Inside 69: Nice.

[Deathkeeper]

[G’nichi’s Door]

Well, it seems like G’nichi has run out of options.
”I thank you for your patience and your understanding, Madam. Uh. Good luck with your temple.”
And then he takes a very deep breath and lets go.

[Rebonack]

[G’nichi’s Door]

The stones are smooth.

The water rushing, but not inundating.

There's a subtle slope to the floor. Just enough to keep you sliding as you're washed away.

Down the tunnel, around the bend, faster and faster!

...it's a water slide.

The dungeon is acting like a giant water slide.

Up ahead the tunnel splits in two, a loud gurgling sound coming from the eastern fork while a sound of crashing waves sounds from the western fork. You have only moments to lean in one direction or the other!

What do you do?

[Deathkeeper]

[G’nichi’s Door]

G’nichi yelps as his tail hits the slopes floor. He expects that to ache later. At least wrapping his wings around himself keeps those in place.
Gurgling is not what he would consider the most welcoming sound, so he leans westward. It’s mostly an instinctive decision more than any conscious one.

[Rebonack]

[G’nichi’s Door]

Woosh! Away you go! The tunnel is suddenly plunged into darkness and you find yourself briefly surrounded by a swirling starscape, as if you were sliding through the waters of primordial creation. And... considering where you are that might not be totally inaccurate. It looks pretty, though!

Then just as quickly you are spat out into a wide pool just deep enough for your toes to touch the bottom with your head sticking out of the water. A large stone sphere covered in the wedge-like writing you had seen before stands at the center of the room, slowly rising and falling. With each cycle of ascent and descent, another wave washes over the room.

Don't get any sea water in your mouth.

The temple is much the same as it was. Still limestone blocks. But the sand is gone, replaced with flowing water and waving fields of sea grass and kelp.

A small fish is nibbling at one of your toes.

Aside from the oscillating sphere, you can make out bias reliefs depicting the creation of the universe. It all looks rather grand. Tiamat and her husband Apsu are absolutely unmistakable. There don't appear to be any more statues in here. But there are several ornate looking jars sitting atop little shelves in the wall. To the west the water grows deeper and should you peek under the surface you'll be able to see an archway leading to another submerged chamber. The tunnel you just came through is a round hole higher up on the wall with a bias relief of Tiamat standing imperiously over it. Another passage leads to the east, just beyond stairs leading out of the pool, sealed by a stone door.

You could investigate the sphere or perhaps the jars. Or you could explore the underwater part of the dungeon. Or you could climb out and try to figure out how to open the stone door.

What do you do?

[Deathkeeper]

[G'nichi's Door]

G’nichi sputters as he stands up. His robe and everything in it are sopping wet. Looking around and finding himself alone, he dumps it over his shoulder. He’s managed to lose his glasses again. His stick bobs in the water nearby and then sinks from the heavy locks.
With a groan, our hero stands up onto his toes so he can get his bearings. He paddles over to the jars, hoping he can maybe find some supplies he can use.
He doubts they’re going to have any spectacles and dragonman-sized swimsuits, though.

[Rebonack]

[G'nichi's Door]

You slog your way into shallower water to examine one of the jars.

Hmm...

The lids are sealed on there pretty well.

But with a bit of fiddling you manage to pry it off and-!

-a giant goofy looking inflatable sea serpent pops out of the jar with terrific force, likely launching you into the water again as it fills with air.

...

What?

You wanted a silly adventure. That's pretty silly.

[Deathkeeper]

[G’nichi’s Door]

Luckily no one is around to hear the sound G’nichi makes as he’s tossed back into the water. He grumpily fishes his sodden wad of cloth from the bottom of the pool and opens another jar, being more careful to not point the top at himself.
If this one is another prank he’s going to check out the sphere.

[Rebonack]

[G'nichi's Door]

With its googly, lifeless eyes the inflatable sea-dragon judges you for your undignified squeaking.

Wincing in case of another pool-toy-serpent attack, you pull open the top of another jar to find-!

A pool noodle.

It's a nice pastel pink color.

Should you pull it out you'll find that it's about four feet long and rather floppy. There are more of them inside the jar.

Somehow.

Why the jars are full of various water toys really isn't totally clear. Is this a temple or a water park? Was this place just spontaneously cobbled together by the door you kicked? Is this all some kind of cosmic joke? Maybe if you could read ancient draconic better the answer to these questions would be clear.

Now what?

[Deathkeeper]

[G’nichi’s Door]

Well, as promised G’nichi will trudge through the water to check out the sphere even though he doubts he will find much he can make out and read.
At the very least he can tie his robe around the end of the noodle like a bag so he can carry what few of his belongings will be useable after all this without having to have the sopping thing restricting his attempts to swim.
He would just take his wallet out and carry it but if he gets spat out at a beach he wants to keep it to tie around himself. The noodle will also be troublesome to carry but he’ll get some use out of it if it does end up being a beach.

[Rebonack]

[G'nichi's Door]

Approaching the sphere is difficult.

Mostly because the intensity of the waves it is generating get stronger the closer you draw to it.

But with a little persistence you manage to swim close enough for a look.

The ancient draconic is written pretty clearly, but given that it is raised text on the surface of a ball it is a bit difficult to read all of it at once. It's the sort of seal that would be used to roll out a legal document onto wet clay. Much faster than writing the letters by claw. You get the impression that it is a poem.

It appears to be about...

Tiamat and Apsu creating the world?

No, not the world. That isn't quite right. Some sort of heavenly world? A world beyond the mortal one. The mortal world, after all, wasn't made until after Tiamat was slain. She is the world.

[Deathkeeper]

[G’nichi’s Door]

Well, on the plus side G’nichi is able to confirm that he is a very good swimmer now.
Sadly, while fascinating the barely-legible text isn’t a help to him. It at least confirms that all of this was part of the temple.
Which only means that if it was a whimsical water park this whole time then he really needs to give those newts a talking-to for drying the place up and being so rude to the goddess.
Anyway, he’ll try the stone door next. If it’s locked he’ll just have to swim through the tunnel.

[5a Violista]

[Three Dragons and a Copse of Corpses]

As Navvy burns away at the 'flames' zombie, it tries to shield itself from the light and stumbles.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, it's a firefighter zombie, and firefighters tend to be resistant from burning. Which, I guess, applies to searing light as well. So, it doesn't completely get destroyed.
Its arms, which got the brunt of the light, as well as one of its legs, evaporate away, causing it to fall over.
The zombie groans and now kicks and tries to shimmy towards Navvy.

Meanwhile
The gamer zombie, realizing that it didn't get turned, suddenly sees Karaglen as a very appealing target.
Or maybe it just thinks that she's small and close and not very dangerous.
It turns towards her as she retreats, and does that awkward zombie walk towards her.

Obsidian, the other dragon, also groans, and then carefully rolls over so she can get on her feet. "Y-yeah!" she calls back. "I'm okay!" Since none of the zombies are after her, she flexes her wings so she can feel what's wrong with them. "Um! Its ankles! If you cut those they're useless!" she calls at Karaglen, who seems to be having problems fighting a zombie.
Obsidian would recommend just biting them, but Karaglen doesn't seem like the type who wants zombie flesh in her mouth.


[Dungeon Makers Guild]

Carlie nods.

She grabs the paper and the now-emptied clipboard so that she can look over the papers. She reviews the waiver info and signs in all the appropriate spots. And then, to the financial paper.
She thinks it over. "affordable". If this were a couple of months ago, then, yeah, she would definitely just go with that immediately. She taps her pen on her lips as she tries to decide. Maybe if she...but...what about...? but she just got rid of her bigger expenses, leaving only transportation and clothing, so...but wait, she's expecting future medical bills and just moved, so she'd have to...but...and if...but wait, that money is under the name of a half-elf and the bank might find it suspicious if a bunnygirl takes money from a half-elf's bank...maybe if she uses a check? She's got one pre-signed so she could just claim her half-elf friend agreed to pay for part of it. She obviously can't use that credit card, though, because using a check and a credit card with the wrong names would be suspicious, but she could maybe use the credit card with her own name on it even though it has a much smaller limit...but then what about...

After deliberating a lot, she decides something: "Do you guys accept credit?" she asks. It's possible they don't: after all, the waiver just had 'chance of death' on it. If so, she'll pay just the standard payment - half by check, half by card. If not, she'll go with other and shoot for half by check and half by treasure split. Probably somewhere between 17% to 20% of the treasure, she figures.

Oh, wait. She supposes she does have one more question: where the dungeon will be at? but, then again, she's sure that the question will be naturally answered before they leave, regardless.

[Rebonack]

[G'nichi's Door]

If nothing else you're getting a pretty strong feeling that the Apsu spoken of in the poems is the same person as Bahamut. Or maybe it's the other way around? Certainly he's the husband of Tiamat.

But Tiamat had spoken of her children betraying she and her husband. That doesn't sound quite like the story you're familiar with does it? Maybe it would be worth your while to learn more about the Dragon Queen. She seems less evil and more justifiably upset.

Either way, the stone door stands before you. There isn't any obvious means of opening it, just a winged sun disk in the center. Pushing on the door yields nothing.

There must be a way to open it.

What do you do?

[Nova_Eclipse]

[Dungeon Makers Guild]

Electra looks over the paperwork. The amount is a bit higher than she would probably like, but they're a unique opportunity, and as long as she's careful, she should be able to recover at least that much if their standard treasure split is any indication. She signs the form for the standard payment, and provides a bank card that can be charged.

"Here you are. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with."

[Deathkeeper]

[G'nichi's Door]

Well, G'nichi doesn't have a light to shine the sun on it. He also has no tools to speak of, so that doesn't work. And he doesn't think bopping it with his pool noodle or flexing at it.
"Open up, in the name of Tiamat and Apsu!" he demands.
But that probably doesn't work and if it doesn't he'll just have to swim through the flooded section.

[Rebonack]

[Three Dragons and a Copse of Corpses]

Okay.

So.

Zombie mostly immobilized. With its limbs gone it can just sort of inchworm toward Navvy in a vaguely aggressive fashion. That's okay. So long as his legs are working he can just slowly move away from it! This is fine. He can help Kara instead since the zombie going after her is still way more ambulatory despite having a smashed head?

Doesn't it know that zombies are supposed to stop being threatening if their head is destroyed?

What a jerk of a zombie.

Anyway! Navvy's breath is being a little not helpful right now since he just used it to fry that one zombie. That means he needs to come up with something else. But what! How else can he stop the zombie? Hmm... oh!

The little bronze wyrmling takes the end of his tail, presses it against the pavement, and scraaaaapes it along, causing a gouge in reality to just start being. It's like a nice little series of cube-shaped chunks of terrain simply stopped existing. As if they were just excised out of reality. Then he focuses, sticking his little tongue out a bit, and wills the matter he just harvested back into being as something else.

It isn't very fancy.

Looks like a cross between glass and metal in a strangely porous form. Almost like the struts inside of bone. Golden light pours from the interior of the construct.

Which, just so happens, is in the form of a little chest-high wall surrounding the zombie. A normal, healthy person could just hop over it. But Navvy is hoping that the zombie isn't smart or agile enough to do that.


[G'Nichi's Door]

The door remains stubbornly sealed.

Which leaves the flooded passage.

Getting in there isn't terrible difficult. Just a matter of holding your breath long enough and diving under water. It feels quite a bit less wave-y down at the bottom of the pool. Quite a bit more aquatic vegetation waving around here, too. Several small, brightly colored fish begin following you.

Inside the flooded chamber is what appears to be a model of... the world? Maybe? It's flat, though. And has a vault set up over it. Honestly it appears to be a reverse fish-tank. Water surrounds it and there's air on the inside. Weird. Also in the room is a statue of a creature very like Tiamat, only with a beard and a fancy hat. That must be Apsu. Might be harder to talk to this statue, though. What with being under water and all. Two other exits lead out of the room. One a hallway that appears to lead back above water and the other a well leading deeper.

What do you do?

[Deathkeeper]

[G'nichi's Door]

G'nichi takes a deep breath and dives down.
It quickly becomes even more apparent that he is a very good swimmer despite being a strange cobbling together of Navvy's bronze dragon features and a lizardfolk.
G'nichi realizes that bronzes are kind of known for this, and he seems to have subconsciously given himself their propensity for aquatic activities. He certainly finds himself enjoying this far more than he expected. It feels very right, do be doing this. He stops by the reverse fish-tank to leave the noodle and his stuff. It'll only slow him down and he can come back for it later.
After swimming a few laps around the room just for the sake of it, he does remember his decorum and salutes the statue (and checks it for any wax that it might want off of its face as well).
G'nichi finds himself feeling giddy at his sudden ability to be good at something. He might as well try the deep path, just while he's in an excellent mood and flaunting his new watery talents.

[Rebonack]

[G'nichi's Door]

You salute the statue of Apsu, but it doesn't respond. There sensation of being watched isn't here at all. It's empty. Just an old statue of a weird human-dragon hybrid thing. There's no wax applied to it. In fact, the face doesn't have any holes in it to speak of. No holes in the eyes. No nostrils. No ears. No mouth. Just solid stone.

Kind of a shame, though.

Talking to Bahamut would have been nice, right?

Or at least a statue of Bahamut.

A god and a statue of a god are two very different things after all.

Regardless, the well looms before you.

It is very deep.

And very dark.

What do you do?

[Deathkeeper]

[G'nichi's Door]

Down the well he goes!
G'nichi peers down into the darkness of the well as he squeezes through. He decides to go down until he starts to run out of air or stops being able to fit.
This will quickly become important thirty seconds in when he realizes that he has no sign of needing air anytime soon and remembers that bronze dragons have gills. Well.
In that case he'll keep going until the path curves or he stops fitting. He doesn't want to travel too far in the dark or else he might get lost.

[Rebonack]

[G'nichi's Door]

Deeper.

Darker.

Until at last you begin to see light in the far distance! It grows brighter and brighter the closer you approach until at last-!

Your head pops out of the top of a fountain shaped like a great big mushrooms, water pouring out of the hole in the top and cascading over the surface into a pool that's a few inches deep at least. This looks like the sort of pool children would be playing in, but there's no one around. You're pretty sure you never changed directions while diving, so it isn't clear how you went from upside down to right side up.

Just one of those mysteries of strange dungeons.

There are statues here, but they're all fanciful animals rather than a likeness of Tiamat. All of them have water flowing out of their mouths into the pool. There's also a rather nice looking cypress tree growing on a little island of white sand not too far away. Warm sunlight radiates down from no apparent source. Several pedestals appear to be set up around the room, each with a little clay cylinder sitting atop it.

There's only one passage leading out of the shallow pool room, a door with a slab of wet clay built into its otherwise featureless surface.

You could examine the door. Or maybe explore the tiny island. Or maybe poke at the statues. Or the cylinders. Or try to comprehend the mushroom-shaped fountain you just popped out of.

What do you do?

[Deathkeeper]

[G’nichi’s Door]

Well, this sure is odd. G’nichi exits the fountain (immediately tripping over himself now that he’s back on his feet). His first impulse was to check out the jars but last time that didn’t work so he heads over to the little island first.
It might just be an excuse to get back in the water.

[Rebonack]

[G’nichi’s Door]

No jars this time around.

Little clay cylinders.

They don't appear to be containers of any kind.

Regardless, you move to inspect the island. The warm sand feels rather nice between your toes, a welcome change from the cool sea water. Scattered upon the sands are a number of large snail shells. Conch, moon, whelk, triton. All large and colorful decorations upon the stark white sand. The palm tree leans at a jaunty angle, several coconuts still in their husks dangling from it. As you approach, one of the coconuts drops off and thumps into the sand. Sitting at the base of the tree is a wooden crate about a foot wide on each side.

Hmm...

There also appears to be a fishing net half-buried in the sand, its weave strangely iridescent.

Plenty of interesting things to examine, surely.

What do you do?

[Deathkeeper]

[G’nichi’s Door]

G’nichi moves towards the crate. Well with its size it’s more of a box, but still. He looks down as he feels something strange under his toes and spots the net. How odd. Maybe it’s made of some special fibers? G’nichi bends down to pull it from the sand.

[Rebonack]

[G'nichi's Door]

You draw the net from the sand and shake it clean. It looks like a fairly common fighting net in form, a wide thing with lead weights at the edges to hold it down. The weave itself is shimmering and pearlecent, catching the light in pleasing patterns. Where you handle it, you can feel a slight rustle of wind playing around the tips of your claws.

It is likely a magical fishing net.

But one must wonder: what's it doing here?

And what good would a magical fishing net be, anyway?

For catching magical fish?

No voices speak in your mind, unlike some of the other oddities you've found.

Maybe this one doesn't have a voice. Or maybe it just isn't talking to you?

Or maybe it isn't magical at all. Maybe it's just a shiny net.

What do you do?

[Deathkeeper]

[G’nichi’s Door]

How curious. G’nichi swings the net around for a few seconds to get a feel for it before throwing it over his shoulder. Maybe he can toss it at someone.
”You know I never believed that people would leave magic items just lying around...”
Then it’s time to open that bow! Maybe he can find TWO magic items just lying around!

[Earl of Purple]

First Mission

Sylvette bends over to take the crystal from the hound and hold it in a lower arm, before hurrying to the edge of the roof and looking down. Either they get flown back across to the clock tower, or Sly tries jumping down onto a balcony or other protrusion, and making her way down the building that way.

She is, at least, away from the edge of the skylight so Haru can get out easily.

[Ionbound]

Escape From the Red Zone

"I... don't know what you mean." And the Captain doesn't sound like she trusts it, either. She'll rest her hands on the pistol and cutlass, but doesn't draw either just yet. Elise helped her, after all, and whilst she's doing things that Audrey doesn't really understand, it might be a good thing.

Freaky Fungal Split House

"You look... Different, too. Pointier, I guess." Ears and teeth, at least. "What're we going to do about your old body? Can you get back in it?" This is worrying and concerning and Jack doesn't want it to happen to her.

Escape From the Red Zone

Elise's grin just widens as her body covers in black fur and her face pushes out to a muzzle full of sharp teeth, ears pointing and taking position on top of her head. The added muscle mass strains but doesn't rupture her dress, and soon she's fully transformed into a large, human-shaped wolf that growls, "Well, you've picked the easy way one way or another. You'll find out what I mean soon enough!" With that, she leaps at Audrey, attempting to pin her against a nearby wall with superhuman speed and strength!

Freaky Fungal Split House

Melissa shakes her head sadly and replies, "I...I don't know. Somehow I don't think so, though. Just looking at my old body feels...Wrong, somehow. Like it doesn't belong to me. Like it's alien; A totally different thing from what I am."

[Chaotic Bob]

[Three Dragons and a Copse of Corpses]

It's true that the little silver dragon would deeply prefer to not have rotten zombie in her mouth. She already avoids most non-bamhacon meats, so gross undead definitely doesn't qualify.
She also doesn't really want to maul the thing's ankles? Which is an uncomfortable quibble to have in this situation, but Kara really isn't super into violence in general. Sure she threw a fireball-thing at that devil in Trog's, but it was trying to murder her mom and she was pretty sure she wasn't going to actually hurt it anyway.

So it's pretty great that Navvy does his thing. A really neat thing, actually, she's going to have to ask about that later.
"Wow, good job Navvy."

With the zombie being maybe-trapped, she'll cautiously stop her distraction running. After eyeballing the zombie to make sure it's actually trapped, Karaglen will then scamper over towards Obsidian to verify that whole "I'm okay" thing. People say a lot of things they don't necessarily mean.
"Hey, I'm pretty good at healing people if you have something wrong and you're just trying to be tough about it."

[Dungeon Makers Guild]

"We accept all forms of useful payment."
So you're good on the credit, Carlie.

Electra's card is taken and passed over a glowing white patch on the desk, which wasn't there a moment ago and isn't there again afterwards, before it is returned.
"Post-payment, we are down towards the fun part. You are free to take as long as you wish, or participate immediately in your respective adventures. For purposes of avoiding potential conflict with local authorities and the like, adventures are to be located outside the city for the time being.
If you take these-"
When did Syncope start holding those two compasses? Who knows! Maybe he pulled them out of a drawer when they were doing something with the forms earlier. That's probably it.

They are held out to Carlie and Electra. They even have a very faintly embossed "C" and "E" on their respective backs.
"They will direct you accordingly. Extradimensional or other forms of spacial relocation can be accordingly targeted as well, for those less fond of hiking."

[Recaiden]

[First Mission]

Good thought, Sly. Your arms are much more suited to this.

An alarm starts going off, loud and shrill.
One of the people who was in the north end of the upper floor is screaming.
The guard who was patrolling the border is now running to the doors. The gate is locking.
Jet has made it out to the roof.

It's not that tall of a building. You could jump to the ground without harm if nothing went wrong. You could also slide down to that, well it's not a balcony, but it's a sort of ledge, at least. Of course, there would still be a tallish fence between you and the outside world.

A bit of advice comes in. We will not be flying out. Meet up where we first came back to the surface.

[Rebonack]

[G'nichi's Door]

The net feels at once very heavy and almost weightless. It's an odd sensation. Like the net itself is a nearly inescapably massive thing, yet the air around it is helping you hold it up.

Then, as you toss it over your shoulder, it unfurls all on its own.

In a blink you find yourself caught under the net, the lead weights digging into the sand. A powerful gale blasts down onto you, making movement nearly impossible. Sand whirls around the net, buffeting and blinding you.

And it is only then that you hear a voice.

Weak.

It isn't a very nice voice.

Cowardly.

It isn't very nice at all.

Irresolute.

It feels like it is dripping with disdain.

You are no King. What makes you think you're worthy to carry me?

What do you do?