Outside 48: Hotter than Inside

[Rebonack]

[The Shrine of Glass]

Xeni.

You didn't have to come down here, Xeni.

In fact Zee told you to do something very different and very less lethal. You just decided to ignore her.

Why would you do that, Xeni?

Why would you ignore Zee? She just knew that Kara misses you and that horrible rabbit things want to murder you.

And speaking of murder!

The fireball blaps into the incoming death slinky, causing the portion hit to explode in a hail of rabbit-shaped fragments trailing little tails of stardust. Everywhere they land glassy ears pop out of the floor like the first pair of leaves from a sprouting bean.

Great.

Wonderful.

And the rest of the rabbit thing is stalled only momentarily as it lashes out at Xeni with a multitude of unfriendly looking pointy bits in the form of tiny rabbit mouths filled with far-too-large draconic teeth.


[Wrattleham & Sebastian's Ford]

The blacksmith doesn't seem like she thinks miner's jaws would be very useful. You have to really follow the ore veins down into the earth and something that just takes a bite out of the ground wouldn't be cut for that at all.

The preacher thinks the dragon goddess looks a bit odd. But then again, these are odd looking folk and maybe that's just the way things are. You meet all sorts out on the frontier.

There will be some trading and exchanging of designs. The blacksmith likes the idea of a mobile town and has a few ideas after viewing the internal combustion engines. The tricky part will be getting the fuel for them since there aren't any oil fields nearby. Powering something that big with steam would be difficult, but possible. They need an even more potent power source. She shares a story she had heard about people using a strange metal that heats up hotter than any fire to produce power, but they didn't know what the metal was called or where to find it.

As the trading rounds up and the time to depart comes the four adventurers who had been staying at the local inn will ride the cage aboard Wrattleham. They're a motley sort, as adventurers tend to be. The bald elf monk, Aelar, is a rather serious but spirited type. He and Piper the halfling had started off adventuring together and met the equally stout and gruff Borrin the dwarf later on in their adventure. The most recent addition was the human Zee, who they had met in some sort of weird crypt. Given how lethal the place was they were happy to have the help. They had been in Sebastian's Ford to help with hostile elemntals of some kind that were crawling up through the bottom of the mine.

"They delved too greedily and too deep," Borrin explains when asked about why elementals would be causing trouble.

"At least they didn't dig up a balrog," Zee giggles.

"Why would there be a balor down there?" Piper asks, confused. She's been trying to make sense of Zee's jokes since they met but she figures she MUST be missing something. "There weren't any demons at all."

"No no, not a balor. A balrog. They're similar to, but legally distinct from, a balor," Zee explains, completely unhelpfully.

"But that's what I just said! A balor!" Piper replies, getting a little exasperated.

"Anyway. There we were. Surrounded by earth and fire elementals," Aelar continues the story to the no doubt wide-eyed children in the audience. "And there were more coming! So Borrin took his great big war hammer and yelled, 'You shall not pass!' and smote the bridge, shattering it in a single whollop!"

The story is quite exciting and maybe a little scary.

[Earl of Purple]

Wrattleham & Sebastian's Ford

Wrattleham's own engines are multi-fuel, though Wrattleham mostly runs on wood and coal. The furnace burns it and I think hot air or smoke is used to push turbines? I'm not sure; not an engineer. But oil isn't needed, except sometimes as lubrication.

The blacksmith's got a point, there; some miner's jaws do have great big drill bits to get really deep, but most traction-towns that survive by mining prefer to lurk in hazardous areas where larger towns can't reach them, as such drills take a while to fully extract from the ground. The blacksmith's story of superheated metal reminds the engineers sent down of old tales from their homeworld, of lost Old-Tech used by the Ancients before the Sixty-Minute War, of power extracted from New Clear. The engineers also make a point of learning how to repair railways, as to carry further in the direction they were heading requires driving over them.

The town's children, of which there's about ten, listen to the tales eagerly; the adventurer's latest job is as children's entertainers, listen eagerly, although they haven't met any elementals themselves. Wrattleham doesn't really do much digging, except when it finds a tip or old landfill site. And then it mostly scavenges the surface layers for archaeology. Not that it's actually found one since entering the Nexus, as it happens. "What's a balrog? Or a balor?" The speaker is a nine-year-old boy with two eyes apparently made of glass marbles with a star floating deep in each one. He also has a few leaf-like scales (or scale-like leaves? Hard to tell) growing from his skin.

[Rebonack]

[Just Wrattleham]

To the child's question both human and halfling answer at once.

"A fallen maiar."
"A powerful demon."

Both women glance at each other. Piper looks a bit cross. Zee looks a bit silly.

"Anyway," Aelar repeats, giving the other two adventurers a look. "We went deeper into the mine, fighting off the gnomes and the salamanders. Eventually we found where they were coming from. It was a great big throne! Made of the blackest volcano rock, black as a moonless night! And seated on the throne was their king, Old King Coal, all black and smoking and burning. As soon as we saw him Zee stepped forward and said-"

Zee jumps up and points dramatically. "You're reign of fire is OVER King Coal! We're here to depose you!"

"And then Coal waved his hand and buried Zee under a big heap of dirt."

Zee makes an 'Oof!' sound and falls flat on the floor for dramatic effect.

"So then the King said, 'Doh ho ho! From violence refrain! For I am Old King Coal and this is my domain! If it is me you wish to defeat you must make music sweet!' So then he called for his pipe and he called for his bowl and he called for his fiddlers three."

[Shadowcaller]

[New Inside - Castilla]

"Oh. That's unfortunate." Not for one of the pixies though. Seeing as how they get to keep their eyes.

Ilpholin frowns. A piece of the staff? Not the missing piece though. That should be in VIGIL's care already. Did they lose it while Ilpholin was distracted with her compleation? But even then, why would the demons risk it out in the open like that? Looking for the rest of it? Or something worse?

Grand. She only had more questions now, none of which this fairy could provide. "Tell me how to get to where you were when the demons attacked you."

[New Inside - Castilla]

"Umm... wait." There is a pause. "You're not actually with the people of this place, are you? Just who're you actually?"

[Earl of Purple]

Wrattleham Alone

"Hey, you hear that, Maya? Don't fall over, you'll become a demon!" There's a bit of laughter among the children at this, and a seven-year-old girl with a glass antler emerging from her forehead frowns at the boy who spoke.
"Nuh-uh! I'm a girl, I'm made of sugar and spice and all things nice! You're slugs and snails and puppy dog tails."

Despite that brief interruption, the children are really engrossed in the story, and their usual caretaker, the town's nurse is also listening with some interest. She's got dark skin, brown eyes and black glass leaves for hair, with stars and constellations faintly visible shining from them, especially when it's dark.

[Rebonack]

[Wrattleham]

"So Old King Coal began playing his pipe and beating his bowl. His fiddlers began to fiddle. And they wove the most fantastical, energetic tune you ever did hear. Then he looked to us and waited for our reply," the monk says.

"We were terrible," says Borrin, his tone flat.

"Just the worst," Zee adds.

"I thought my lute solo was pretty good," Piper grouses.

"Old King Coal thought it was so funny that he decided that we had won," Aelar says. "We struck a deal with him. The salamanders and gnomes would stop attacking the miners if they stopped digging deeper. That's why Sebastian's Ford was considering moving the town. They had already dug out all the easy to reach ore anyway. This just made the move a little more of a priority. And THAT! Is the story of how we saved Sebastian's Ford from getting ruined by angry elementals."

"They even remembered to dig me out of the dirt pile after the musical battle was over," Zee adds, dusting some stray particles of dirt out of her long black hair. She still hasn't gotten it all yet. What she REALLY needs is a shower.

Adventurers are great! Always full of exciting stories.

[Reinholdt]

[New Inside - Castilla]

"Umm... wait." There is a pause. "You're not actually with the people of this place, are you? Just who're you actually?"

[New Inside - Castilla]

Ilpholin frowns. She shouldn't be surprised really. It wasn't the hardest to figure out. The people here should already know how to get there and half the other questions she was asking.

"I'm the enemy of all angel marked, Ilpholin Xar'cha. With your help, hopefully I can figure out what they were after and ambush them. I want to make sure they can never hurt anyone ever again."

[Earl of Purple]

Wrattleham

If she asked, Zee could maybe be shown to a shower, or possibly a bath. Certainly some method of cleaning herself; it's a large town, and the engine-workers get absolutely filthy.

"Does that mean we won't get a concert whilst you're here?" It's the nurse speaking, not one of the children. She's got a cheeky grin on her face, and her teeth are glass. She's also wearing a blue plastic tunic and loose brown trousers. Her eyes are black, star-specked voids, her skin tanned and she's got brown hair. She's quite pretty, though exotic in appearance from the mutations.

[Murkus]

[Hillside Rambling]

"I-it's not that simple. If I stop and think about it, I know that Sylvess thought me into existence. They're not wrong. I-It's complicated, but Sylvess went through a lot a-and took to hiding in his personas a-and at some point it stopped being an act and I don't feel like him, I don't think like him. I pick up his stutter a bit, but that's it. But...it's still his body." It's hard to explain this, hard to express what it all means, what it feels like to be told you're not real.

And to start to think that the people telling you that are right.

Guess all that therapy must be working.

[Hillside Rambling]

Even kindly Vivi has to stop and think about this one. What do you say to something like that?

"What are we all if not some gods nascent thought," Vivi intones. "I knew a sage who used to say that. Perhaps Sylvess did birth you from his mind... but dragons..." She has to pause there. "Dragons are intensely magical creatures. You are something more than a passing fancy. That is how I feel it. That is what you feel like to me."

[Arkhosia]

[The Joining House]

"T-that's, er - well, uh, would they be a little less rowdy than the folks around here?" Blanche artfully dodges, trying her best to act like she isn't a brighter shade of red from such a forward inquiry. "I-I mean, she did seem like pleasant company." She takes a second to finish off her mug as a means of trying to keep herself from saying anything unintentionally incriminating.

[Rebonack]

[Wrattleham]

"Sure won't, we don't want to get tossed off the side of Wrattleham," Zee replies with a giggle.

The adventurers don't stay on long. Just a few days before they disembark near the next town. Zee's got all the information she needed, really. These people are honestly quite nice, if a little odd. But that's true of most everyone in the Nexus, isn't it? She had considered striking a pact with a few of them, but decided against it. She doesn't really... want this to spread so quickly. And if people knew that power could be gained it would. Just giving them something Correct to strive for is plenty.


[Waylaid Tours]

It was supposed to just be fun little tour. A bus that runs between Inside and Riverside, stopping at a few of the pleasant natural wonders of Outside along the way.

The forest wasn't on any map.

Outside changing isn't exactly a new thing. But changing so abruptly? One moment gentle rolling hills, the next in the middle of a dark forest heavily choked with decay. There's something distinctly wrong about the trees here, the way they coil and clutch at the sky. The trunks of many are cracked and cankerous, strange colored humors oozing from blighted fissures. Gravestones and mausoleums dot the forest, overgrown with vines and briars, faces of marble monuments worn featureless by age and moss. The pitted cobblestone road is unkind to the bus' suspension, giving the small number of occupants an unpleasantly bumpy ride.

This is NOT what they signed up for.

"Don't you worry none," the bus driver slash tour guide calls from the front to his meager number of customers. "This sort of thing is perfectly normal."

A brief glimpse between the rotted trees.

A headstone.

And a phantom.

Scarcely visible, it points a single bony arm back the way they came.

[Deathkeeper]

[Waylaid Tours]

Hector groans as he nearly smashes his face on the seat in front of him. It’s been a long day, he finished his book halfway through, and now-
And now-
Oh dear, that looks particularly strange isn’t it? This seems like a great time to be anywhere else, despite the fascinating prospect of seeing a real life specter.
”Mayhap we should back up?” he suggests to the driver shakily.

He looks around at the bus. His black hair threatens to get in his eyes; he should have gotten it cut last week. He flicks one of his grey-streaked bangs out of his eyes. Grey hair in his twenties. He’s still mad at whichever ancestor gave him that.

[bc56]

Waylaid Tours

Dave shrugs. He doesn't see what the big deal is. It's just a spooky forest, but there can't be anything really unnatural there. That stuff doesn't really exist. He turns back to his phone and plays more Tetris, ignoring the dark, ominous woods outside the bus. After all, there's nothing interesting out there.

[Earl of Purple]

Waylaid Tours

Actually paying attention is a pretty young woman in her twenties, wearing a pair of hiking boots, beige cargo pants and a black jacket. She carries a digital camera around her neck and she owns a satchel which contains more photography equipment and books on various birds. She's got bright green eyes behind a pair of yellow glasses, and rich auburn hair that has been tied into a ponytail and pushed through the adjustable bit of a baseball cap blazoned with the logo of the Inside Interlopers elephant polo team. Her skin is reasonably pale, and she's been applying some sunscreen.

[Chaotic Bob]

[The Shrine of Glass]

This is one of those moments where Xeni thinks back on how much of a mistake it was to laugh his coworkers off when they said he should carry an actual weapon.
A big hammer sounds good about now.

Still just has magic he's reluctant to over-use, his fists, and assorted knick knacks in his robe's pockets.
Also his robe.
Hm.
It is a magical, tear-resistant robe...

If the thing was a little smaller, he'd have a really terrible idea. Instead, he has an only mostly terrible idea.

Still requires letting the thing get close enough to him to try biting its way through his clothing (which, even without the spiky bits penetrating, hurts), but this should make it pretty unlikely it can squirm away before that string he's animated out of his pocket does its thing.
Its thing being a constrictor impression.

Wasn't it just a piece of string? Yes, but now it's a substantial ribbon of aggressive magical cloth, more than big enough to wrap up and crush the thing, if it can get a grip.

[Ionbound]

[Waylaid Tours]

Towards the back of the bus sits a somewhat witchy looking young woman. Her black hair cascades down her back, and green eyes peer out the windows from behind round, wire-frame glasses. She's wearing a long-sleeved dark blue blouse with star designs and jeans. When she sees the bony arm out the window, she jumps but remains mostly nonplussed, turning her attention to the front of the bus and asking the driver, "Are you sure this is the right way towards Riverside?"

[5a Violista]

[Waylaid Tours]

HarleyCarlie Hopps, bunnygirl and Riverside veterinarian assistant is also one of the riders here. She's actually here with one of her coworkers - an awakened bat who's working there to pay his way through Veterinarian School. The bat's name is actually, funnily enough, Bruce: the 'wizard who did it' had a sense of humor. Obviously, with Bruce around, Carlie won't try shapeshifting: she's spent a while building up this life and suddenly doing anything weird in front of witnesses would be awful. Besides, it'd mess up her make-up.
At least her make-up matches the rest of her clothing, so that's good: loose dress, ring with small dark red-and-black jewel. Her black hair is up in a bun, between her rabbit ears. And...her skin color is pretty close to milk chocolate.
...
She gets teased a lot for that, especially around Easter.

They both got on the bus to check out new things that sprung up between Inside and Riverside and they were just in Inside to visit another vet's office, one that specializes in weird animals, and they're on their way back. Unfortunately, while Bruce is able to look around and see what's going on and spot the weird animals outside on the trip (he's perched on the back of the chair), Carlie isn't able to.

See, she's feeling a little nauseated. It's weird, because she hasn't really felt this way on all the trains she's ridden.
She put her forehead against the window to cool off and brought her legs up onto the seat next to her. And she nearly fell asleep.

When they suddenly hit bumpy cobblestone, she's jostled awake for one reason: she suddenly feels more sick. She quickly puts her hand to her mouth - just in case - and looks around outside.
...
It doesn't look pretty out there. She has no reason to doubt the bus driver, however: she can only assume it's as normal as the bus driver said.

"How close are we?" Carlie asks to anyone around her; her voice is a little muffled through her hand. "Did we take a detour?"

[Reinholdt]

[Waylaid Tours]

A woman possessing vivid pink eyes and sporting a blue furred cat tail and a pair of blue furred cat ears sits on the bus, trying to relax. The catgirl hands rest in the lap of her long dress that denies the viewer as much skin as possible. Leah was enjoying the sights, even perhaps relaxing a bit as her sisters insisted she do. Though she wasn't really feeling stressed to begin with. She knows the image her sisters have of her as being wound up and uptight, but it's a false understanding. Having decency and morals isn't the same as being ready to snap.

Leah blinks, realizing she got lost in thinking about her rather difficult family again and looks out the window. There she sees a pretty evident warning that they are in the wrong place. "Did you see that? Did anyone see that?!" Leah asks, fur standing up a little as she points out the window to where the phantom was, pointing them back the way they came.

It's gone by now of course. Such things always are.

[Lady Serpentine]

[Waylaid Tours]

Also on the bus is Lucy Aldgate, aspiring medical student. She's not especially dressed up by comparison to most of her companions, but she did make an effort compared to her usual, and she's pleased with the results - a simple black blouse over a straight, pale grey skirt that comes to about mid-thigh, and, in a spot of color, bright pink leggings beneath that. Well, mostly pleased. The fact that she only has one pair of shoes and those are heavy boots (that she's dyed an only-slightly-less-eye-popping shade of pink) kind of ruins the effect she actually wanted, in her opinion. But she's determined not to focus on that! This is going to be a pleasant trip. Definitely. Even if this mysteriously appearing forest (and isn't that just a phrase and a half?) is kind of creepy. The driver knows more about this kind of thing than she does, almost certainly.

The human looks down just as the phantom appears, checking to make sure that her bag is still next to her. Which is probably wise! Even if it does mean that Leah's exclamation leaves her confusedly peering out her own window. She keeps one pale hand on the bag beside her, though, even while she's staring at the forest beyond the bus. She's lived in Inside her whole life, and even if it's not as prone to changes as Outside, that's given her a healthy respect for the fact that things can disappear just when you want them most if you're not careful.

[Rebonack]

[The Shrine of Glass]

As much of a mistake as ignoring Zee's advice and traipsing off into a doom dungeon while you're already magically fatigued?

That sort of mistake, Xeni?

All you had to do was go home and give Karaglen a hug. It would have been great.

Now you're- well. Something is still trying to hug you, Xeni. Just not in a very nice way.

Then biting!

And ribbon!

The ribbon lashes around the horror and partly crushes it. To which it reacts by doing... gosh. It's doing something. That's for sure. Vibrating? Maybe's it is vibrating. That isn't quite right though. For a brief, mind-bending moment it appears as if the rabbit thing is both ensnared and not-ensnared at the same time. Then the moment passes and the VERY not-ensnared rabbit thing is trying to give Xeni a really aggressive hug again. Getting said hug would be painful and unpleasant but not particularly lethal.


[Waylaid Tours]

There's quite a bit of chatter on the bus all of a sudden.

Honestly it's a wonder the driver can hear it at all, what with the sound of the tortured suspension rattling against the cobblestone road. Everything had been smooth(ish) asphalt up until now. What's with the rocks and pothols and-

The whole bus lurches as it hits a particularly large crater in the road. Thankfully the jostling had already gotten everyone's attention otherwise that probably would have banged someone's head against the seat in front of them pretty darn hard.

"Everyone hang on!" the bus driver shouts. "Road is narrow, no room to turn around! Don't anyone worry none! This sort of thing happens every now and again. We just get through the new patch of landscape and everything is fine on the other side."

There, see? He knows what he's doing. This bus driver obviously has lots of experience with this sort of thing. Eventually the worst of the potholes subside. The cobbles are even a little more intact! The bouncing of the bus subsides from a bone-rattling experience to a merely bumpy one.

The driver glances over his shoulder to give the passengers a confident smile. "There, see? Everything will be just fine."

And in that precise moment, there's a thing in the middle of the road.

With a tremendous crash and a shriek of rending metal, everything goes black.

Hector

You awaken in the fetid, tenebrous heart of the forest. What meager light pierces the canopy reveals sights both morbid and distressing. A few scraps of metal are scattered in the clearing about you, the ruined corpse of the tour bus. A tire lays in the damp, reeking leaf litter, acrid black smoke rising from the flames licking across it. The fire refuses the touch the rot-infested forest floor as if repulsed by such an unclean thing. In the dark you hear the cries of beasts unseen. Something stalks these woods, and you do not have to look far to find evidence.

A carcass lays nearby, splayed open and little more than ribs, gristle, and a bit of fur. Mushrooms have already begun their pitiless task of turning corpse to rot, and rot to earth. It appears to be no one from the bus; some forest animal. But the thought occurs, whatever may have made that carcass might return for it.

And should it find you?

It might have another carcass to claim.

The clinging, misshapen underbrush in this forest is dense; far too dense to push your way through. Thankfully, however, there are paths. Paths of cobbles and flagstones, slick with moss and slimy mold , but paths none the less. One leads up hill, winding between trees with heavy, thorny branches draping over it. Hanging from one tree is a wicker ring with tanned skin stretched across it, its surface covered in rusty colored, spidery writing. The second path leads down, the earth growing steadily more marshy and the fungus growing steadily more luminous. In the distance you can hear the dull drone of insects. The third path leads deeper into the thicket of brambles and briars. The darkness is deep here, full of a strange, bestial scent. A few stray tufts of silvery white fur hang from the thorns.

What do you do?

Dave

You awaken to the scent of death.

Wet, metallic, with a hint of open sewer.

There are no signs of the road. No signs of bus' ruined remains. Only the wind in the leafless trees and the groan of a cast-iron gate swayed by the breeze.

The unwholesome forest surrounds you, the site of a graveyard lost to time and thought. How long ago were these tombs and sarcophagi fashioned that a forest would overtake them? Monuments are as thick as underbrush here, mausoleums, headstones, pillars, statutes. All pitted with age and slick with clinging slime. It is unnaturally cold here, as if the heat were being drawn from your body. An unearthly, singularly hostile presence presides over this place.

The living are not welcome.

Finding the source of the death-stink is not difficult.

While you were fortunate, landing on a thick bed of moss and rotted leaves, one of your fellow passengers was not. They lay still, eyes staring into oblivion, head cracked upon the edge of a pitiless granite foundation stone.

Their phantom stands above them, staring in muted horror at their own slowly cooling corpse. Fear radiates from the shade, nettling at your heart.

Several clear modes of egress offer themselves. You could pass through the groaning iron gate and along the cobble path. The gravestones don't look quite as thick in that direction, but the scent of rot is almost overwhelming. The second path may seem like madness at first, a grand Gothic mausoleum stands open, decorated with marble skulls and leering devils. A flight of stairs descends into the darkness here, but a sign lies propped up against the stone edifice. 'To the Hamlet'. The third path leads deeper into the graveyard, a path over which bones dangle from trees, clattering against each other like macabre wind-chimes.

What do you do?

Bird Watcher

You awaken to find yourself draped over the branch of a tree, though perhaps 'branch' is an ill-fitting word for it. It is wider than you are tall, its surface fibrous, spongy, and smelling of mildew. The exposed wood is a sickly beige with thick, black vines running through it which pulse to a disquietingly heart-like rhythm. Fleshy colored toadstools festoon the wood with monstrously sized shelf-fungi protruding from its flanks. Should you peer over the edge, you will be met with the dizzy sight of leafless branches, fungal bloom, and sufficient height above the bramble infested forest floor so as to slay you without question should you fall. Against all impossibility the chair in which you were seated is caught some distance away in snarled tangle of grasping branches. They appear to have caught it, and dumped you, into the canopy where you now lay. Had the chair's flight have taken you a few unfortunate feet one way or the other, your corpse would be just one more source of meat for the mushrooms.

A caw cuts through the deathly still of the forest canopy. Upon a branch, hopping back and forth in avian frenzy, is a crow. Something about it is... wrong. But in the clutching shadows of this blight, benighted forest the precise nature of the wrongness is difficult to ascertain. The crow caws again, as if waiting for you to rise-

-or perhaps perish. There are more than mushrooms in this forest that crave flesh.

The bird gives a throaty gurgle before flapping to another, slightly higher branch, and watches.

Three paths are open before you. The branches are thick and the shelf-fungi broad and strong. You could use them to follow the bird higher up into the canopy. Your eye is drawn to crow feathers tied with string and dangling from the massive tree's trunk. A trail of talismans, shifting in the wind, leading higher. Something with fingers must have made them, surely. Perhaps someone lives up here? The second route is out across the branches themselves. Massive in size, clutching at each other like the decaying limbs of some great octopus. The impossibly large trees here share an embrace. Leaping from one branch to anther couldn't be to trying, could it? The third path is the tree's trunk itself. A great canker appears to have burst out through its bark, leaving a hollow filled with luminous orange sap and violently green glowing mushrooms. The hollow leads down toward the forest floor, lit in eerie neon colors. The scent of rot from the hollow is almost overwhelming.

What do you do?

The Witch

You awaken upon the old road, in the twisted remains of the tour bus.

There is little left.

It is as though some great force had seized the bus, sheered it in twain, and flung the occupants to the four winds.

You are alone.

Half of the bus is on fire. Most of its seats are stripped away. The front of the bus has been compacted as if it were little more than an empty can crushed under a boot. There are no signs of the passengers.

"Oh gods... oh gods no!"

You are not alone.

You hear the bus driver pleading and sobbing. You hear the sound of rending metal. You hear the crunch of bones and the squelch of living meat.

You wish you were alone.

The Thing is here. The Thing that the bus collided with.

You must escape.

You could run back down the old road, away from the Thing, but the cobbles are slick with rain and slime. There is no cover. If the Thing sees you it will catch you. If the Thing catches you, then your bones will crunch and your meat will squelch. But if you get around the bend while the Thing is distracted with its meal, maybe it won't see you? Over the edge of the road you see a culvert, a standing circle of stacked stones built into the hillside and covered with a rusting iron grate you are certain you could slip through. Foul, oily looking water drains from the culvert and into the marshy, stinking muck. The entrance looks small. Your brief glimpse of the Thing suggests it is anything but small. If you make it into the culvert it won't be able to follow you. Finally there is the forest. Grasping trees, hanging moss, and eerie cobwebs line a steeply descending path deeper into the woods. The path is closer than the culvert and more sheltered than the old road. Maybe if you slip away into the woods the Thing will not notice you.

What do you do?

Carlie

You awaken to the spray of salt water in your face and the stinging scent of rotting fish. You lay half way out of a pool of gently lapping, though frigid, water. Your fingers scrape through a thing layer of sand overlaying porous stone. As your hand twitches, a startled sea louse the size of a rat scurries away into the darkness. You feel something moving in the water.

You are in a cave, basalt crags surrounding you, their surfaces glistening with sea water and patches of fleshy orange tunacates. Eerie coral grows from the walls, casting the damp cavern walls in unearthly shades of red and lavender. Here and there phosphorescent pools of water slowly churn, smelling of brine. You can hear waves crashing somewhere in the far distance, jets of water blasting through holes in the stone and leaving a heavy salt mist hanging over the cavern. Somewhere far above a shaft of light shines down through a fissure in the ceiling, illuminating an exquisitely carved ship's figurehead sticking out of a sandbank. You must have fallen through the fissure and into the pool, the water breaking your fall.

Three paths are open to you. You could try to scale the slippery, treacherous basalt walls encrusted with barnacles and mussels to reach the edge of the fissure. Through it you can make out dark forest in the distance. You can hear horrible, inhuman cries from the woods above. The second is the sandy wash that slopes upward, strange signs carved into the stone pillars that dot it. The third is deeper into the sea cave, illuminated unearthly corals and luminous brine pools.

There are no bats here.

What do you do?

Leah

You awaken in an uncanny garden, bathed in an unearthly light. It pours in through your eyelids and fills your mind with music. You can feel it pulling at you. Pulling in a direction you find yourself wholly unable to describe. All around is the forest, a decaying ruin such that it is, full of leafless trees and bloated fungus. But this part of the forest is quite unlike that which you witnessed from the old road. Pools of colour dot the forest floor. They ooze down the trees and seep from the pores of the mushrooms. Here and there crystals have grown from the pools, shimmering with internal light. They grow in spirals, stepped and tiered, like bismuth.

It is utterly silent here.

But the music is nearly deafening.

Three paths are open to you. You could flee from this accursed light into the humid, dark embrace of the deep forest where mushrooms grow fat and rot holds sway. You can't help but feel the toadstools along that path have a vaguely, disquietingly humanoid shape to them. Or you could trek deeper into the garden, where the crystal growth has devoured tree and stone and mushroom alike in radiant tombs of shifting colour. Or you could follow the standing stones, jagged and imposing, that lead off through the wood. The patches of colour are sparse along that path, yet they shine with an even greater brilliance. Motes of light, like fireflies, drift between the monoliths.

What do you do?

Lucy

You awaken at the foot of a hideous idol.

It's a squatting, squalid looking thing. Crudely fashioned from wood and bits of bone. Whatever it is, you're uncertain, but the sight of it fills you with dread. The wood is dark in color and well oiled, hard and well maintained. A far cry from the creeping rot of the forest that surrounds you on all sides. Four torches surround it, all burning with oily flame, as well as an alter of uncut stones. The alter is covered in rusty stains, an elaborate curved dagger made of bronze sitting at its edge. In the flickering firelight, you can see the glitter of jewels set into the idol's eyes.

Discarded and ruined, the emergency exit door of the bus lays in the mud next to you. Four huge parallel gouges are cut deep into its surface, their spread wider than your torso. This sight is, perhaps, even more troubling than the idol.

Behind the idol yawns the entrance to a stone crypt, firelight dancing in its depths. The light doesn't move, so perhaps there are more torches? Deeper into the clearing stand more idols, each more grotesque than the last. The scent of dried blood grows fresher in that direction. Another path leads off into the forest and away from this blasphemous place, but among the rotted trees and standing stones are more claw marks akin to those in the door.

What do you do?

[bc56]

Waylaid Tour - Dave

Sure is chilly here. Dave clutches his comfy sweatshirt around him for warmth. He seems to be in a graveyard, one of the ones he spotted from the bus, perhaps. No matter. The dead cannot hurt him. But it smells awful! He spies the corpse of his fellow passenger a moment later. Is there something floating in the air above it? No, it must be a trick of the light. Still, he is struck by the strangest sensation of fear for his own mortality. If he sticks around here, he might be next. Assessing his options, he makes for the gate, into the rotting stench. It would be foolish to go into a mausoleum, regardless of what the signpost says. There wouldn't be an exit there, but the gate provides a clear delineation between the graveyard and the much preferable forest. Gates lead to roads, even if the road which connects to this graveyard must be very overgrown.

[Rebonack]

[Waylaid Tour]
Dave

You have chosen to put the graveyard behind you and instead trek deeper into the rotting heart of the dark forest.

You push the iron gate open, causing a shiver-inducing screech to sound through the woods. If anything didn't know that you were here, it does now.

The number of tombstones quickly diminishes until there's little more than the odd marble obelisk, headstone, or a statue of an angel weeping into its hands. Why there would be some many graves here isn't clear. What WAS this place before the forest grew up over the top of it? Why are there so many graves out in the middle of nowhere? No one would have put these here in the middle of the forest, right? It must have been a huge graveyard. But where's the city that supplies it with corpses?

You know of at least one new corpse that was added to it recently.

Best be cautious lest yours makes two.

Soon you will come upon a strange sight. Someone standing near the side of the road in baggy pants, a shirt, and jacket, all filthy and worn. They're wearing no shoes, since wearing shoes with prove difficult with those horse's hooves they have for feet. It's a lanky, clawed, hyena headed creature with a thick neck and long dark auburn hair running from head to mane. Her lips are rotted off, revealing hideously discolored teeth. Her eyes are little more than pale white orbs. A hyena's tail is sticking out from the top of her pants. She has a shovel, which she's trying to wedge under the lip of a sarcophagus while maneuver a large broken headstone under her shovel to act as a fulcrum. Sitting on a rotted stump nearby is a lantern, a ghostly blue-green flame swirling inside it.

It's a ghul. Technically she's a ghulah since she's female. As busy as she is trying to pry that tomb open she doesn't appear to have noticed you yet.

"Hate this stupid graveyard," she mutters to no-one. "Swear it keeps getting bigger and there isn't ever anything worth eating..."

You could sneak back the way you came easily. Or perhaps creep off the path and through the thorny underbrush to avoid the creature. Or maybe try to confront it somehow?

What do you do?

[5a Violista]

[Waylaid Tour - Carlie]

The bunnygirl wakes up.

Between the awful smell, how she was feeling earlier, and feeling something moving under her hand - and then something else past her leg - which she then immediately associates with the smell, Carlie has no choice but to vomit.

Soon, nothing more comes up and her throat feels tired and she starts coughing...she really only has one choice now, doesn't she? She takes a moment, concentrates, and disconnects her sense of smell from her brain. She drags herself out of the water, before whatever brushed against her decides it wants to come back.

It's then that she notices that her dress is torn around the knee, which then leads her to notice leg is bleeding. It went numb from the cold...and she looks up, to finally figure out where she is and why she's here. She's in a seacave, beneath that forest? And she must have fallen in and her leg caught on that rock up there, which is why it's bleeding out, which is definitely something she should fix.

...She's alone, right? Carlie figures she can just straight fix it. Concentrating a little more, her leg starts to stitch itself back together. And...cave. Right. There's plenty of light, but there's also plenty of darkness. Maybe seeing thermal vision might help better? It doesn't take much longer, and her left eye changes itself to see infrared and heat instead of regular light.
There.
She should be safe now.

So what's her priority? she wonders, sitting up and turning towards the water. Find other people. Bruce, probably. Carlie was practically sleeping on the bus, so she has no idea where they are or which direction even is the road...others might know, and Bruce can fly. As Carlie looks up, she figures most everyone is probably up there, in the forest above instead of in this cave...
But she can't just climb right up. Even though she can't smell it right now, she can still remember the smell and she's already feeling too nauseated to climb anyway. She'll just slip and fall again.

She looks at the ship's figurehead: it's a good distraction from the taste of vomit, so she can continue thinking. Let's see..there's shrieks and screams up there...honestly, it's most likely toads combined with people from the crash who can't just stitch their own cut back together by willing it. Probably some dying. And birds. Birds can make some weird sounds.
So, Carlie can go farther into the cave. That's obviously a bad option - everybody else is up, not farther in the cave. And her first priority is to find others. That leaves walking along the sandy wash. Maybe while she's there, she can look at those pillars, too, to see what's up with them.

The bunnygirl stands up, and carefully walks to the pillars in the sandy wash. She only glances at the water every once in a while, just in case there's...something there. Probably just fish, to be honest."Bruce?" she calls out. If he hears her, she hopes he'll fly to her. "Are you okay? Bruce!"

[bc56]

Waylaid Tour

A person! Dave could ask for directions.
But she seems to be a grave robber. That's less of a good thing. He briefly wonders what chemical impurity is in her lantern to make its flame that color. Should he greet her? Then he hears her talking about trying to find something good to eat. Does she mean corpses or something else? Must be something else. This graveyard is getting to his head. "Hello? Excuse me, miss? Do you know where the road is?"

[Reinholdt]

[Uncanny Garden - Leah]

Ugh. Her head. What happened? The last thing she remembers is looking back to try and confirm what she saw. And then there was this... THING. And shrieking. She thinks some of it was hers.

And would someone turn off that music?! Leah's eye's shoot open and she sits up faster than she should have, grabbing her head almost instantly at the headache. A concussion? Chronicler she hopes not. The catgirl takes a moment to observe herself first, trying to ignore the sound. She... she seems alright. Externally at least. Her landing was particularly soft it seems as she starts to look around at the rest of the scenery. Her ears flick right and left searching for the source of the music that isn't there, that makes no sound, that pulls so insistently at her mind. It must be a concussion. She could not explain it any other way. Yet as she stood, she felt no dizziness.

"Hello?!" Leah calls out. "Is anyone there?" She replies to herself, brushing off the dirt on her dress. "Who's playing that?" And more importantly, where did everyone else go?

Leah squints her eyes at the otherworldly light as she considers her choices, all but certain no response is coming, ears flattening against her head. The forest... is the most likely place to find the others. And the most likely place to find the THING. That would be counterproductive. She starts to step towards the deeper areas of the garden when she notices the monolithic rocks. Stones were always something of a guide for her. She did always choose rock in rock paper scissors for a reason. Turning, she tepidly heads towards the standing stones to follow them, hand occasionally brushing them for comfort and stability.

Was this where the music was drawing her? If it was, should she not turn around? Leah takes a moment to hold her hands over her ears, wishing its beckoning notes would stop for just a little while.

[Ionbound]

[Waylaid Tour - Gwyn]

When Gwyn hears the bus driver scream, her first instinct is to stand up and try to help him. This lasts for all of half a second until she hears the sound of metal and flesh tearing and she realizes that he is beyond help and that, if she doesn't do something, she'll be next. She takes advantage of the time she's looking around for a way to escape to cast a minor muffling spell on her feet at a whisper, "Symud yn dawel." figuring that that will be useful one way or another for her flight. After taking stock of her options, she flees towards the culverin, steps muted and running as low to the ground as she can manage to avoid The Thing's notice.

[Deathkeeper]

[Waylaid Tours- Hector]

Oh, oh dear. Hector surely wasn’t expecting something to go this level of wrong on a simple tour. But he is glad to be rather miraculously unharmed given the fact that about 95% of the bus and everyone in it are gone. He’s glad he didn’t pack anything valuable at least. But that leaves him stranded in the woods with nothing more than his wallet, his phone, two tissues, and a very small utility knife. Oh and a few discarded pieces of bus.
You know, the thought of pieces of a bus makes him think that he ought to start moving even more than the nearby carcass.
The swamp is out. He’s not going to find anyone going that way. And he is wholly unprepared to ford any swampy marshes.
He takes a minute to look at the brambly path, wondering what sort of animal left that fur behind. A wolf, a bear, maybe an unusually large badger? He realizes though that he doesn’t really have any way to identify any of those besides knowing what a dog smells like. And he probably doesn’t want to meet the creature anyway.
As for the ring, well, it was certainly made by something with hands. Even if it’s rather on the creepy side of things. Unless something particular jumps out at him while examining the bramble-torn fur, or recognizing something human about that skin, he will pick that path.

[Rebonack]

[Waylaid Tour]
Carlie

The smell is gone.

Merciful. It isn't churning your stomach any longer. But neither can it warn you of what might be lurking in the dark. Thermal vision is sadly not terribly useful. Even in the low light you can see rough outlines at least, and that is about what thermal vision yields. Everything here is uniformly cold and wet. If anything down here is alive it is likely cold and wet as well.

You step into the sandy wash and quickly discover that the strange stone pillars are illuminating the path. Unlike the coral they shed a soft, greenish white light. Close enough to examine them now, you find that they have strange spiraling patters etched into them. Spirals that are, it appears, set with gold. They glitter in the dim light. Along the path you feel your foot strike something slimy and heavy and fibrous, terror gripping your heart as it wraps around your leg and-

It's just a heap of sea weed.

Disturbed by your motion, several small ghostly white crabs and sea lice retreat from the rotting pile of vegetable matter and go skittering away to their burrows in the sand.

Then you speak.

Does Bruce hear you?

Something did.

Another larger heap of kelp, this one hardly visible in the gloom, moves. You hear a slithering sound. Wet scales scraping against sand and stone.

You could freeze. Stay where you are. Maybe whatever it is will lose interest? You could move closer and investigate. Maybe one of.. haha... maybe one of the people on the bus was just a giant eel or something disguised as a human? Or something? You're disguised too, right? That isn't impossible. Or you could flee back the way you came. But what guarantee is there that the other paths won't have their own terrors lurking in the dark?

What do you do?

Dave

With a yelp of surprise the woman whirls toward, you, her shovel briefly raised defensively. Then just as quickly she's no longer a horrible monster (not that you seem to notice that sort of thing) but rather an almost supernaturally beautiful woman. She quickly sets the head of her spade down by her feet, trying to block her horse's hooves from view. She's likely unaware of your 'disability'.

"Oh, ah, hey? I didn't hear you there. I was just-"

She glances down at the tomb at her feet, its lid ever so slightly ajar.

"-checking to make sure no one had robbed this grave. Yeah."

She doesn't sound terribly convincing.

"You, uh, you're lost in the forest then? Man, that sucks. This forest really sucks, let me tell you. You don't want to go back to the Old Road, though. No way. The Thing hunts there."

The ghulah is likely concerned that if the Thing were to eat you she wouldn't get any.

"So, uh, if the Thing hit your caravan or whatever it probably scattered everyone. I, uh, I don't suppose any of your traveling companions happened to land nearby in a less than living sort of state? Since that would be really sad. And I would need to, y'know."

She taps her shovel against a cobblestone.

"Bury them."

This person is extremely sketchy, and she didn't answer your question. Maybe you could dismiss her and look for the road on your own? Or maybe if you told her about the corpse you saw she would be more willing to share information with you? Or maybe you might be able to press her for more information about the forest? She'll probably just spout superstitious nonsense, given her talk of 'the Thing', whatever that is. Probably just a rogue bear.

What do you do?

Leah

You choose to follow the path of standing stones, carefully picking your way between the monoliths. Ethereal lights dance around you, budding off from the colour pools and drifting through the air. Peering close, you discover that they almost resemble tiny jellyfish, if a jellyfish were made of wheels withing wheels. The stones are smooth and glossy with a dark forest green color to them. Should you touch one, you'll discover that they have a filmy, almost soapy smooth texture. Soapstone, likely. They've been carved, as soapstone often is. Carved with intricate intersection spirals. Colour flows from the center of the designs now and again, slowly oozing along the labyrinthine path and dripping to the ground upon reaching the edge.

As you press on you feel a jarring, lurching feeling quite suddenly as the forests abruptly shifts.

You're back in the clearing where you started again, having just stepped out of a colour pool oozing down the trunk of a tree. There are the same crystal growths. The same pools. The same bloated mushrooms. And, perhaps most disconcertingly, the same you.

You lay in the middle of the path, unconscious.

You know. Somehow. Beyond question. That didn't just loop back to where you started, you've looped back to when you started.

You could try awakening your past self, but you have no memory of such a thing happening. You could continue down the path of monoliths again, but would that simply return you to the clearing once more? Or you could try one of the other paths, a path of humidity and rot or a path of steadily strengthening song.

What do you do?

Gwyn

You are silent as a shadow as you creep away from the ruined corpse of the bus, trying your hardest to ignore the stomach churning sounds of death. Mercifully you can't see the source of the nauseating noise, but your imagination is more than happy to fill in the details for you. You hurry across the road and pick your way down the embankment. If not for your muffled steps your feet surely would have crunched on the gravel and that would have been the end of you. A patch of marshy earth stands between you and the culvert, stagnant water languishing over a pool of thick mud.

As soon as you step into the pool to climb into the culvert the mud squelches loudly, causing you to sink up to your knees.

There is an immediate reaction.

Something is moving toward you.

Something large.

Something fast.

And save for the sound of feet striking pitted, slick cobble stones, something silent.

Gripped with terror, you scramble the last few feet through the mud and haul yourself into the culvert, crawling around the corner through rancid water to get out of sight of the grate. You hear a tremendous impact behind you, the crack of stone and the protest of bending metal.

But nothing breaks.

Then comes only silence and dark, the only sounds the distant drip of water and your own heart thundering in your chest.

As your eyes adjust to the dark you can see there are two ways forward. There is one set of tunnels that wind their way through pipes like the one you now crouch in, scarcely wide enough to crawl through, just barely wide enough to turn around in. The stinking water flows through these pipes, heavy with oxidation. You're certain that if the Thing somehow followed you, it couldn't fit through these pipes. The wall of the pipe near you is broken open, leading to some sort of crypt. You can hear sounds coming from the crypt, guttural cries in the dark. The sickly scent of decay from the crypt is nearly overwhelming.

Or...

You could wait where you are for a time and then peek back around the corner. Check to see if the Thing has grown bored and left. Once it's gone you would be free to take whatever path you want to escape this accursed forest.

What do you do?

Hector

Someone made that, you think.

Someone with hands.

Someone with intelligence.

If someone lives in this benighted, festering pit of decay, maybe they know the way out?

You strike off uphill, brambles occasionally pulling at your coat. It's irritating, surely, but not nearly as troublesome as trying to navigate the thicket would have been. The hike is arduous but, thankfully, mostly uneventful. Every now and again the trail becomes difficult to pick out in the gloom, but at every such juncture there's another morbid dream-catcher hanging from a rotten tree to point the way. This eventually leads you to a clearing with an incredibly wide oak tree sitting in the middle of it.

Hanging from the tree, suspended by what appears to be black yarn, are doll parts. Heads. Bodies. Arms. Legs. Just dangling there, swaying gently in the fetid breeze.

Built into the trunk of the tree is a door.

A small, red door. Large enough, perhaps, for a child

You could, perhaps, check to see if anyone is home. Or you could flee back the way you came, thoroughly creeped out. But then you spy another dream catcher near another trail leading away from the unearthly tree house and the nebulous sense of wrongness that hangs over it like a grave shroud.

What do you do?

[Deathkeeper]

[Waylaid Tour- Hector]

This place is not right.
Not right. People don't just hang dolls up like Thanksmas ornaments. And more than that, the place just feels wrong. No, no he isn't touching this one. None of that.
He wouldn't even fit.
Hector jogs past the house to the new path.

[Ionbound]

[Waylaid Tour-Crypts]

Gwyn looks around and takes stock of her options as she mutters, "Goleuwyf," to create a fist-sized ball of floating illumination that hovers up to the ceiling. After looking down the pipe, Gwyn decides that doing a Shawshank Redemption re-enactment was definitely not in the cards today, and that turning around and having to deal with The Thing again is right out. Left without any more attractive options, she grumbles to herself, "Great. Guess we're dealing with zombies today. Just what I wanted," sighs, and heads down the path towards the crypt, ball of light leading the way about a foot or two in front of her and at the ceiling-level.