D&D 5E [D&D 5e] Planescape - In Through the Out Door

[goatunit]

"Rest easy, Lord Hathfall," Eurid answers the man. "I'm off duty."

After a dram of wine, the dustman wipes his mouth on his sleeve.

"But you know, you should show respect to the Dustmen. We're the ones're gonna pull your corpse out of a ditch one o' these days. Worse friends to have than me."

 

[Unsung]

Adal reaches back and touches her braids, pulls the end of one up and looks down at it. "Three years," she sighs. "...three too many. My people, we are wanderers. I should have found a herd, put all four legs back on the Outlands again, long ago."

 

[Unsung]

Hathfall raises an eyebrow, plucked and painted as recently as a few months ago but no longer. "Mm, yes. Well, you will have to forgive me, Master Turnstone, if I still hold out hope of leaving my corpse elsewhere." He pours himself another glass of Sembian red from Barstle's private stock. "It surprises me to hear you're ever even permitted to be off duty. Isn't everyone in this town some sort of...missionary, or proselyte? Faction'ers, factotums, fact-a-loo-lallies and what have you. Even your atheists are selling something."

 

[Unsung]

The man coming down the wooden stairs, unsanded but solidly constructed, is...odd, but perhaps no more odd than anyone else Graydon has seen so far in Sigil. Certainly not as odd as his new familiar.

He's what Graydon would probably describe as 'scruffy'-- if he were being generous. He has lank, wavy hair, dark but with a lot gray in it. He's wearing a dented, corroded breastplate, no sword or shield that Graydon can see, and an oddly-cut mantle.

The mantle is the strangest thing about the man-- decorated with some of the most exquisitely detailed flowers Graydon has ever seen, more realistic than the finest mundane tapestry, even faded as and the garment is.

The man's manner is...fragile somehow, stark, unbelieving, like the man lost in the desert who crests the next dune only to see the oasis. "...That music. Who was playing that music?" He looks past the young wizard rather than at him, angling his neck as if to see into the barroom.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

[section]The effigy--if it could have been seen--disappeared, subsumed into Shard's body. Shard found herself incapacitated. She kept her awareness but lost control of her body. Picayune took a full minute to adjust. He'd never occupied another being before, and it was an odd experience. Shard was still there; she just wasn't in control. He could sense an intangible wall, behind which lurked Shard's knowledge of the world. And she was powerful. Picayune shuddered with the thrill of possessing such a prime vessel. Hoo, boy! De t'ings I kin do! Lawdy! He spun in a 360-degree circle, drunk on Shard's power. He bowed to Eurid. He curled her lips into a smile. He thought about doing several other unsavory things, but refrained. She power-full. Mmm, hmm! Don' want her on my ass. No way, no how. Nossir. She whoop my tail up an' down Chartre Street!

In the end, Picayune folded Shard's body into a chair and settled down to focus. He rifled through his thoughts, doing his best to project images and memory to her. He played a montage of scenes of loss, hurt, and love. Waking up in the small hours of the morning on a Sunday and making love to his son's mother. Watching a storm roll through Kenner. Standing in the hot June rain by Jackson Square, hoping for leavings from tourists. How he felt his first jazz procession. Breasts and beads at Zulu. So drunk on Mezcal that he passed out cold in a gutter. A nutria larger than a dog crawling out of the canal to survey the world. And then image after image of water invading the city, flooding everything. Fear in folks' eyes, a panicked fight over food that ended with a small boy shot and left to die. The smell of fetid waste. A body floating by in eight feet of water. And, beneath it all, a rock-hard yearning to be home.

It was hard to give up Shard's form. She felt so damned good. She was the first human contact he'd had in some time, and he didn't want to decamp. After another full minute of dickering over whether to leave, he bit the bullet and exited. Gave her back her body. But not without looking in longing at her once he let her be free. Damn, girl. You a fine, fine woman. And then he hoped she didn't stab him with a rusty spoon for his stunt.[/section]

 

[Quickleaf]

Floating alongside and slightly behind Graydon, his spellbook cocked its vellum head toward him, though no words seemed to pass between mage and spelbook. They appeared to be in a tavern, one of the dozens in the Lower Ward. Not a place Shandrizar the All-Seeing would be caught frequenting at the zenith of his power.

You're an illusionist? Well, that would explain the dissembling. Quite the opposite I would say from divination. One obfuscates the truth, the other reveals it. In my heyday I revealed no less than 267 significant truths, not all of them easy. Sometimes the truth does go down better with a bit of honey.

For now Shandrizar would have to play the part of dutiful familiar until he found an opportunity to undo whatever curse or cosmic joke had befallen him. At least this young prime mage he found himself bound to was not hopeless. He was cautious of revealing his given true name, for starters, and caution went a long way in Shandrizar's book.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

By this time, Rusty had deduced that other animated objects were not also Rusty...mostly. Still, it watched the flying talking book with great interest.

 

[goatunit]

"Looks it sometimes," Eurid says with a nod, responding to the duke. "But this ain't the Prime or the Inners. Material is, well... immaterial here."

He glances around at his scattered companions before continuing.

"Where you're from, they got armies, aye? Kings and nations and clans. And a body makes his will on the world with a sword or a flag, on account of them's the tools what work. But out here, an idea's sharper than a sword, and faith can be literal armor. Our borders are philosophical, not geographical--so we don't have much call for hereditary lordlings. Here, the high-up is always the blood who thinks, believes, and acts. So small wonder you hear a lot of proselytizing, rummy?"

 

[Pembinasa]

"I'm afraid I couldn't tell you; I was coming in to find out myself. Shall we go together?" He stepped around the man, smiling courteously; no harm humoring someone down on their luck. Even so, he didn't immediately go toward his short-term companions, instead looking for the Harmony guardswoman who had been at the bar.

Mmm, if you say so. One of my professors always claimed 'a good enough lie deserves to be true, and should be treated as such', which seemed a valid approach to me. Now, there's been some bizarreness since I headed to the necessary, and I'd like to know what I just walked into. Anything your divinatory skill can pick up that wouldn't be obvious to the naked eye?

Hunting down the guard, he offered a cheery little wave before getting into arm's reach of her and whispering. "By any chance, do you know just what that fascinating music was? It seemed a bit... unusual, even for a place like this."

 

[Unsung]

"Hmph. Well, yes, one supposes that heredity is no doubt something more of a liability, when one's superiors are apt to live forever and a day." He drinks. "You say all this as though it should make me grateful that I am here, but I like it no better than I would to be caught betwixt the teeth of a turning clock, or held in the gnashing gizzard of the leviathan, or surrounded at my every turn by the stings and fresh combs of a recent dowager's petty court. The wheels turn, the tides turn, and the honey arrives at the breakfast table each and every morn without fail. One doesn't need to stick one's hand into the hive and check for oneself."

He drinks again. "Bah, 'City of Doors', my left foot. Better some things remain behind closed doors."