Dreaming Strange Dreams IC

[Plerumque]

http://i.picresize.com/images/2015/06/27/ITuUs.jpg


Dynafel is a city on stilts; still rebuilding from the last time the Yellow Swarm razed the town, the foundations are wooden and rickety, and well-traveled shortcuts through the forest of support beams below have resulted in a town with streets that wind above and below their destinations.

The one place in town that doesn't lean in the wind is the Reliquary. It was dug deep into the ground when built decades ago, to prevent any spillover into the town from the numenera stored in their archive. Not that it offers much protection anymore, as the reliquary has become an unofficial gathering-place since the Swarm reduced City Hall to splinters. If something goes wrong, the town's probably doomed, but most of the residents figure it is anyway.

The mood is subdued as the town's residents go about their business this morning, patching the foundations or making repairs or grumbling at the inflated prices set by the opportunistic vendors who've descended on the town like flies. Nothing seems out of the ordinary until Dustworth, who was assigned to keep watch this week, comes scrambling up the stairs to the top. "The Swarm!" he gasps. "From the south!"

Order collapses. The merchants abandon their wares and take the stairs two at a time down to the stables. People drop their tools, nails skittering across the floorboards and off the edges. Someone begins shouting—"Walls! Reinforcements! Get down!"

"Wait!"

The voice of Narla, the town's resident eccentric and Aeon Priestess, knifes through the crowd, and it parts around her as she strides over the creaking boards. Speaking in a more measured tone, she continues, "I've been preparing for this. I wasn't expecting them to be back so soon—I can't be certain it'll work, and it might be dangerous—but I think it's the best chance we have." Angry murmurs begin to rise, and she raises her voice. "You know we can't stand another one!" She looks around imploringly. "You know!"

[Prince Zahn]

Neilraw should not have come here, he thought to himself. He has too much to discover, so many plans in life... He can not allow himself and everyone else to die here.

He raises his voice above the murmurs of skeptics with hesitant courage. Anything is worth a shot if what she says is true.

"I'll help you!" Neilraw volunteered blindly into what he had yet to understand. He slowly approached the front of the crowd before Narla, seeking pardon from those he nudges aside. "Any action has to be better than cowering away. Go on, tell us more of your plan."

[glaiveguy]

His third day now in the city and he had spent the entire morning staring at the silkworms. He nearly didnt even notice all the commotion until someone mentioned the Yellow Swarm. Then suddenly he hears a woman, a Priest, calling out...

"Aye! And me too!"

This was his chance to get closer to the dreaming reliquary. His initial cunning plan of simply walking in had been rebuffed, as had his second cunning plan of begging. But THIS! This was an opportunity.

"I'll help ya, just show me where...err...what I need to do."

The metal of his arm begins to prickle as he gets near Neil and the Aeon Priest...he briefly wonders why that might be.

[Plerumque]

Narla whirls defiantly, stabs a finger in a malcontent's face. "You see! They know!" She speaks up. "All who care for the future of Dynafel, come to the reliquary. All others, go about your work." In a flurry of skirts, she's down the stairs. The crowd grumbles, and although a few of them follow with trepidation, more return to the shouted orders and construction work.

The reliquary is roughly carved, wooden supports visible in the roof of the tunnels. Small chambers are connected to the main hall every few feet, entrances sealed with lead. Narla stands before a table with a half-assembled, organic-looking monstrosity, a silver sheen pooling around it. Her eyes gleam with fanaticism as she speaks.

"We know that the Yellow Swarm is attracted to centers of dream and phase-space research, but not why. However, recently a series of experiments determined that specimens are resistant to most conventional means of damage, and the reason is theorized to be that they exist in several planes of existence at once. Therefore, if we have a means of accessing them in all planes, we could eliminate them permanently." She indicates the artifact on the table. "I believe I have discovered such a way. However, it's a dangerous experimental process, and I would need volunteers to undergo the phase-change process. Are there any willing here?"

[Anti-Eagle]

Sinan stood quietly as the Aeon Priest Narla spoke in the crowd. The walls grew weaker every day it seemed and the swarm getting in would likely mean death for everyone inside. He wondered if she actually had a way of stopping them or if she was simply throwing what she had at the problem to see if anything happened. He waited until she had ran off before following to the city's reliquary.

When he arrived and she spoke again he didn't want to drive any of the others that had came off by being asking what he thought were reasonable questions but he wasn't sure about the device. She said dangerous but if it was just going to kill him there wasn't much point.

"I'll volunteer. But before I do I'd like to know what the process would do to me and I'd like to know what happened to previous subjects?"

[glaiveguy]

...he had this thing about volunteering especially when he already had one unknown numenera slowly eating him...but nothing adventured, nothing gained. Time to roll the dice one more time.

"And me as well! Let's show those yellow bastards a real fight eh?"

He hoped it didn't hurt...and that his metal friend didn't get territorial or anything...

[Gorgon_Heap]

A week ago, in a wholly generic village much less memorable than Dynafel, Seabreeze had been sitting on a street corner with a half-dozen down-on-their-luck musicians. They cavort and sing, jangle their instruments and battered tin pots at passersby hoping for a shin or two, and smoke a seemingly endless number of hand-rolled herbal cigarettes. Eventually they’d get chased off by some guardsman, and they’d meander to another part of town to start again. Once they unknowingly came to rest near some petty gang’s turf and were almost attacked. But Seabreeze and her mastercrafted sword – appearing like a threatening outsized machete – convinced the thugs to allow the musicians to move along in peace.

Four days ago she met a lovely man named Dwek. Dwek was a traveling merchant whose usual strongman/bodyguard for long journeys was laid up with an illness. Though she refused to help Dwek with physical labor, she agreed to walk the road with him as protection in exchange for hot meals.

Dwek was an amiable traveling companion and an amusing storyteller. Better than some she’d seen paid a small ransom by some of her wealthier employers. But what Dwek really loved was to barter, and though his great creaking cart of herbal medicines crafted by a local apothecary. She asked him once why he didn’t use it to heal his bodyguard, and he’d been shocked. “At cost? You have no idea how that would eat into my profits, Miss Pharrid. Besides, he snores.”

They arrived at Dynafel mere hours ago, walking though the front gate and eagerly searching for shade and water. That’s when the alarm west up. Dwek is dead now, his cart where he left it. There were wounded everywhere, and she’d directed somebody to the cart, thinking it couldn’t hurt. But all around her people sobbed and shook or growled in strained determination as they fabricated piecemeal fortifications against the next attack. Many muttered about the crazy lady Narla, but Seabreeze wasn’t seeing any good options.

Frowning, she peered over at the line of bodies and lingered on a pair of road-worn boots. Here lies Dwek. Dead in Dynafel’s wreck.

She walks to Narla, her hand tight on her sword hilt. “Yeah, here,” she says, her youthful voice and gleaming multihued hair shockingly vibrant amid the carnage and ruin. “I’ve been in this town two hours and I already lost a friend. The choice seems to be absolutely getting my brain sucked out by bugs or maybe getting my brain sucked out by a mysterious dream machine. I think I’ll go with the less certain option- Axiom? I can’t believe it! Wait – Please tell me you and this swarm being here at the same time is a coincidence.”

[Prince Zahn]

Neilraw evaluates his situation - the Yellow swarm, the fittingly named strange force that leaves only destruction and fear in it's wake, is on the verge of ripping the town apart, including himself and the reliquary. it will certainly destroy every trace of Dynafel if left unchecked. in order to stop it, he must undergo a painful procedure that might kill him.
might; a word which implies potential alongside uncertainty.
he might be able to stop the yellow swarm, he might lose his allies, if not his own life. he might be made a hero if he and the others could stop the swarm, but Narla's assessment of the dream world MIGHT be entirely incorrect, it just might...
so many variables, so much uncertainty opposing certain demise, Neilraw winces physically, mentally, and mechanically at his difficult oversight as his right arm jerks up along with the right side of his face. he immediately recovers from it though. this time.
"Sorry, it happens every now and again. it's a nervous tick." he shrugs it off casually. "It sounds like a very risky procedure, but I don't think the Yellow swarm will wait for a foolproof one." Neilraw proceeds to state the obvious. "have you any advice for us once we reach the other side, O, Aeon Priestess?" he inquires without so much as a hint of cynicism.

[Plerumque]

Narla hesitates. "Well, as I said, it's an entirely experimental procedure. My, ah, living subjects have returned in various stages of health, mutation, and catatonia. Most of them, though, have returned. I've tried sending through various numenera devices, but even biologic ones seem unable to interact properly with the process." She glances up, where the sounds of shouting can be heard through the clay walls. "It's time to go. Any last questions?" As she speaks, she moves over to the table with the misshapen hulk, where deformities are beginning to grow and bulge like bubbles at the top.

[Anti-Eagle]

Sinan nodded and after a moment stepped toward Narla while saying "What do I need to do?"

He didn't like the sound of what had happened to those she had risked on the process but of the two obvious choices, his was clear. Probably die in the city to the vast swarm making its way into the city or go along with the plan and the others and possibly come back wrong from Narla's artifact? The risk was always there in his work and he'd be more likely to survive if he did this. Payment for the work, if he desired it by the end of this mess, could be haggled later.

[glaiveguy]

"Little Breeze? Well now! Fancy meeting you in a place like this! You're quite a ways from home aren't you? Ah but the reunion may have to wait a bit longer"

He turns to the Priestess.

"My dear lady, under the circumstances I think I'd have preferred ya lied and told me it was perfectly safe. Unless ya can tell us more of what's going to happen we should maybe make hay while the iron is hot."

[Prince Zahn]

Neilraw is starting to recognize a familiar face - he remembers Sinan, and how he asked that exact question with the exact tone back in the day, when Neil hired him to round up spare parts. However, a more pressing matter arose.
"Pardon me, did I just hear correctly, that you are Seabreeze? Seabreeze Pharrid?" Neilraw, a clear stranger in the area, adressed her."It might sound bizarre, but I have sought to meet you in person for the longest time, going only by the ominous wisdom of an all-knowing device." the man smiled and extended hand as a sign of friendship. A pale, mechanical plate covers the palm of his hand as subtle whirring sounds are made beneath his burgundy sleeve. Written on the silvery cuff upon his wrist wrist is his name in dark blue script. "I am Neilraw, - er, Neil, for short."

[Gorgon_Heap]

Surprised and relieved to see a friendly face in the midst of disaster, Seabreeze walks forward and lightly raises her hand to Axiom in an unfittingly sophisticated manner given the circumstances. He dashingly takes the proffered hand in his own and tips his head, but quickly turns his attention to the crazy lady.

She nods agreement with Axiom's request but is taken aback by the stranger's approach. "I - I ... suppose it's a pleasure to meet you, Neilraw." She casts aside the ladylike politeness and grasps his hand solidly. She's clearly wary and has no idea what to make of him, but otherwise takes it in stride.

She's younger than he'd thought she'd be, and beautiful. But she has self-confidence in abundance, and the sword at her side sways with her hips with an easy carelessness belied by her hand automatically brushing the hilt in unconscious practice.

[Plerumque]

Narla steps forward again, impatiently. "I hate to break up your meet-and-greet, but this town needs its saviors now. Come here." She gestures each person to the table in turn. The misshapen growths at the top of the organic bulk have begun to wriggle and molt, tiny - almost microscopic - white worms squirming through the flesh and pouring out onto the table. The Aeon Priest picks up the first of four syringes off a nearby platform and drops in worms one by one. "This is an experimental procedure," she repeats. "Please remain calm. It is unlikely to be overly fatal." Then she grabs Axiom, slams the needle into the base of his spine, and forces down the plunger. She waits for a beat or two, and his body crumples to the floor. "Next?" she asks calmly, pushing the unconscious body out of the way with one foot.

Please make a Resist Mental Attacks roll.

[glaiveguy]

He continues talking to Seabreeze as the priestess asks for attention.

"What a surprise seeing ya all the way out here! Such grand hospitality your family showed me. A shame they didn't..." and then he was horizontal. This wasn't even the third time such a thing happened to him, he subconciously has presence of mind to at least break his own fall and roll to the recovery position before thought deserts him

It's a d20 roll right?

[roll0]

[Gorgon_Heap]

Seabreeze instinctively reaches for Axiom as he collapses, but it too late. She shakes her head, scowling at the madwoman and kneels at her friend's side. He checks his head for injury and then positions herself - anxiety written all over her fare - so that she won't immediately fall across Axiom's face and smother him when it's her turn.

[Prince Zahn]

Neilraw, too, flinched when he saw Seabreeze's friend faint from a needle. Not nearly as much as he thought he would, however, as the process seemed quick enough to ensure that even If it was excruciatingly painful, it was over in an instant. And for all Neil knew, Axiom could still be alive. But he was a nano, darn it, not a physician!
"I guess I'm up next." he raised his mechanical arm with a light whirr."Don't worry, Miss Pharrid, if he survived the procedure, so can we. And he will have our help on the other side. "
Neilraw steps up to Narla, and slowly closes his eyes tightly shut. As his upper and lower eyelids meet eachother, a unique type of circular slot, with odd symbols carved around it slides from his eyebrows into the center of his irises center. Because of this supplemental inconvence, however, Nielraw could never blink quite as fast as other humans.
Neilraw bravely accepts his fate.

[Anti-Eagle]

Sinan watched with interest as the worm things were harvested from the mass and Narla stabbed the syringe into Axiom. He blinked as Axiom dropped to the ground and hesitation entered his mind wondering what the worms were doing. He looked fine though, so far, and it appeared it was to be expected though or atleast he assumed it was to be expected.

Sinan watched Neilraw volunteer himself next. He looked to be the same one he worked for back in... Yenth. It was Yenth. An interesting occurrence. His mind went back to what was infront of him as he saw Narla moving again. It wouldn't be long until the needle was in himself as well. He straightened out as he stood, preparing to get his injection when the time came.

[Plerumque]

You're standing in a collage, fragments of a thousand could-bes glued together by a mad artist. Here a shard of smog-streaked city, there a pastoral landscape with inverted colors, over there a spiral of choppy water dotted with jagged masts and sail-scraps, next to it the night-black gulf of the void. Above it all, somehow in more dimensions than should be possible, a clockwork sun gleams with golden light. And then you're falling, falling up- but is it up? Your body twists, stretches, passes through itself, and then you're a giant, standing with the golden sun, the only constant thing in a flickering world. A moment passes, then another, still as anything you've known, and then a vast eyelid cleaves off from the glittering surface and reveals a dark and beautiful eye. The sun speaks with the voice of a grandfather clock big as the universe.

—SPEAK, ASPIRANT, AND KNOW TRUE FALSEHOODS.—

Narla refills the syringe, still wet from Axiom's flesh, with the pale worms slithering across the table. She takes a quick step forward and jams it into Neilraw's back before he can change his mind. She waits for a moment, then tosses his unconscious body on top of Axiom's. "Next?" she asks, brushing off the worms still clinging to the needle.

Please make a Resist Mental Attacks roll.

[Prince Zahn]

Resisting mental attacks is an inability for Neilraw. Could I spend effort on it?

[roll0]

[glaiveguy]

The Sun! The Sun! The Sun! The Sun!

His mind is ill equipped to handle more than 6 dimensions at a time, 7 tops. He goggles at the multifaceted time-diamonds in the sky and spends some time being at one with the world-mind until the Clockwork Sun jolts him from his reverie...and he was just about to figure out the secret to self actualization!

He looks upon the Solar Gear Array. He hopes this isn't one of those "3 questions and you're done" sort of situations...and what the hells is a true falsehood? Well he'd try civility first...

"The name is Axiom my clockwork friend...ta whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?"

[Plerumque]

The sun’s eye fixes on you, and you can see gears within gears within gears.

—MORE STARS IN THE SKY.—

It considers this for a moment.

—I WAS TO BE THE ONLY ONE.—
Words write themselves across your vision in crisp clarity, everything else hazy and smudged. You think you can read them, though you’re not sure— somehow, you know they’re in a language that’s been dead for aeons, yet somehow the poem makes itself known to you, shining through the gaps. It’s a paean to an ancient hero, dust now, but before you can reach the last line it’s like a match has been struck and the flame devours the words, leaving searing holes in your memory. And then the holes are you, or they’re devouring you, and you’re nothing but words, but then were you anything else? And then you separate, and the part of you that was other is gone. And the words form in your mind, unbidden, and you recognize the voice of the poem.

—TELL ME YOUR GREAT SMALLNESSES.—
For the briefest instant, you see the world as it truly is, a majestic chaos of impossibly tiny and improbably vast. For the briefest of seconds, it is all unified, equations etched into your mind with white fire, and then it begins to break off. Wings burst out from the symbols and they flutter away, the universe in a flock of doves. You thought there were few, but there are many, and though there never seem to be any more you are now entirely surrounded by the white-hot birds of mathematics. When their beaks open, it’s the voice of God that emerges, and you realize that it was never a Word but a Number.

—SECRETS ALWAYS KNOWN. SAY THEIR NAMES.—
The world recedes, and in its place there is the sea. It rises before you, water rising past the sky, and in a single moment you remember it all. You remember the eightfold ambitions of man, the star-spanning empires, the conquest of the Sun itself. You remember how far, how very far, you made yourself from the whim of Nature. You remember that you forgot your insignificance. You remember when you remembered it, knew once more that your mightiness means nothing to it. You feel awe and fear and terrible joy, and though you can’t recall if the sea always spoke, it does so now, in the voice of the Sublime.

—WHAT WOULD YOU WISH TO SEE FOREVER.—

[Gorgon_Heap]

Unable to truly process the enormity of what she's seeing, and swamped by the unrestricted emotions coming both from her and around her, Seabreeze is quite confused by the question.

Conjuring images of the relative handful of amazing, beautiful things she's seen in her few short years wandering the world, she can't possibly think of any one time or place or person or even event. Wouldn't just seeing forever be wonderful enough? she responds in wonderment.

[glaiveguy]

"Aye well, I can understand that desire. Some times I get ta thinking my star ain't sitting where it should in the sky either."

He leans against the dome of the sky nonchalantly and offers the Solar God-Machine a cigarillo.

"Never let that tyrant, Fate, grind you down. You do who you are eh?" He flashes a charming grin and puffs on his own smoke, creating an expanse of smog that blows across the land below.

"So...I think I'm supposed to ask you how to stop this swarm that's approaching...you know anything about that?"

[Prince Zahn]

"Smallnesses..." Neilraw processes the words, but all he can think of are the words bubbling in front of his face. his mind controting with colors and shapes and words - ever since that Aeon Priest poked him with a needle. really, what was THAT for?
lost in thought before the words as they etch through his mind in many colors changing at rapid speeds. his facts - scrambled. "Well, whatever a smallness is-is...is, I don't have it, 'As King Noren's trusted advisor, I'll let you in on a little secret: The only thing bigger than I is his majesty's appetite - at the feast last night he was hungrier than a pack of Seskiis, at least a real pack of Seskiis would have been easier to appease.'" Neilraw Cited a line from a local satiric play about the lives of royalty, fighting to hold on to stray thoughts as the visions became eerie.
Can I attempt to fool the creepy hallucination? fight madness with madness?

[Anti-Eagle]

Sinan stared in awe at the God-bird-reality-equation as it etched its fires into his mind and fluttered around him. The worms.. what were the worms? Was this real? This had to be in his head, unless it wasn't... And then it spoke and his mind went blank, unknowing how to answer what was infront of him. As he tried to think something, anything to say, words began to stumble out of his mouth.

"I don't- We understand without knowing and know without understanding. We fumble in this dark because the ancients left us to die. What has been lost will be lost again and what has been found will never be found again."

He remembered hearing those words once when he was young. Not in that particular order and he wasn't sure why he recalled them now but they felt appropriate.

[Plerumque]

The clockwork sun's gears grind as another aeon passes. Finally, the eye blinks, slow and beautiful with eyelashes like night-gleaming daggers. When it opens again, there is steel in its iris as well as gold.

—I WILL FORGIVE YOU, BRIGHT-BURNER. YOU HAVE LOOKED INTO THE DAY. TELL YOUR CONSTELLATION TO REMEMBER YOUR ORIGINS. AND I WILL TAKE MY TOLL.—

The light dims a fraction, perhaps as a courtesy.

—YOU MAY PASS.—
The poem changes, bawdy limericks flitting past celestial odes and stark elegies like the words are trying on faces. Finally it settles back in the half-eaten hero-song of before, and the voice of the poem resonates past.

—INCENSE BURNT, OFFERINGS MADE. WE WILL ACCEPT. I WILL SING OF YOU ONE DAY, TRIUMPH OR DEFEAT. REMEMBER, ASPIRANT, THIS PLAY MAY HAVE A PLOT AND PLAYERS BUT IT HAS NO SCRIPT. YOU MAY PASS.—
The birds rise in the air, riding a current of fire that creates the world behind them as it goes. As they reach the top, they coalesce back into an equation, but then the numbers soar out one by one, flying back to the beginning of the universe. In the crackling of the fire before it grants you annihilation and rebirth, you hear more strange words, old as Time itself.

—LET YOUR EYES BE FREE OF DECEIT, ASPIRANT. SEE THE WORDS BEHIND THE VISIONS AND THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE WORDS AND I BEHIND THE NUMBERS. SEEK TRUTHS IN FIRE, ALWAYS. YOU MAY PASS.—
Your vision expands, dizzying you in vastness, and you see that even the incomparable size of the wave was merely that of a few drops of water, rolling inside the first that might plausibly aspire to the title of life. It speaks, though you can't tell if it's the wave or the proto-thing or something much, much larger.

—YES.—

A moment passes, or perhaps an eternity.

—YOU MAY PASS. BUT REMEMBER THAT THERE IS ALWAYS A LARGER WAVE.—

You awake in Dynafel, on the sod floor of Narla's reliquary. She leans over you, graying braids swinging down, yet when she speaks, it is in a strange and garbled tongue, a jumble of sounds not so much a dead language as an unborn one.

[Prince Zahn]

"I..." Neilraw opens his eyes only to squint moments later. What happened. Has he passed his test of sanity or has he failed?
"–I don't understand you, Narla." he spoke, his eyes tired from what he has been through. "Is this what being deaf feels like?"

[glaiveguy]

Axiom yawns and stretched his arms over his head as he wakes and rises. He takes a pull from a hip flask, a brief smell of alcohol, lubricant, and cloves wafting. He looks around at the others and then at the priestess.

"So...did we win? Crisis averted? I'll take my payment in coin or trade goods"

He stretches and stands up and looks at the others.

"Did the rest of you see the Eternal Solar God-Engine too? Or was that just me?"

[Anti-Eagle]

Sinan awoke with a start as he was ejected from the dream place. He looked around for a few moments at what was around him, before focusing on Narla and what she was saying. When the garbled nonsense started spewing from her mouth, he shook his head briefly and started rubbing his eyes.

After he heard the others he said "I don't know. I don't know what I saw."

Thinking about what Neilraw said he wondered if her speech was something wrong with him or wrong with her.

[Gorgon_Heap]

Seabreeze jerks awake gasping. Her hands reach out as if trying to test the air itself and it takes a long moment for her to focus. She seems to be looking at something far away, too far away to actually be seen.

She regains her senses and looks at each of you in confusion. She looks at the old madwoman in absolute bafflement.

"I think I was away. Did I miss something?" Realizing the others are just as confused. She takes a deep breath and stands, somewhat wobbly. "You're not deaf, Neilraw." She turns to Narla. "What language are you speaking? Talk to us. How long were we out? Is everything all right?"

[Plerumque]

Narla ***** her head to one side and gibbers something to herself, before loping out the room. When she returns, it is with a man that you vaguely recognize as the leader from this morning, though he's different: intricate geometrical tattoos cover his skin, hypnotic patterns in gray and black. He answers Narla in the same muddled speech, then turns to you. He tries a few different languages, though you recognize none: one like the cawing of birds, one like the scratching of claws on rock, one like the jagged hum of static.

[Anti-Eagle]

Sinan stared as the man spoke the what sounded to him to be nonsense languages. After a few moments he shook his head again and turned to the others with a neutral expression. He stated "I think that this is the worms. If you're hearing the same things I am then they're being distorted by whatever the worms have done.

He took his pack off of his back and started to look through it for something to write with and on. Remembering that he hadn't owned an ink pen in some time he spoke again "Do any of you have anything that could be used to write with? Ink, chalk, charcoal? I think that we'd have a better chance with written word."

[Gorgon_Heap]

Seabreeze frowns, but reveals a compact, well-organized kit containing a number of drafting implements and a small book, as well as scrap paper and pencils, pens, ink, etc. She hands Sinan a creased leftover scrap of paper and a pencil. "You think maybe this is in our heads? If that's the case we're not going to recognize written words any more than we do audible ones.

"How about I try pictures if words don't work? Draw some obvious things to figure out how differently we're understanding each other?" She keeps her kit handy if needed.

[Anti-Eagle]

Sinan smiled as Seabreeze handed him the paper and the pencil "I'm hoping that it's only sound, whatever this is." After a brief second he used the pencil to write as clearly as he could "What is wrong with us?" on the paper.

Looking at Seabreeze he said "If this doesn't work then your way would make sense."

He briefly considered handing it to the man that he thought Narla to be using as a translator, but there was the possibility that he was illiterate and as it was it would be faster to simply hand it to her. He stepped towards Narla and held out the piece of paper to her.

[glaiveguy]

"Somethin similar happened to me when I ate that desert cactus fruit...well technically it was a mushroom growing out of the fruit...couldn't say more than gibberish for 3 days."

He lights a cigarillo and offers a wrapped stick to his companions in aphasia

"Course that was just me. Didn't have any friends sharin in the glossolalia! Haha!"

He leans against a convenient desk, table or wall as the letter writing begins, hoping this can be smoothed out. He was eager to get his reward. Easiest money in his life, just get stuck with a needle and sleep for a while...he wonders what happened to the iron sun...

[Plerumque]

The tattooed man accepts the page of paper gingerly and examines it, tracing one finger over the charcoal-scratches. He creases it once, twice, and then closes his fist around it. When he opens it, the page is a paper star, standing in his gray-inked palm. He hands it to Narla, who holds up the star and blows carefully on it. The paper singes and curls, though there’s no heat, and in moments it has become a fragment of an ember. When she releases it, it flutters up to the ceiling, carried on a column of invisible ash. She follows it with moon-dark eyes, then turns to you and crooks a gnarled finger. She scuttles across the room and up the ladder, into the shade beyond.

Outside the reliquary, there’s no sky. In all directions, the space is taken up with tangles of stairs and platforms and walkways, vast wooden tangles of viscera blocking sight in all directions. Every few moments, someone with the same geometric tattoos as the star-maker runs past, feet pounding, before vanishing behind another junction of beams and struts. Narla sits down, cross-legged, and withdraws from her smock a handful of cards. They are strange cards, though, contorted faces leering up from the deck as she shuffles them. Once, twice, and then she flips down three cards, face-down on the splintered wooden walkway. She gestures for someone to step forward.

Whoever would like may roll three dice.

[Gorgon_Heap]

Seabreeze observes the cards with an uneasy curiosity ...


[roll0]
[roll1]
[roll2]

[Plerumque]

The card that Neilraw flips over is angular, with broad strokes of color clashing in a way that is at once entirely abstract and all too real. It evokes a humanoid figure, shaded in blue and green and earthen brown, opening her arms to a vast, insectile thing depicted in sun-colors of brilliant yellow and scarlet and purple, bright enough to leave an afterimage in your eyes. At the bottom, there is script in your own tongue, the first you've seen since before, reading, THE SYMBIOTE.

The card that Axiom flips over is lushly colored as an oil painting, the subject a queen gazing out at you and raising her arms in supplication. Her face is wracked in ecstatic agony as she beseeches the viewer, but beneath the anguish are features that you recognize, features once etched on every coin in Iscobal. The face of the zealot is the face of the mad queen Whenith. Beneath her are the words, THE ASPIRANT.

The card that Breeze flips over is rough with heavy lines, as if it has been carved into stone. It shows a woman, aged and stooped, wearing a blindfold and carrying a rough iron lantern. Eyes cluster around her like thorns on a branch, though none in the beam of the lantern that illuminates her unknown path. This card bears the words, THE PHILOSOPHER.

Narla considers the results, then hands each card to its chooser. She stands up, curtsies to the travelers, arranges her skirts around her, and steps off the edge of the walkway. The tattooed man steps up behind her, gestures for you to follow him, and likewise falls, a faint smile on his face as he vanishes into the endless wooden maze.

[Gorgon_Heap]

Surprised and confused, Seabreeze looks to the others and shrugs. "I guess this is the way. I don't know if we're even awake, so what else is there?" She walks over, peers into the dark, and cringes before stepping off.

[Anti-Eagle]

Sinan looked at the oddness around him as things went, mild confusion and slight amusement on his face. After Seabreeze dropped off the edge he looked at the other two and wondered if any of this was real. He shrugged and followed the others, walking off the edge.

[Prince Zahn]

"Don't look at me, I am having my suspicions that we are not even alive, much less awake." Neilraw walked to the edge as others did before him. "It could be just the worms speaking, though. However, the laws of conformity specifically dictate that if the majority of other people are jumping off of a highly elevated surface edge, such as a bridge or a window, that we are to do the same. I'm afraid that even given our current condition, we are not exempt from this rule." he says to Axiom who remains with him. "I will see you on the other side, friend." Neilraw jumped off the edge of the walkway, holding his nose in hopes that whatever he falls into does not fry his biomechanical circuitry.

[Plerumque]

You land without falling, in some twisted hellscape at the bottommost part of the labyrinth, where the beams are ashen-black and firelight from above casts angular shadows over the faces of the priestess and the tattooed man. There are two sets of stairs here.

One is carved into the earth, reminiscent of the passage to Narla's chambers back in the Dynafel you knew. At the bottom of the steps, there is darkness, but it is not bitter darkness, sharp darkness. It is soothing darkness, the darkness of moonless tranquility, the darkness of the time between sleep and dream.

The other is wooden, spiraling back into the labyrinth of day. It is carved with lines of poetry, and upon closer inspection they reveal themselves to be odes to the comforts of everyday life: meat and drink, a warm fire, a good tale, and family to share it with. Even standing near the first step you feel the wash of sunlight and contentment.

Narla turns her head, braid swinging, and fixes green eyes on each of you in turn. She draws two more cards from the deck of fortunes. One she places at the first step of the earthen stair. REMEMBRANCE, it reads, and bears the image of an eye closed. The other she places at the first step of the wooden stair, reading PEACE, and the image of an eye open.

[glaiveguy]

"So this is one them...umm...metyfours?" He looks between Narla and the cards. "Some kinda shared dream maybe? And we need to find the answer to how to stop the swarm?"

He rubs his stubbled chin.

"so...if we need to get through this dream to find the answer then we should go with the closed eye right?"

[Gorgon_Heap]

"Deeper ..." Breeze responds curiously. "I suppose. This is supposed to be an archive, right? So 'remembrance ...' Could that mean searching memories, maybe? But then what's 'peace'-oh! Like saying 'Good day' and letting us wake up?

Then yes, I guess deeper it is."

[Anti-Eagle]

Sinan looked at the two paths ahead and thought about what they could be and weighed the choice in his head. After a few moments of thought he turned to the others and said "I agree. I think remembrance leads deeper into the worm dream."

[Prince Zahn]

Neilraw stayed moderately silent to calculate these oblique measures and new bits of information. For as long as he could remember himself, metaphors were never the young man's strong suit- searching for different meanings in words that already have meaning, It's just... it's just Counterintuitive.
Wait, the others are discussing our options, Neilraw ought to be listening.

Neilraw thought somewhat concretely. "I do not understand, Do we not want peace? The cards could imply searching for peace in Dynafel, as opposed to... Um, remembering something, that is not peaceful? I'm afraid I'm not certain, these words are abstract and ambiguous at best on their own, if not meaningless coincidence - need I remind you the Aeon priest is communicating with us via picture cards randomly drawn from a card deck."

[Gorgon_Heap]

Clucking her tongue, Seabreeze shrugs with her eyes. "Well, clear or not, our options are still to stand still and maybe die in our sleep or keep going and find another way to die. Or not! I mean, we definitely want to find other options entirely."

She's clearly readyto move along, and starts for the path downward, motioning impatiently at Axiom to do likewise.

[Anti-Eagle]

Sinan simply said "You have a point but she's right," before following Seabreeze down the remembrance path.