The Collected Journals of Artemis Heuw, excerpt 10
"... shaded it and drew sparks around it for dramatic effect. I sat back and contemplated the blueprint for a moment, then closed my eyes and tried to visualize the flow of quantum magics through the design and how the interaction of right- and left-handed eldritch ventrices would interact. I woke up with the sun streaming through the window and a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal on the table beside me. I really need to stop working so late. I reviewed my design, stained somehow by a short flow of viscous fluid that had materialized near where my head had been resting, and realized I had been blueprinting in my sleep again. Evidently I had been dreaming of magically animated children's toys in the shape of an upright bear, powered by syberis dragonshards and capable of emitting scathing beams of light from their eyes. The wierd part, though, is that the design looked very much like the one I had used when I made Stark just a month earlier...."
. -- An excerpt from the Craft Journal of Artemis Heuw, Volume 5
"...which is all I want to say here about going through the wall of mist surrounding the Mournlands. I have written copious notes about the event, however [ref: PJ-CM-1]. Enough that as soon as I can find them, I plan on expanding upon them and recording the whole experience and my perceptions on the event into a book. Perhaps I shall call it "Artificers in the Mist"....
The Mournlands were, as all accounts had lead us to believe, gloomy. The landscape seemed drained of color. I could not tell if the sky was overcast, or simply the dead gray of a sky that must naturally associate itself with a dead-gray land. It was as if we stood in the center of a great wound; we were mites standing on the dead flesh of the conjoined dragons Eberron, Syberis, and Khyber.
On the plus side, I didn't have to go back into the mist to rescue anyone: the whole group was just a short distance away in a gloomy looking camp. Even HU was there waiting for me. I waved and went over to join them. They acted as though they were grateful to see me come out of the mist alive. I knew as well as they did, though, that I was the only one adequately trained to study and experience the mist without getting lost. That is why I was the last one through. Where they bumbled, I explored.
We had a good idea of where Whitehearth was, but only a vague idea of where we were. Finding the lost Cannith site would be an true expedition. We weren't as well equipped for this mission as I would have hoped, though. For all the research IR had done on the Mournlands [ref: PJ-V4-95], we didn't have the time to stock up on the necessary provisions before we had to leave Sharn. I knew healing would be a problem here, but thanks to IR's discussions on the matter, I had a few tricks up my sleeve that I thought would serve us well. And eventually, they did. That is jumping ahead in the tale, though.
We travelled east -- as best we could reckon -- seeking Whitehearth. The stasis-dead were all around us at times. According to my studies, Cyre was the site of may decisive battles towards the end of the War. Travelling through one such battlefield, we were all of us surprised when a mountain of corpses rose towards the sky, on the back of some monstrous, hideous insect or crustacean. It moved quickly towards CA and grabbed him in one huge pincer. CA, to his credit, already had his sword out and, though pinned, continued to hack at the beast as best he could. The rest of us jumped into action, too: GR with his crossbow, IR with her summoning, and XL with his stick-spear. I directed HU to put some of the alchemist fire to use against the creature, and set about infusing myself with just the right combination of magics to destroy the creature, save CA, and not get myself killed in the process. The last of my enchantments complete, I charged forward. The creature perished.
We recovered CA, who was badly wounded but not mortally so. We started contemplating ways to restore his health when he started climbing up on top of the beast and pried a long pole with banner off if it's crusty hide. He stood there for a moment, holding the banner aloft and looking at his find. It struck me as very funny for a moment. Bodies lay impaled on the creature next to CA; dead yet looking nearly alive. Some almost seemed to be reaching for CA and some for the banner. It looked like a poorly colored picture plate you might associate with an adventerous epic tale: a warlord holding his banner aloft while his enemies lie dead and dying around him. I had to cough to cover up my giggle, but I think no one noticed.
CA came down from the carcass with his two finds. Along with the banner -- belonging to some dead elven guy, to hear CA speak on it -- he carried a twin-bladed sabre. It looked like a terribly unwieldy weapon. Five feet long, if an inch, with a scimitar-like blade jutting out in either direction. How would one swing that without gutting themselves, or cutting off their own foot? CA seemed excited at the find, though. He did like living dangerously, I guess.
We did what we could for our wounds and continued on. The whole of the land was creepy and quite unsettling. HU and XL kept jumping at shadows, and they were starting to make me a bit anxious. For almost two days we travelled like that, encountering a number of plague dogs (undead), a rather aggressive vulture (also undead) and a very spooky ghost who wanted GR's soul, or something equally trivial. (The ghost was undead, naturally -- well, not *naturally*, but, you know -- I didn't think it worth mentioning the obvous, though.) We overcame all obstacles.
Through grit and determination we made our way to where our map said Whitehearth would be located. My Cannith-honed senses spotted the place from -- literally -- a mile away, though no one else remarked on it. As we approached, GR suggested we spread out a bit to search for the entrance. I simply rolled my eyes and walked right up to the opening in the hillside. To the untrained eye, it looked like nothing more than an abandoned mine shaft. I could read the signs, however. One of those signs was a placard hanging on the entrance's cross-beam that translated to "Whitehearth".
That undead vulture attacked us again, and we ran into the cave for protection. There was plenty of room for us inside: the tunnel almost immediately ballooned out into a large staging area. The cave was empty except for a single tunnel that exited from the far end. That tunnel branched almost immediately into three passages, each ascending or descending at different angles. I turned to GR and bet him 10 silver that the passage to Whitehearth would be in the lowest chamber, but he just grunted, pointing off in the direction of the one tunnel that sloped gently upwards. I'm not sure if that was acceptance of the wager or not.
We went up, and just around the bend found an adamantine hatch in the ground. My Cannith senses were tingling. "This is a false hatch," I told him. Still, he wanted to see it open so I obliged him. The hatch was cunningly trapped, and locked to boot. I was having a heck of a time getting around both before they would reset themselves. CA and XL came while I was working and told us that there was a similar hatch down both of the other corridors. Since the one I was working on was a fake anyway, I gave up on this hatch to see the other two. I pointed out to GR which hatch would lead down to Whitehearth (the one in the lowest room), then set about openning up the third hatch just to prove my point. I opened this one without much difficulty. Beneath the hatchway was bare stone. A fake.
And this is where I learned a very valuable lesson. I was focused on overcoming the hatch -- so much so, in fact, that I failed to notice that some alien force had been attacking the rear of our party. I allowed myself to become distracted and without my supervision, the DC had fallen in trouble again!
I raced out to discover a fight in the outer cave. The vampire we had run from at Rose Quarry had caught up to us -- that undead vulture was his familiar and he had been tracking us for days. He (the vampire, not the vulture) held IR casually in the crook of one arm, while his green claw minions and their undead cohorts were attacking my friends. A woman elfin sorceress hit GR repeatedly with magic missiles, while her goons had GR, CA and XL choked up in the bottleneck of the back tunnel. A couple of our attackers were down, but CA and GR both looked pretty bad.
I had just finished up some of my best infusions [ref: CJ-V3-16, CJ-V3-12] when GR called for surrender. I was farther back in the tunnel, so I couldn't see what was happening, but we must have been winning! Alas, I should have known that without my involvement, we were not. XL immediately agreed to a surrender, and even CA seemed willing to stop fighting. We had given up.
Which is not to say that we were cowards. The vampire had IR at his mercy, and threatened to kill her if we did not surrender. GR and XL were simply protecting her life. The vampire told us that in order to save IR's life, we must venture into Whitehearth and retrieve for them the very schema that we had come to recover. I was outraged! I moved forward to launch my own attack and win back IR, but GR was negotiating, stalling for time. I'm not sure what he was stalling for; it's not like we could heal up to renew the attack.
I joined the diplomatic mission at that point, and tried to negotiate IR coming down into Whitehearth with us. There was but one exit, and vampire could guard that, couldn't he? But he wasn't falling for it. Our fate was sealed. We would have to go down into Whitehearth, overcome it's defenses (along with whatever curses the Mournland had affected within it's locked halls), recover the schema, and trade it for IR's life.
Ah, well. That's what we came here to do, anyway. Now it was more interesting!
We retreated into the tunnel again, while the vampire backed his group out, taking their dead. They set a guard outside of the main cave.
Now, with a purpose, I set about opening the main hatch down into Whitehearth. HU helped. Before long, it was open.
Below the hatch was a shaft going down. A ladder was built into the wall on one side. I dropped a sunrod (one of my own creations, I might add [ref: CJ-V3-97]) into the shaft, but it simply passed through a curtain of darkness and was lost. I couldn't even hear it clang against the ground below. This would be exciting!
GR asked who should go first, but I didn't really think that a valid question. I descended into the darkness, followed closely by HU. Despite his large chest, those arms make him an excelent climber!
The darkness extended for a mere ten rungs of the ladder and then ended. The shaft continued on for another fifteen feet or so. My highly trained senses immediately grasped the significance of the darkness: it was a magical globe surrounding Whitehearth, an impeneterable field that would prevent any sort of detection from piercing it's protective shell. Just the sort of construction I would have placed around a secret research facility. There was a very tiny curvature visible to the darkness -- so small that I doubt anyone as simple as those I travel with could have noticed it, or garnered the it's significance. My trained eye measured the curvature and I did some quick calculations. If this was a spherical effect, and I was on the inside of the sphere, then the whole complex would have to fit within an area no two points of which were farther than two hundred feet apart. Ha! I wasn't thirteenth in my mathematics class for nothing!
The shaft came down on the side of a spherical, metallic room, the ladder tangential with the west pole of the room. (To fully grasp that concept, one must accept that a spherical object has an upper pole -- which is the point on the sphere that represnts it's upper-most point), a lower pole, and cardinal north, south, east, and west poles. One could conjecture, of course, that there is also a north-north-northeast pole, but that would be silly.)
Coming down into the room was relatively easy, but it was something of a balancing act since there were no ladder or stairs to help one transition from the vertical to the horizontal. HU had an easier time of it than I did. The inner surface was composed of high-friction metal plates that were a bit rough on the hands an knees. Across the room and about a quarter of the way up the sphere a metal cylinder capped with a mithral plate jutted out into the room. It was the only point of interest so I went to investigate. Along the way I snatched up my sunrod, which had rolled to the lowest point of the sphere. The other memebers of the DC streamed into the room.
The cylinder was plain metal with an octagonal mithral plate on it's top. Evenly spaced along each side of the plate were holes which I estimated to be about an inch-and-a-half deep and about an inch in diameter. A colored ring surrounded each. Most of the rings were blue, but two were green and two were brown. Another hole in the center of the plate (with a blue ring) made for nine openings in total.
There were no operating instructions and we had nothing that resembled a matching key, so we were stuck. We searched over the room again, and the shaft leading out, but found no other exits. Once again, it would came down to my rather impressive skills as an artificer to save us. I told the others to get comfortable, and began one of my more time-consuming infusions [ref: CJ-V1-8].
An hour later, I had identified the purpose and use of the pedestal. It was operated by color-coded dragonshard keys. When the properly coded key was inserted into one of the keyholes and turned one quarter turn to the right, the chamber we were in would reposition itself to the designated doorway and present an egress. Now all we needed was a key.
We racked our brains, trying to think of any time when we may have had one of these keys, or had the opportunity to acquire one. No one could come up with anything. I was perusing the journal of BG when an idea struck me. I turned to GR, a dragonmarked member of House Tharashk, and asked him, "Can't you find a key for us?"
The look of slow-forming recollection on GR's face would have been amusing to watch, if I hadn't been rolling my eyes in exaspiration. Honestly, the level of nescience that I must put up with in this group is astounding at times. Even HU seemed amused. GR set about the task of locating a key-like object immediately.
A few minutes later, GR had determined that there were a number of such keys, all within a couple hundred feet, and all quite out of reach. He climbed out into the outer tunnels to see if he could sense anything, but found nothing. The anti-divination globe was working fine, it seemed.
We worked for a few minutes more, trying to come up with some way to fetch a key, but found nothing. With a sigh, I pulled out the summoning scroll we found some time back [ref: PJ-V3-68]. I told the rest of the DC what I was about to do, then started reading the scroll.
The being to answer my Calling was tall, gaunt, and alien. IR would have known what it was were she here, but she wasn't. I had to deal with him on my own. The creature would not "steal" any of the keys for us, but he would take us to their location. We negotiated a price.
We were teleported to a dining hall, still inhabited by House Cannith personnel. They lay scattered about the place, dead where they had collapsed on the Day of Mourning. It was sad. GR immediately pulled the boots off of a nearby body and compared them to the size of his own feet. He put the boots on.
Amongst their personal possessions we found a number of keys: dragonshards inserted into a color-coded ceramic handle. Most were blue, but we found a red key as well. A quick search of the adjoining kitchen failed to turn up anything interesting. The food still looked good, but I didn't trust it. Finely honed senses, and all that.
The only exit was a long hallway that ended in a vault-like door. I used one of the blue keys we had found and a moment later the door swung open. We were looking upon a spherical room with a metal column jutting up from the lowest point on the floor. There were signs in the room that indicated that this was the very same chamber we'd spent so long in.
I hypothesized to HU (the only one in the DC I can hold a rational discourse with) the possibility of localized gravitational control, emenating from this central, spherical chamber. He just tok'd at me, and I had to agree. A simpler explanation was more likely.
We gathered in the sphere and tried one of the keys. Immediately, the door leading to the dining hall snapped shut, disappearing from view, and the whole room spun. I had, naturally, already come to the conclusion that this would happen and was braced for it. HU and a few of the others were a bit surprised by our sudden movement. I helped them up as a new door opened in the wall.
Over the next few hours, we explored the place fully. There were a few dead Cannith researchers here and there, but not many. Most of them had been in the dining hall. We encountered two very interesting spell effects -- living spell effects. They were a bit tiresome to deal with, but, unfortunately, they continued to attack us, so had to be destroyed. A pity -- I kind of liked them.
We also found a couple of intelligent, living creatures. The first was a large she-wolf named Rorsa. She looked as though she had been experimented upon and might have been part construct. She had kin somewhere here in Whitehearth, and asked our assistance in rescuing them from a "stone wolf'". In exchange for our help, she offered a magical necklace that she wore. There were living creatures in danger -- of course we agreed to help.
It took us some while to find the stone wolf. And when we did find it, it was a surprise to everyone involved. I noticed it first, naturally, and repositioned myself to a more tactically sound location. GR wasn't nearly as quick, and got pounced.
The stone wolf was, sort of like RO, a wolf that had been experimented upon. He could speak, which was a surprise, and had great slabs of black marble grafted onto his flesh. I surmised that he, too, was part construct.
Whatever he was, he was a killer. The fight was quick and dangerous -- just the way I like them. XL had the idea of slipping past the stone wolf and opening the cages in the room beyond. We could see and hear wolves in those cages, but when they had an opportunity for freedom they hid until the Stone Wolf was defeated.
And before long, defeated he was . He crashed to the ground with a mighty crash, almost pinning CA. We had been hard set upon this day, and could go no further. We needed rest. Before we did so, however, we communicated to the wolves that RO had sent us. They allowed us to escort them back to RO and it was a happy reunion. We chose our resting place and camped out for half a day. One of my most basic infusions [ref: CJ-V1-21] allowed me to mold the very structure of magic to my will and create a trans-dimensional space that we could climb up into. That little rope trick was the only space we could use to heal ourselves here in the Mournlands.
After resting, we continued exploring. One of my favorite rooms that we discovered was the linen closet. I know that sounds strange, but it's true. A number of long-lived invisible servants were in the room, taking the linen, cleaning it, drying it, folding it up, and putting it back in it's place. It was a simple, elegant process that repeated again and again. That's the kind of magic I will have in my tower some day!
Late in our stay at Whitehearth we found the administrator's office, which had a wall that showed the foundry room. We hadn't found the foundry yet, so this was pretty exciting. According to what we could see, though, the foundry was a mess. Appearantly, the fire elementals bound to the glass kiln had escaped. Virtually everything in the room was burnt and useless. Back by a molten glass pool, however, I spotted the treasure that we sought. In a glass or crystal chest were a few red vials, a large metal plate, and the schema we had come to find. We were one step closer! Now all we had to do was find the room shown to us on the wall, defeat the fire elementals guarding it, and claim our prize.
One step at a time, though. We thought by this point that we had scoured the entire complex, but still had no idea where the kiln room was. Guess who worked it out? That's right. Me. There was a second "switching chamber" that we had found -- similar to the spherical room we first discovered, but the control panel was just a little different. In a flash of pure genius, I put two of the keys in the panel and operated them simultaneously. The way to the kiln room opened up to us.
From where we stood, we could see the heavy vault door that led into the foundry. GR and CA were all set to go charging in, but I knew better. A whole slew of protective, offensive, and utilitarian infusions later, and we were standing in front of the vault going over our battle plans one last time. I opened the vault door and CA, guarded against fire, went in first. Two large elementals charged immediately. GR counter-charged, his weapon powered-up with an elemental-destroying infusion. XL slipped around the creatures and made for the chest.
A moment later, as CA was getting pounded and surrounded, I used my infused cane [ref: CJ-V3-7] to prod one of the elementals away. He fled under my command. CA finished up the elemental that had him still pinned in place while GR charged the retreating elemental and destroyed that one, too. The battle was over disappointingly quickly. And after all that preparation, too!
After taking stock of our condition, we went about searching the room. Virtually anything that could have been of use had been destroyed by fire and the once-free elementals. The crystal chest, however, was unharmed. Therein lay our bounty.
My trained eye picked out the two potions of fire restistance immediately. There was also a mithral plate, about two feet across, that had patterns all over like a schema. Five ports on the plate were designed to hold actual schemas, however. One matched the adamantine schema we had recovered for Lady d'Vown over a month ago [ref: PJ-V1-103]. Another was for the diamond-shaped schema that we had been sent to Whitehearth to recover.
When I pulled that schema out of the chest, I felt suddenly elated. There was not one, but two diamond-shaped schemas. They were exactly alike! I practice-fitted each into the plate, and they fit like a charm. I was careful to minimize the time I had the pieces conjoined, however, so as to avoid any unwarranted magical effects. I handed one of the schemas to HU and, at someone's suggestion, gave the other to GR. You guessed it. It as GR's suggestion. I hope that doesn't come back to haunt me.
The fight with the elementals had not been dangerous to us, but it had exhausted most of my resources. We decided to rest once more before going back to negotiate with the vampire for IR's release.
At some point during our down time GR snuck out of the cave. Reportedly, he wanted to "test the keys on the hatches" in the outer cavern. He came back claiming to have overheard that the guards in the cavern were given a shoot-on-sight order. I suspected that GR might have gone to negotiate on his own, but no matter. One way or another, there would be no further negotiating with IR's captor. Now it was a fight!
The roof of the kiln room was a large hinged dome. After we felt properly rested, we worked out how to escape Whitehearth through the dome and snuck outside. We were on top of a hill that overlooked the vampire's camp. A couple hundred yards from where we stood, a single large pavilion was surrounded by six lesser tents. Around this setup was a ring of bonfires, and even from this distance we could make out guards encircling the camp. Dotting the ground between our location and the encampment were scattered undead. On watch, no doubt.
I came up with a plan. Infusing a quick spell into my cane, I summoned an illusion that would conceal all of us from the undead. It would hold until one of us attacked or actually touched one of the creatures. I set CA the task of killing the humans in the camp, infusing his newly acquired blade with a bane enchantment to help him out. Somewhere along the line, GR had found an enchanted mace, so I gave him the task of destroying any of the skeletons defending the camp. I re-iterated to both of them that as soon as either attacked, our invisibility would disappear. (An excellent pun, and no one caught the humor in it. I travel with boors.)
XL had a very special task. One admirably suited to his camoflauging nature. He was to infiltrate the camp in the confusion of the attack, find IR, and bring her out. His was the most challenging role, but I thought him up to the task.
Naturally I had a part to play, too. Someone had to stay in the back and supervise the entire affair. Gods only know the kind of mess we would be in if our overall strategy was left up to anyone else. HU would stay with me, to defend me and help out as needed. In case of emergency, I had a couple of surprises ready for anyone foolish enough to get close to me.
A dried-out river bed started at the foot of our hill and ran within ten paces of the enemy's encampment. We used this to approach the camp, walking right under the noses (?) of half a dozen skeletal guards. We hit a snag, literally, about fifty feet shy of our goal, however. A tangle of dead brush and logs had jammed the river when water still flowed, and blocked our way now. We would have to exit the ravine.
Rather than exiting on the encampment side of the ravine -- we would have surely been spotted by the human guards standing watch nearby -- we exitted on the far side and attempted to sneak around. CA ran swiftly and silently forward, then GR went. I brought up the rear, mimickig CA. I should have realized, though, it wasn't the man I needed to mimick, it was the boots I had created for him [ref: CJ-V3-76]. I don't think it was me the guards heard. I'm sure it was HU.
Regardless, the alarm was raised. CA sprinted towards a makeshift bridge some distance away, while GR clambered noisily down into the ravine, just on the other side of the jam. That's when we learned that the log jam was not unoccupied. Some living-dead plant-like creature-sentience sprang to life, lashing out at GR with a large prickly-looking vine. It was big enough to snare a horse!
GR was just a bit too quick for it, though, and scrambled away. He made it across the ravine and up the other side, battling the vine and it's life-like roots. I wasn't close enough to be in any danger from the vine, but the far-flung root system of this crazy plant-creature was another matter. It animated and sprang up from the dry, cracked earth to grab anything it could. I have always been an excellent dancer -- very light on my feet -- so I managed to dodge the roots for quite a long time. HU, on the other hand, was constantly forced to take the time and effort to tear himself away from where he became rooted down.
Meanwhile, the fight was progressing. Displaying his dexterous elven heritage, CA had run across the rickety bridge and launched himself over some very difficult terrain. He landed gracefully, planting one end of his twin-bladed scimitar in the now corpsified guard who stood waiting for him. Within a heartbeat, though, CA was surrounded by the camp's other guards. He fought like a devil.
The elven sorceress had come out from one of the tents by this point. She ordered the skeletons to "Kill the intruders!". I had counted on this tactic. There were about a dozen skeletons standing guard out away from the camp. The nearest "intruder" at this point, then, was myself. Perfect. They charged towards me, but, lacking my quick-footed reflexes, quickly became entangled in the still active plant creature. A fair distance away and struggling to move at all, they were out of the fight for quite a while. The undead that were closer to the camp had GR as their closest enemy. They charged towards him, but didn't stand a chance against his artificer-infused mace.
There were enough undead, though, that GR was quickly getting overwhelmed. Worse, there were enough human guards engaging GR that he couldn't focus solely on the skeletons. A good thirty feet seperated GR from CA. I was throwing lightning bolts from my confiscated wand into the largest groups of enemies I could find. XL was no where to be seen. That was good.
Then the vampire came out. That was bad. He stood close to the elven sorceress at first as she directed streams of magic missiles at GR. Then he started spellcasting. Summoning a giant skeleton and directing it against CA, the vampire moved out of my view. Things were slowly going down hill for us.
That didn't last long, though. Five seconds later, things were as bad as they could possibly be.
A Lyran airship had drifted silently towards the battle, coming in low behind us. Rapelling down were the four remaning members of the team that had jumped us in the Broken Anvil in Sharn [ref: PJ-V2-54]. They had friends.
The half-ogre and a knife fighter charged off towards CA. Behind them was the wizard woman. Near me (close enough to be trapped in the entanging roots, in fact) was the armor-plated priest. I could see that he still bore the burn marks that scored our last encounter. He acknowledged my presence, but made no hostile actions.
A gnome woman came down with the attackers, but I lost sight of her almost immediately. Up at the railing of the airship was a man, shouting orders to his people. He told them to kill the "Emerald Claw" first -- whatever that was -- because we would have to be questioned. Just like that, our enemies had turned into our allies.
Things really started cooking, then. It was almost impossible to seperate friend from foe from not-foe in the melee surrounding the camp. I threw more lightning bolts. CA, showboating his elven speed once more, lept from clear ground into the path of one of my bolts quicker than the lightning itself was moving. Impressive, but he got burned for his efforts. Evidently, I need to talk to him about staying out of my line of fire.
A tiny voice whispered in my ear, warning that they would eventually turn on us, too. I had no idea what was going on, so I looked to HU. He merely shrugged. tok tok
The man up in the airship was shouting down to give up the schema, and we would all be spared. One of the newly arrived adventurers was pressing GR and CA for the same thing. The vampires men were quickly dropping. It would only be a matter of time before the newcomers turned on us.
That small voice came again, whispering that she could help us, but wanted amnesty within our group. Realizing what was about to happen, I called out my agreement.
But I was too late. GR read our situation and found his own solution. He pulled out the second schema and threw it at one of the attackers, who grabbed it and caught one of the mooring lines still dangling from the nearby sky ship. I was so mad I tried to hit him with a lightning bolt, but the damn thing chose that moment to fail to operate.
The ship took off so fast that they left two of their own behind. Radigast the cleric and the huge half-ogre.
Suddenly the little gnome appeared and said "Hi, my name's Dahlia," in that same small voice I had heard just a moment before.
Correction: they left three of their own behind."
. -- An excerpt from the Personal Journal of Artemis Heuw, Volume 6
tink -- "Yes."
tok -- "No."
tink-tink-tok-tink-tok-tok -- "You look nice in your blue jacket."
tok-tok-tink-tok-tok -- "I am concerned that the alchemist fire I am carrying will detonate."
tok-tok-tok-tok-tok -- "Danger, Artemis Heuw! Danger!"
tink-tok-tink-tink-tok -- "I have to go to the bathroom."
tok-tink-tink-tink-tok-tok -- "You want me to follow you where?"
. -- An excerpt from "Translations of a Pack Homunculus" by Artemis Heuw, 998YK
