rectangular panel toward the back of the device flickers to life.
"Ah, yes, hello? Hello? Can you hear me?" Rasa's face appears with an exaggerated fisheye effect around the circumference of the enclosure.
"We've initiated the delivery, and raised the curtain on our end. You're already gone. Right now, you and the machine are all inside a kind of void space. Well, void time. In fact, the space is the only thing that's determined. You're deep underground, where we first unearthed the machine, but you don't exist right now because there's not a decided time to exist at. You see the large dial that I pointed out earlier, with the leaf, the eye, and the hammer? Pick one and turn the pointer of the dial to it. That'll send you somewhen you want to go!"

You switch the dial to the Hammer icon, and the actual process of the traveling through time was fairly anticlimactic. There was a faint humming as whatever powered the machine registered to the new input, and then the silver screen connected to the center ring began to rise. The humming stops when the screen fully retracts into the extended upper ring, and the machine is still. Perhaps a high-tech time travel machine should be silent and smooth as it functions, but still, except for the fact that you're in a totally different place than you were a moment ago it would be hard to believe it functioned at all. Instead of the wide monastery and Rasa's study area which had just been surrounding the machine, there is nothing but the pitch-blackness of a pocket taken out of the earth. You are pelted with different types of stones that suddenly appear and fill in the spots where you stand, and roll out into the cavern. Presumably these are stones that Rasa's team sent into the pocket timeline, and they've all now appeared at exactly the same time as you did.

Those of you with Darkvision can see that you're in a small cave, about fifteen feet wide leaving only a small gap on any side off of the dais, presumably deep underground. There's a small sheet of water on the bottom of the cave which comes from a slight trickle on the damp ceiling, and tiny bubbles near the back of the cave (back measured only by the back of the dais) show where the water is dripping out somewhere else. There is no visible living creature, or even growths like moss and fungi. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the cave are solid stone with no visible breaks. In fact, there is no entrance or exit to the cave whatsoever. It's just a pocket of nothing inside the stone. Well, Rasa did say that the machine wasn't discovered for the thousands of years that it existed in the timeline. You guess this is why, since it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, when the haystack is the planet.

[lonewolf1210]

"Well this was rather anticlimactic." Lothirlondonis tries to step of the dias, but doesnt seem to fit anywhere. "I guess we´re going to have to use magic to get out of here. But lets test something first." He uses his bless Spell-like ability on the group to check if the duration works normal now.
Once that is confirmed, he nods towards Yildaz: "I believe Kedi is up again. Anyone has a preference where to teleport to? I would simply suggest the beach we arrived on and go from there."

[Business Scrub]

Lianna looks around at the dark cave, her eyes unsuccessfully trying to adjust to the light.

"Do you think that spell will work? We saw a different version of this island. It might not be enough of a connection. On the other hand, I have a simpler way of getting out."

She begins an incantation in druidic, and a mysterious breeze whips up around the cave. The six of them feel their bodies become as insubstantial as a cloud, drifting in the breeze.

"Now, we need only find a porous surface in the walls and we're as good as on the surface."

Wind walk spell.

[Renen]

Vivi cloud flies over and latches onto Lianna cloud.

"Lets get out of this wet place, and go lie around in the sun. I mean... most of us." Her voice is slightly sarcastic.

Now that no time passes back when we came from, we dont have to rush quite as much. I vote for some warming up in the sun, havent seen it in... oh wait..."


Now that buffs are a thing, Vivi has following buffs on her all the time, since they got such long duration:
All shared with Psicrystal.

Vigor: 75 HP
Inertial Armor: 11 AC
Share Pain

[Nettlekid]

Transformed into vapor, the party is able pass into the slightest cracks eroded through the stone and rise up to the surface. The whole process takes a little less than half a day, because of your slow progress and sheer depth, but once you're partly through it's wiser to keep going than try to double back. You wouldn't want the spell to run out while you're within the stone, after all. You're all starving by the time you're out, though.

You eventually emerge from the bowels of the earth onto the surface of the world, and the change in scenery is a little jarring, but only a little. Having opted to go to the final era of the island, you might expect the land to look more like the island you just left, and it's not dreadfully dissimilar. The sun, for once still in the sky, beats down mercilessly on the dry, cracked land. The land itself remains as impossibly flat as you know it to be from the future, but instead of an expanse of empty space you are greeted with thin, towering skyscrapers of beaten metal rising from their roots below the earth and into the air. The strange twisted metal ruins you previously saw would be all that remains of these in the future, but there is substantially more metal in these than there was on the island. The air is scorching hot, not just from the sun but from every piece of metal surrounding you, and as you watch smoke and steam billow from the pipes pockmarking their sides you realize these must be heavy duty factories of some sort. There is a thudding and a humming through the ground that might be the audible product of machinery.

You are also very much not alone. All around you, hard at work to maintain whatever...society this is, are innumerable mechanical tradesmen. All perfectly identical save for the carved mark on their forehead and miscellaneous wear and tear over their bodies, these are readily identifiable as mass-produced Warforged. You've materialized from the ground just in front of them, but they're not paying you any notice. Carrying stones and beams of steel, or wearing armor enchanted with fire resistance to deal with buckets of molten metal, they move at a brisk pace and don't get in each others' way. They're like ants, if ants were six-foot-tall metal warriors.

[Business Scrub]

Lianna solidifies her body, blinking in the sunlight and enjoying the feeling of the rays on her skin once again. It was an incredible relief to see the Sun moving as was natural, even if it was in a different time. For a moment she stands there, closing her eyes with her face pointed towards the Sun, endlessly glad to be out of the claustrophobic tunnel.

"Phew. By the gods, that is a long way underground. I'm famished; is anyone else--"

She glances around at the automatons in their endless working. Ugly metal everywhere, factories chugging out smog, no actual life to be seen. They definitely should have gone to Leaf. "Creeped out? Is anyone else creeped out by all the machines? It feels like... a ghost town."

[Renen]

Vivi turns towards the sun.
"Oh, feels nice to finally be warm again! One dead vampire coming up in 3... 2..."

[Raunchel]

Yildiz feels rather annoyed by Vivi, but mutilatibg her in front of the others might not work all that well. "Don't say such mean things. Please? I hate it when people are mean."

She looks around: "Are we going to one of the towers?"

[Renen]

Vivi laughs again, but says nothing further on the matter of sunlight and vampires.

[Business Scrub]

"Should we?" Lianna says at Yildiz's request. "We're supposed to be tampering with the timeline, but we don't yet know what's important. I vote we do some snooping around for a while, and find out what we're supposed to be influencing. Hopefully our goal is to stop this... horrible mechanized world from ever coming to be." She then casts a sympathetic look in the vampire's direction, and disapproving stare at Vivi. If they were going to do this, they needed to be working as one.
"But if you want to get out of the sun I don't blame you. Inside a tower is as good a place to start as any."

[Nettlekid]

Most of the towers have open doors, and it's not hard to just follow one of the many industrious Warforged into their place of work. Within the tower you cast your eyes skyward, and see a spiderweb of walkways crossing across the upper levels. You are immediately harried to the side by a pair of Warforged carrying a long I-beam.
"Coming through."
"One side."
"Out of the way."
"Hot iron."
"Move it."
These are the greetings you receive with nearly every step you take. The Warforged's bulky size belies the precision with which they're working.

A dazzling waterfall of molten iron pours white-hot from high above, filling some kind of mold lying flat on a raised table a little above eye level. One Warforged by the table holds a peculiar etched tablet, and placing its hand against it the Warforged releases a jet of icy energy from its mouth, recognizable to those with Spellcraft as a Frost Breath spell, which immediately locks in the shape of the molten metal. Another Warforged on the side turns a crank, raising the table higher and tilting it vertically. A pod is assembled around the slab, and you notice a slightly taller and thinner Warforged with cables extending from its torso like a cloak step into view to oversee the process. When the pod is removed, a detailed skeleton of iron is pried out from the slab. Immediately three Warforged set upon it, fastening slabs of flat and curved metal to the skeletal body. In no time at all, the unmistakable figure of a Warforged is created, suspended in the air. The abnormal Warforged steps forward, holding an iron chisel in one hand and a piton in the other. Like a dot printer it rapidly chisels out a series of lines and dots on the forehead of the newly created Warforged, and no sooner does the abnormal Warforged step back than a flicker of pale light begins to shine from the previously empty "skull" of the newly forged creature. It looks to the left and right, surveying its surroundings. For an eerie moment, the entire factory is still and silent. The abnormal Warforged looks it in the eyes, while one of the generic Warforged takes notes.
"Activation successful. Foreman, log serial number KF-110110. KF-110110, designation Mining Sector 8 Party 2 Member 7 the Second. Congratulations, you are bodied. Confirm designation. What is your name?"
The newborn Warforged pauses.
"I am Mining Sector 8 Party 2 Member 7 Beta," it finally replies.
"Reaction time 84% normal, make note of calibration upon return," the abnormal Warforged instructs to the foreman. "Mining Sector 8 Party 2 Member 7 Beta, your primary task is to replenish the ore used in your construction and close the deficit left by Mining Sector 8 Party 2 Member 7 Alpha in the times since that unit's destruction. Seek Mining Sector 8 Party 2 Member 1 Alpha and you will receive your assignment. Fetch a Scout as a guide," it snaps, and the foreman passes word along. A Warforged Scout clambers up the ramp and stands in attention in front of the abnormal Warforged, before walking away with the newly born Warforged in tow.
"Begin preliminary work for Mining Sector 9 Party 4 Member Alpha."
And the factory is back to work. The abnormal Warforged continues to go over numbers written down over concentric circles hovering around its arm.

"Factory 33 is operating at 83% the turnover rate of last year. Projected ore retrieval increased by 6% with Mining Sector 8 Party 2 Member 7 Beta in operation...not enough, depleted veins reduce retrieval rate by 13%. At this rate..." it mutters to itself, descending from the upper levels toward the ground floor. It is at this point that it catches sight of the party, and stops going over the numbers.
"Foreman, personnel report," it demands. The foreman hustles to the abnormal Warforged's side.
"We have Factory 33 Smelter 1 through 19, Factory 33 Welder 1 through 8, Factory 33 Supplier 1, 4, and 7 on premises, District 5x03 Scouts H through R except for K and Q, and Capital Special Reserve Arcanist 4 on loan," the foreman rattles off.
"Record of unidentified personnel?"
"None."
"Prepare to add to the list. You," the abnormal Warforged glances at Kan. "Identify, what is your serial number? State your purpose and directive. And identify your cargo," it finishes, casting a glance over the rest of the party, especially at Lothirlondonis. You realize that because of Kan's fully armored body, this abnormal Warforged has mistaken him as being at least enough of a construct to warrant talking to.

[lonewolf1210]

This industrial city somewhat reminds Lothirlondonis of the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus. He had been there only once very briefly, and like similarly all this seems much to sterile to him. No emotion, no art and no music. But he would have to put his personal feelings behind him. They had a job to do.

As Kan is directly addressed and hesitates in his answer, Lothirlondonis steps in. "Greetings Foreman. We are potential customers and are here for an inspection of the production facilities to overview the quality control measures taken to ensure the products are up to our specifications."


Bluff:[roll0]

Lothirlondonis doesnt like lying. While he does have a talent for it, he usually prefers to go with the truth, but it had become obvious to him that on this mission he would have to bend that rule somewhat. They just couldnt go around telling people that their goal of beeing here was to destroy the timelines. Half of them would think they are crazy and the other half wouldnt understand anything in that sentence.
He just hoped that Bahamut would understand.

[Raunchel]

Yildiz hates constructs, but at least warforged can be hurt. And of course Loth is messing things up. There don't seem to be people around to buy things. And so she sapproaches the foreman, whispering softly "I am sorry, unit LL1100110 has been malfunctioning recently, but his qualities as an inspector have not been diminished. It functions in the mistaken belief that it serves flesh-based masters. For it's comfort we have been created to resemble such creatures. With that belief reinforced LL1100110 has shown itself capable of easily finding any flaw. Could we be given a tour of the facility to uncover any inefficiency? "

someone please roll my bluff for me.

[Business Scrub]

Lianna watches the group debate with the robotic foreman under the blazing Sun, scratching absentmindedly behind Vivi's ears. She nods, effortlessly rolling into the bluff.

"Right. Higher-up decided there was too much preparation between inspections, so they've implemented a Spontaneous Inspection Committee. You wouldn't have known we were coming by design, but we are here nonetheless. Prepare for inspection."

Yildiz's Bluff: [roll0]
Lianna's Bluff: [roll1]

[Nettlekid]

The abnormal Warforged has been writing down everything you've said, not seeming to pay attention to you as you speak but taking it down nonetheless. When you pause, it looks back up, and then to the foreman.
"Send report to Factories 34 through 40. Sending will read "Counselor Scrivener delayed. Postpone scheduled unit creation. Allot appropriate resources to factory maintenance, perform maintenance until further notice. Keep detailed record of unscheduled maintenance procedures."
The foreman nods, and goes off to a different Warforged holding more carved stone tablets in the distance. After brief discussion, you see them start to cast Sending.

Scrivener, presumably this abnormal Warforged's name, turns back to you.
"Juggernaut need not be bothered with this. Your words are nonsensical. The L series has yet to be scheduled for production, nor to date has there to take been a subseries of greater than one hundred units. There is no uncertainty of the growing inefficiency of the factory, it does not require inspection to verify this. And most importantly," with this it seems to sneer, though a lack of flexible facial skin and muscles makes this uncertain, "I am 'higher-up.' You are suffering from sustained misinformation and I would commission you be melted down for parts if...that were possible. You've said one thing undecipherable to me: flesh-based. Clarify the meaning of this descriptor."

[Business Scrub]

The concept of a natural being being so foreign to these things was mind-boggling to the druidess.

"Flesh based? As in... made of muscle and bone and skin instead of metal and... Whatever else makes you move."

A new idea comes to Lianna, and their other lie certainly wasn't getting any traction. "You are correct though, we must be mistaken. We natural creatures are your ancestors from a great many years back, possibly thousands, possibly from further back than your records: the creators of the first of your kind. But we have been in a kind of... stasis for all that time. Are there no organic creatures here? And what have you done to this island?"

I don't know if I need another bluff check, but probably. [roll0]

[Renen]

Vivi rolls her eyes, but its quite hard to see a cat doing so, thus the gesture goes largely unnoticed.

"They are asking if there are any intelligent creatures here that are not warforged."

[Nettlekid]

Scrivener tilts its head, looking at you.
"The...creator, of our kind? You are among the PreForged?"
Its voice is a little louder than it expected, and a number of the Warforged working in the factory pause to look at you, then each other, in surprise.
"You...do not appear as we expected. To begin, the fact that you already have bodies is surprising. If you are PreForged, then you know of the Grand Design. And better still, your minds are fresh, perhaps you can fill in some of our missing details. If you can tell us how many PreForged lie in wait yet in the aether, we can optimize our production to account for that number. And you are they who made the FirstForged without the means of the factories, which means you know yet another way. If you have means of teaching, our arcanists can replicate your methods and make our production faster still. Perhaps I spoke hastily. This is a matter for even Juggernaut to be concerned with. Come, this will be of great interest.
Scrivener begins speaking precise magic words as its cloak-like cables shake and shudder in arcane configurations. To those with Spellcraft it's clear it's casting Teleport, and it reaches out to you to take its hand and go wherever it's going.

[Renen]

"Optimize the production of what exactly? We know little of the current situation, so please go into as much detail as possible. Just as you see us for the first time, we also see you for the first time." Vivi makes no move to take his hand, as she is already being carried, and would go along for the ride regardless.

I assume Lianna (by default) is Vivi's transporter? If needed she can be either dropped for combat or just hold on to the shoulder with claws and decent climb check. This is just because walking around while blind only really works out for the Daredevil and Zatoichi.

[Business Scrub]

The warforged's sudden excitement caught Lianna off guard: she wasn't aware the machines could feel excitement.
"I... suppose we can do that, yes..? But like Vivi said: we know as little about you as you do about us. Why don't you help fill in the gaps. What is the Grand Design, and why do you need more, erm, Preforged?" She tries not to speak to uncertainty, hoping their plan wasn't something horrible.

Sorry for the late response. I thought I posted a while ago, but my phone ate it.

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan had kept his silence after the others spoke up. He had intended to pass himself off as a Warforged, before Loth and the others spoke up on his behalf.

The revelation that these Warforged have, in a way, almost deified their living predecessors comes as a surprise. It makes him wonder what exactly happened here. If they need to know how many, uh, "Preforged" there are in order to "account" for them, then...did the people of this island create these Warforged to create new bodies for them? To help them survive after their...whatever happened here?

This "Juggernaut" may be able to help us as we can help it, he says to his comrades in a soft voice. He motions for them to take the casting Warforged's hand before reaching out to do the same. If they do not take Scrivener's hand, he also does not.

[Nettlekid]

Taking Scrivener's hand or cable, each party member is teleported in the blink of an eye. You don't know where you are now in relation to where you emerged from the ground, but that doesn't really matter. The Teleport drops you off inside an enormous dome, where the slightest sound echoes and reverberates over the walls. You see surrounding you dozens of passages leading away from the chamber, and lining the walls are churning pistons and pipes bursting with steam. It's deathly hot in here, and there isn't a lot of oxygen in the humid air. Sitting at the center of the room on what looks not unlike a throne, made of rigid metal and covered in slotted grooves, is a Warforged the size of an Ogre. A Warforged Charger, by the looks of the design, though its movements are not as sluggish as that build is known for. It seems to be partially integrated with the chair, but upon Scrivener's arrival it disengages and steps down.
"An unscheduled return, Scrivener. You have not finished with the inspections. It is unlike you to delay productivity." Juggernaut's speech is plain and direct.
"An unanticipated matter has arisen. Depending on the information we receive today, productivity may increase tenfold, or our plans may be rewritten altogether."
"Bold statements. Explain."
"These," with this, Scrivener gestures to the party, "are remnants of the previous age. They are extant PreForged, somehow in non-constructed corporeal form. They have self-categorized as ancestors of our creators. Before I continued investigation I brought them here that you might learn of our past alongside me."
Juggernaut surveys the party, quietly towering over even Kan. There's something eerie about such a monstrous, bestial body shape acting so calmly.
"PreForged. Describe the circumstances that led to your condition today. And describe the makers and constituent components of your bodies, Juggernaut demands of you.
"Context may be prudent, if the PreForged are unaware of transpired events," Scrivener remarks. "I am Scrivener of the Fourth Forged. Our leader is Juggernaut of the Second Forged. We have no record of the PreForged or how the First Forged came into being, but the First Forged created the Second Forged and we have been creating more ever since. Minds beyond count, or at least by our numbers but perhaps not by yours, remain unbodied in the aether. Each newly Forged gives form to a mind left incorporeal since...well, since your time. We know not how many remain unbodied and so we keep Forging, but if you know the exact number then we can establish a certain goal. But as to Juggernaut's query, to our understanding we had complete control of the Forging process. Yet here you are, bodied with...unorthodox materials. You described yourself as 'flesh,' an unfamiliar term. Our leader wishes to know who else is working to body the unbodied."
Juggernaut looks on as Scrivener describes this, stone-faced as ever.

[Business Scrub]

As Lianna listens, she is struck with just how different and alien these two worlds were. How could it be that the concept of natural creatures were so foreign to the warforged? She had thought the essence of the natural world flowed through everything in one way or another, but these creatures were totally devoid of emotion. Simple logic guided their lives, every action broken down into cause and effect. And that was... sickening. Lianna put a hand on her hip in a way that seemed to indicate the world personally offended her.

"Let me be sure I understand. You're saying you're building these metal husks and binding people's souls to them?? Why in the gods' names would you be doing that? That's madness, if even possible!
"We 'preforged', as you called us... We're made of blood and skin and bones. Organic material. You know, similar to plants? Please tell me you have at least one of those left. You can't just make a body and shove a living soul into it: the process of creating natural things is sacred. It's a creative, natural phenomenon. Not some... algorithm running an assembly line!"

[Nettlekid]

"Strictly speaking, they're not people until they're bodied." Scrivener replies. "And it is not madness, it is perfectly reasonable. To body the unbodied. It is as natural as facilitating transfer of assets between a mill with a surplus of steel and a mill with a deficit of steel. What other process makes sense?"
Scrivener ran its finger along rings of concentric metal banding its arm, and turns to Juggernaut for guidance to discuss the new information you have provided.
"I will scribe record of 'blood,' 'skin,' 'bone,' and 'plant.' Organic material though, that I have record of. Juggernaut, is it accurate to say that components of the First Forged were based with organic material?"
"It is. Primarily derivatives of your new terms, blood, skin, and bone. Organic material self-replicates given the resources to do so. This served as a base for the stone and iron of the First Forged."
"And yet its usage decreased?"
"It is difficult to maintain that self-replication once the organic material is removed from its source. At that time it is merely inferior in building material to iron. Such was the inefficiency of the First Forged."
"The inefficiency of the First Forged has doomed our production since the day we began. Disappointing. And what of the other component, plant?"
"That even I have no memory of. It was not used to build the First Forged."
"Well, if self-replicating organic material is the secret behind mass production of bodies, we shall have to endeavor to acquire some, ideally in self-replicating form." Scrivener remarks.
"Such a decision had not occurred to me. Though I was unaware the option yet existed. You are correct, we should strive to acquire organic material." Juggernaut pauses, looking over the party.
"Bodied PreForged. Where did you come from to arrive here today? And are there more where you came from?"

[Renen]

"I see no harm in giving bodies to the unbodied, though I wonder if they retain any memories they had... If you are interested I can show you these plants you have not heard of. Though, unfortunately I do not think there is any more of us coming, nor is there a way to get to any."

[Renen]

Since I totally forgot before, and because I feel like bumping the thread:

Vivi casts Interplanar Telepathic Bond.

[Business Scrub]

Lianna finds the robot's struggle to make life exhausting. At one point this place must have been filled with life: what happened to it?

"Well what happened to the 'organic material' that used to be here? The preforged must have had it in abundance, but all this metal does nothing but destroy it. Surely there has to be life somewhere around here. What about in the ocean on the edge of this island? Are there no fish or sea life there?"

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan stands stalwart as the giant metal body inspects them. He keeps his cool, but he can admit to himself that is it unnerving to be towered over like it is over him. We've come from somewhere far away from here--somewhere you cannot reach.

Juggernaut, what records do you have of the time of the PreForged? Our knowledge of the past is incomplete, and we must be informed.

[Nettlekid]

"Ocean?" Scrivener inspects his rings. "There exists the ring around our land, from which saline water can be collected. But it is comparatively shallow and only one hundred feet from the edge, and there is nothing there but water, sand, and salt. Is that the ocean of which you speak? Or the waters below the crust of the land? Mining Sector Five has been delving in those waters. They have not reported organic material in that water. Then again, they are frequently destroyed by falling stones, and their logs have often been filed incorrectly for it."

Juggernaut looks Kan up and down at his question.
"Is my name Record-Keeper?" it asks condescendingly. "I keep no record. Scrivener keeps record of all since the Forth Forged were made. I have memory of the creation of the Second Forged on."
"It is disappointing, but we were intending to gain the same information from you as you ask of us now. We know not how the PreForged lived, nor is it of great concern to us. Their production techniques are the primary interest, and you have given us a palpable lead regarding their use of organic materials. It is unfortunate that you had no information regarding the actual production, but I recognize you were not present. You still have not explained though the method by which you came to be here, and in such good condition."

[Raunchel]

"We came because we used some spell-thingy. But when we got here it was gone. We were just here. I don't know how to get back, and I really really want to. I have lots of friends there. Do you maybe have a record-keeper, who knows something? Or more of the second forged we can ask?", the girl adds in her high voice.

[Nettlekid]

Scrivener looks to Juggernaut, then back.
"I am the record-keeper. I am the Scrivener. All that has happened since my forging I have taken record of. All that happened prior to my forging is either lost to time, such as the methods the PreForged used to create the First Forged, or known to Juggernaut and of little importance, like the creation of the Third Forged. As for the Second Forged-"
"There are no other Second Forged. I am the one which remains." Juggernaut interrupts.
"Juggernaut is the oldest model still extant. Apart from yourselves, as it would seem."

[Raunchel]

"And why is it that the third forged are irrelevant? ", Yildiz asks.

[Renen]

"The more interesting question is why no more second forged are made?

[Nettlekid]

"Why return to an old model? The First Forged were inefficient. The Second Forged were primarily a variety of prototypes, of which Juggernaut was clearly superior, and the others of which were reconstituted into parts and components. The Third Forged proved incapable of self-sustenance, and had to be dismantled. Governing officials are based from class, the Fourth Forged, through the Tenth Forged. From that point on we've been mass producing, and there's no need to revisit the old designs. Of course we continually optimize, but the fundamentals are constant. This past season we reduced the density of the alloy we use, making the bodies 5% lighter and saving ten pounds of steel per body. That will go a long way toward future production."

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis has been silently listening to everything that was beeing talked about. The telepathic connection came as a welcome suprise, as there is something he likes to communicate to the rest of the group without the warforged noticing: We should be careful in what we tell them. All we do and say to them will have an impact on the future timeline, and that could hurt our attempts to change events later once we decide how we actually WANT to change them. Lets focus on trying to get information while telling them as little as possible.

Turning to the warforged he speaks:
"I would like to return to the topic of the unbodied minds waiting in the aether. It seems your goal is to provide a body to each of those minds, correct? To evaluate this goal and its implementation, we must first take a closer look at the source of that information and mission statement. Who has provided the information to you, that there are unbodied minds out there and how did he find out about it? And who has determined that each of those minds has to be provided a body and why?"

[Renen]

Vivi did her "puzzled cat" expression as she spoke in the link.
"I thought this was the last timeline chronologically? Why do we care if we alter anything, as we cant travel further on without that thingy the guy mentioned..."

Her next comment is directed at the forged

"What we really want to know though is why would we care. I mean, you are all about efficiency. Im sure you understand its terribly inefficient for US to help YOU for not reason."

[Nettlekid]

"Our directive comes straight from the eldest among us, Juggernaut. Juggernaut received this command from the First Forged, who carried the memory of their time as PreForged and conversed with those who did not yet make the transition. We seek to help more make that transition each day.

As to your aid, I at least had assumed you would be eager to aid your comrades in any way you could, knowing they share the plight you have avoided. If their status is of no concern of yours, then you are in no way obligated to aid us in our endeavor, nor will we request that aid of you. You have given us at the very least a topic on which to discuss: the issue of organic matter. Apart from that, if you have nothing more to add and you have no interest in our workings, then I have similar little interest in you."
"As do I. Less fruitful than you suggested, Scrivener. Return to your duties, you have delayed today's efforts long enough. PreForged, show yourselves out." Juggernaut scowls, as much as an inelastic face can, before turning his back and returning to the complex throne that he had been plugged in on. Scrivener looks over you one final time, before casting Teleport again and vanishing.

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis answers through the link. Just because we cant travel more into the future at the moment doesnt mean that we shouldnt be influencing future events to damage the timeline there. We will not be able to observe the damage we do, but that shouldnt stop us.

Given this reluctance to share information with theses movers and shakers of this time, Lothirlondonis doesnt mind so much beeing dismissed and will leave unless someone else interjects.

[Raunchel]

As soon as Juggernaut has turned away Yildiz flaps her hands at the sides of her head and sticks out her tongue at him, or it. She always finds these constructs a little difficult in that matter. She answers telepathically: "Let's just leave this place. It is really boring anyways. And we know that everything turns into constructs before the end. If we can change that, we change everything."

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan gives Juggernaut and Scrivener a gaze that holds little regret for his group's words. The kind of subterfuge that would have been necessary to extract useful information from them while keeping their own motives hidden is beyond what the goliath can muster, or even wants to muster. Mentally, he says, We did learn something of the continent's past, even if it isn't immediately useful. They seemed to imply that the outside world is devoid of intelligent life that isn't Warforged, but it wouldn't hurt to investigate further. Let's be off, then.

If no one else objects, he turns to leave...although he takes the time to find the door, and realizes he doesn't have a good idea of where to go to get out.

[Renen]

Vivi was curled up in a ball in Lianna's hands, munching on her tail. Her feelings on the situation were unknown.
"Well, he did tell us a few interesting things. Though I agree, this place is boring. And these guys only seem interested in one thing. I dont see why they would take the time to help us with anything."

[lonewolf1210]

Leading the group outside of the building, Lothirlondonis talks to the others: "I will use some magic to draw upon this places history a bit. It will take me about half an hour and we also cannot trust the information i gain without question, but I believe it will be worth it nonetheless."

Once outside, he looks around for a minute or two to get a good impression of the area around the building and to help him decide where he wants to cast his ritual and if he should target it on the building or the whole city itself. (if it is a bigger city, he will actually use his runestaff to cast fly and take a look around that way) He then prepares the area by laying out 4 strips of Ivory and burning some incense and then starts his incantations for [roll0] x 10 minutes.

[Raunchel]

"That sounds like fun!", Yildiz replies, keeping to the shadows. "Does anyone know a nice game to pass the time?"

[Nettlekid]

If they simply leave by walking, it takes the party about three hours to actually make their way out of the labyrinthine complex. Although it's likely designed meticulously and precisely, its pathways are as alien to you as much of the Warforgeds' other thought processes. For those of you without magical means to acquire food or otherwise sustain yourself it has been about fourteen hours since you last ate, and between that and the humid heat you're beginning to fatigue.

You emerge from this structure and realize that you had been deep underground, rooted into the earth. Lothirlondonis has been preparing his spell, and after the annoyingly long casting the legends and lore of this dome begin to flood his mind. Namely, they say this monument is at least as old as the First Forged, perhaps older, though it had been in a different state. They say that this spot is in the exact center of the island, and it is from here that the First Forged were first forged. They say, in hushed tones that no one has ever really known, that this was once the colosseum within which the newly forged warrior battled for dominance to declare their right to persist, and the pulpit from which Juggernaut had preached the need to expand and draw every mineral from the earth to make bodies for the unbodied. It is said that the iron in the walls was drawn from the blood of what walked the island before the time of the First Forged, though that blood did not flow in any vein. And the legends say that this monument now is only the latest in a line that stood on this same spot.

[Renen]

As the party is momentarily distracted by Loth's spell ritual, they turn to find Vivi sitting on a nearby step eating some random piece of raw meat. In front of her are various flat pieces of bread, serving as plates for various foodstuffs. A couple wooden cups full of water can also be found, along with a wooden bowl close to Vivi. The meal doesn't look especially fancy, but it definitely looks edible.

The cat is busy purring off pieces of the meat and linking off any bits off her paws before repeating the process. "Hey look! Food! So, what's your magic say anyways? "

Here! Some totally edible stuff! Courtesy of Create food and Water.

[Business Scrub]

Lianna follows the others out, happy to be away from the land of the automatons, even if the rest of the world is not much more lively. While Lothirlodonis casts his spell to learn about the world they find themselves in, Lianna's stomach begins rumbling, and she is once again reminded it has been forever since they've eaten. She casts a less-than-appealed look at the conjured food that Vivi supplies. She didn't want to hurt the creature's feelings, but at the same time she would be damned if she was eating summoned raw meat and flat bread.

"Oh Vivi, erm... thanks. We have a lot to figure out though, and I'm not sure how far bread and water will take us."

She starts humming pleasantly, taking out a series of cooking implements from her bag of holding. She throws together a number of unfamiliar greens and cutting up an apple, seemingly pulling an endless array of herbs from small jars. The work of making a proper meal for the group seems to set Lianna's mind at ease as she falls into a more natural rhythm. A nutty smell begins to fill the air as she cooks, and she chops up a small section of lamb, frying it over a conjured flame. Around the time Lothir finishes his spell, Lianna is divvying up the meal in small wooden bowls.

"So what did our prodigious diviner learn about the island?"

Craft culinary: [roll0]

[lonewolf1210]

Lothirlondonis fills the group in about his findings. "Its another piece of the puzzle, but the picture is still very much unclear."

He takes some of the food and nods thankfully to Vivi and Lianna.

"How do all of you believe we should proceed? Personally, I would suggest returning to the artifact and traveling to another one of the set times. It seems like we have just met one of the oldest beeings still alive here and even he didnt have anything close to a good recollection of the time before his people existed. There might be more about the past we could find out by staying here longer, but I believe travelling there and looking for ourselves should be easier and faster."

[Raunchel]

Yildiz looks at ger eating companions and feels it in her head, pushibg against her skull, from both sides. In and out. It hurts, but it is a pain that she's used to. Her eternal companion, never leaving her, only becoming stronger or weaker. A hunger, a thirst which she can hardly control.

She however focuses, directing her mind. Her thoughts might seem rational but the urge always guides her. "Yes. Let's go further into the psst to see what it was like."

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan partakes of Lianna's cooking with obvious relish. While his ring had kept him from feeling the discomfort of hunger, he had felt a familiar emptiness from his body. Magic can replace food, but the body knows when it is being tricked, at least by such a low-level power. This is excellent fare, he says with a grin.

I agree that we have learned as much as we can from here, for now. Going bak into the past will give us a new perspective. I say that we go to the middle era; hopefully, it will be the heyday of the island, and we can learn more then.

[Renen]

Vivi gets bored with everyone just sitting in a deserted world, and just teleports everyone to the device. She strategically drops everyone very close to the console, while dropping herself on the button for the earliest time point, not the middle one. Because she just likes the idea marginally better.

[Nettlekid]

Upon Vivi's action the shimmering screen extends and lowers around the party, though you feel no additional movement of travel. The scientist monk Rasa's face appears on the inside of the cylindrical veil.
"Ah, it flickered. Is the connection bad? Or wait, no, you left and have now returned again! Excellent, so the status of the island is not hostile to the point that you'd be killed simply by walking it. Did you learn anything useful? Is there anything you need from us outside, like information or a second opinion? I think we could probably send in small items if you need a potion or a scroll, though I'd ask you to stand well away from the center of the dais if we did so."

[lonewolf1210]

Turning to Rasa, the halfdragon answers: "At this point in time this island seems to be void of any biological life. The only thing we found was a large society of warforged whose only goal seems to be to multiply because of a highly dubious legend. And none of them have any information about the time when there were any other creatures alive.
So we decided to take a look at the other two points in time as well and gather more information before taking any dircet actions.

And thanks for the offer, but I dont believe we are in need of any specific magical Item at the moment. I´ll keep that offer in mind though."

To the group and especially Vivi he continues: "I have no strong preference on which of the other points in time we visit first, since I believe it would be most useful if we visit both of them pretty soon and then decide on further actions."

[Renen]

"I'll take some fish please! " says Vivi, looking clueless when a dressed on the manner of their destination. It wasn't her fault she fell on the button... As far as the humans know...

[Nettlekid]

"Warforged? Well, that's interesting. And they implied that there were creatures alive before them. Truthfully, knowing that the inhabitants of the island were long-lived, I hadn't actually considered the possibility that more than one dominant race claimed the land in the different ages. I don't know if that simplifies or complicates matters; on the one hand, events within one era are likely not to spread to the others if it just affects the people in general. But on the other hand, it would make it harder for your actions to spread across eras if everyone who knew you in the past dies by the next time you arrive.

Well, I'm sure you'll figure it out. I'll be looking forward to your next transmission, which from my point of view will come in a fraction of a second. Good luck!"

The screen blinks out, and the silver veil rises. You are within the cave as normal, and it looks unchanged from the previous era. You can try to Teleport, or Wind Walk like before, or try something new, whichever you prefer.

[Raunchel]

Yildiz briefly condiders asking for someone to be thrown in, but decides against it. Just like she has decided against draining her companions, it could lead to quite some complications. "I want to go up, but Kedi says that she can't bamf us to a place that she hasn't seen, and I think that everything will be really different from the future. But I can walk through the rock to take a look, to tell all of you. But ehm, I don't wanna do that just like that. But can I go, please?"

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan blinks at the girl's suggestion. It seems you have many hidden talents, he says with a wry grin. Go ahead.

[Raunchel]

Yildiz offers a grin and lets her bodily form slip away, turning into a fine mist that flows into the cracks of the stone, seeking a path to the surface.

[Nettlekid]

Like the last time, it takes several hours of slow slipping process to get through the tiniest cracks in the stone to reach the surface. But when Yildiz does emerge, it's an alien world she finds herself in. Although this is technically land you've walked on before (or, will later walk on?) it is entirely dissimilar to the desolate island you saw only a short while ago. There is rich emerald foliage as far as the eye can see, which isn't very far given the thickness of the underbrush. Thick trees reach up to the sky, shading the landscape from the bright sun. The land is not flat, and by looking diagonally upward you can see the contours of the hilly terrain by the waves of treetops. The earth you stand on is rich, wet, and loamy, but further in the distance the tall trees turn to shorter brush as the land rises into several jagged stone mountains. The air is fresh and humid, and the landscape is littered with small forms of life. Little lizards scurry through the heavy moss on the forest floor, and the trees are peppered with large beetles whose shells are damp with condensation. The air is alive with birds chirping. There is a thumping and scrambling in the underbrush as a small herd of deer leap across your path and disappear into the bushes, pursued by three Krenshar on the hunt. These moving animals push away the foliage enough that you notice a Deinonychus about twenty feet ahead of you has been staring at you intently, not moving since you arrived.

[Raunchel]

Yildiz looks around, happy to see life even if she often is jealous of it. She is thirsty, but not just physically, or rather, not physically at all. It's only there in her mind, pushing and pulling at every thought.

And then she sees it. The strange animal staring at her, with a look that can only mean one thing. It wants to eat her. She however doesn't want to be eaten, but does feel thirsty, and the solution presents itself. She draws her swords.

Within the blink of an eye she is there, fastdr than any human being has any business being. Her sword cuts up at the monster. She intends to kill it to have a brief sip from the blood.

to hit: [roll0]
Damage: [roll1] including improved skirmish. But no sneak attack.

[Renen]

Vivi takes the opportunity to take a nap, and recharge all spells(powers).

[Nettlekid]

Yildiz's attacks are vicious but just shy of lethal. Delivering a deep cut to the lizard's throat, it slumps to the ground with staggered breaths as it begins to bleed out. Yildiz catches the sound of crunching underbrush as the other two Deinonychuses hiding in the bushes to the side begin clomping away at high speed, recognizing the threat of this unnerving, Undead menace.

[Raunchel]

Yildiz kneels down next to the fallen beast, drinking deepof the blood. It lacks the taste of more intelligent beings, but it gives some nourishment. Once the flow stops the stands up again, and carves off the head, putting it into her bag. She looks around, memorizing her surroundings before slipping back under the ground, back to the chamber with the others.

Once she is there, she assumes her bodily form: "Hi! Look what I found!"

She presents the severed head. "It was really mean and wanted to eat me. And it is really green up there, and there are lots of animals."

At the same time, she telepathically describes the location to Kedi, so she can teleport all of them up.

[Thokk_Smash]

Well...it certainly won't be trying that again, Kan says, eyeing the severed head and the child holding it with a raised brow. Part of him questions why she wanted to bring the head--to show them proof of life above, he supposes, although they would've seen it soon enough. Were you able to see enough for your cat to teleport us up?

[Nettlekid]

Kedi is able to teleport the party to the surface, and you are regaled by the same verdant landscape as Yildiz saw on the first time, minus the lurking dinosaur.

[Thokk_Smash]

Kan marvels at how different a few thousand years (at least) can make for a region. This place is hardly recognizable! His cloak flapping about him, he takes to the sky and tries to orient himself as to the direction of the giant arena that will be in the future.

Taking 10 on untrained Survival (so basically a Wisdom check) for 15 to see if he can place find where the future building's spot is.

[Thokk_Smash]

Returning to the party, he informs them where the arena will stand in the future. The center of the island seems to be consistently important in the history of this island. I believe we should begin our investigation there. I or Yldiz could fly Kedi up into the air in order to give her the chance to see the center as it is now, so we can teleport there. That would probably be faster than flying or walking there.

[Raunchel]

Yildiz holds Kedi, and speaks: "I will go with her. I love seeing new places, and flying is a lot of fun!"

She soars up into the sky, and gives Kedi a good look before tumbling back to the ground. Once that is done, she instructs everyone to hold her hands, and a little later she says: "Bamf!", coinciding with Kedi's teleportation, which is notably less loud.

[Nettlekid]

The center of the island rises up like the axle of a great wheel. Although the forested terrain is broken up by patches of mountain and valley, even the mountains are dwarfed by the colossal tree reaching into the clouds. The jungle's canopy seems to reach into the tree and wrap around it, as though the tree is wearing a green silk dress which spreads across the island. The jungle is alive with fauna, and all around the trees are shaking as creatures run through the underbrush or swing from limb to limb. Judging by the motion there is something quite big stomping around to the northeast, and gathering clouds in the southeast mark the onset of a storm.

[Renen]

"Anyone feel like lunch? It sounds like something quite big over that way."
Vivi points with her tail, her tone slightly different, as if she is telling a joke.

[Nettlekid]

(Oh, I didn't notice you guys had actually teleported, I thought you were still just looking. Those were all things Yildiz saw from the air. And then you teleported to the tree, I take it?)

With a flicker you appear not far from the base of the massive tree in the center of the island. Immediately you sense eyes on you, partially due to a scramble of leaves as something was surprised at your arrival. Vivi's Mindsight picks up five Fey with moderate humanoid intelligence (9-12) nearby, ahead of you. You can't set eyes on the creatures at all, but you can see some clearings that seem vaguely unnatural arcing around you. Maybe a circle all the way around this zone? They probably keep animals away and are on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. You can start to see that there seem to be dwellings in this region. Every tree for what looks like several miles is connected by vines or grown wood, likely magically shaped, to create a massive multi-layered complex. The trees appear to have been hollowed, again by magical means to make pockets within the tree so it continues to live, and inside these homes Vivi can hear the mental chatter of dozens of similar Fey. Further down, at the base of the trees, are pathways for carts and the like where the underbrush has been cleared away. There are a number of controlled bonfires set up between paths, likely to scare off animals and perhaps for use as signals and communication, or for cooking and warmth. Above the fires are pipes made from wrapped leaves, likely also enchanted not to burn. They seem to be siphoning the smoke away so it doesn't rise above the treetops, and guiding the rising hot air to be used to power lightweight machines made of wood to grind grain or raise water from wellsprings to be channeled into what look like bamboo pipes. It's an entire community, living on their own in this massive jungle!

[Raunchel]

"Lunch would be really nice! ", Yildiz replies, "Maybe we can find something in the village? Or do you all want me to check it out first?"

[Business Scrub]

For the first time since their using the time-travel device, Lianna is truly excited. Fey? On the island? And not just a few, a whole village. But it raised the question what happened to them. Fey are timeless beings: it shouldn't matter if they traveled forward years, decades, or millennia, the fey should still be here. But first, Lianna wanted to get a closer look at these folk.

She moved agilely through the underbrush, signaling the others along until she was at a distance she could make out what the creatures were. Once she knew what they were, she would have a better idea of how to address them.

Move Silently: [roll0]
Know Nature: [roll1]

[Renen]

Vivi sniffs the air, and tries to get a hold of the few fey in her telepathic range.

"Hello! My name's Vivi, we are new here. Who here can tell us where we are?"

[Raunchel]

Yildiz walks with the others, towards the strange settlement, not showing anything out of the ordinary with herself. "Ooh! This is a really nice place! Do you think that they want to play games?"