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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy E Grenemyer" data-source="post: 7475804" data-attributes="member: 12388">#74: Trinket HorrorsFinding an abandoned hold in which to retreat from the world was easy; Cormyr is full of such places. Living with the...things...was hard, at first. Odds and ends gather everywhere living creatures exist. Possessions outlive their owners. Absent someone to use them, objects become trapped in time. It was no trouble for you to learn what was popular when the tower was home to the living: a miniature portrait of a now deceased tower resident; a tiny cage with no door that was once a child's plaything; a torn fan that revealed a sleeping cat perched on a tower windowsill.At first you took comfort in these echoes of life. They would not bother you like living people would, and they would anchor you to the world at large should you ever choose to return home.But things change. They always change. Days, weeks, months spent foraging and thinking grant a solitary individual a greater power of perception over their surroundings. You felt the eyes upon you whenever you returned to the tower. You could not see them, but they were watching. You were surprised to realize the eyes held no perception of your awareness of them; they were lost in scrutiny of you. You awoke each morning to a question posed in your mind, "Shall we eat this one? Or use it?" The voice in your mind was not yours. It was theirs.Looking through a window when you're sure no one on the other side is aware you're watching presents a temptation. For someone such as yourself, it proved a dread lure. You watched the cat, turning it in the sunlight shining through the window where you're sure it once slept, letting the light play on its painted form, and you saw. You pretended a door was fit to the tiny cage, mimed opening and closing it, and you saw. You looked at the tiny portrait, staring into its eyes harder than you'd ever stared at anyone living, and you saw.Pondering their thoughts and watching them became your sole purpose, until the fateful day when they saw you. You watched their huge maws filled with fanged teeth and fat, wet tongues twist in fear, the pupils of nine hundred eyes open wide in surprise, then paranoia. You heard one hundred mind-voices speak as one, "Kill it!"You fled the abandoned tower. You ran, stumbled, fell and got back up. The earth shook not long after you left, a horrible roar rampaging through the trees. With hands over your ears, you turned to see pieces of tower flying hundreds of feet through the air, a caustic stench riding the stone as it crashed back to earth. You watched the stone boil, bubble and melt into so much nothingness, as though it never existed at all. Your return to civilization heralded a dire question: How do you reveal your secret without being discovered and devoured? For surely the Eye Tyrants will not stop until you are dead and the secret of their existence is secured.A population's taste for oddments and decorations are many and varied, as the merchants say, and governed by what was fashionable at the time. So many trinkets. So many eyes. Looking for you. Everywhere in Cormyr.********Welcome to 1st level! Good luck. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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