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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="energy_One" data-source="post: 874388" data-attributes="member: 1130">And now, without further adieu... The Sleeping Sword continues!_______-________Chapter 1: The Back Steps, Part 1 (In which those concerned find themselves awash in obsidian and starting off their relationships bickering like wee sword-wielding children...)Each of the characters feels a darkness surround and envelop them. They are greeted in the darkness by the smell of roasting meat and quiet, almost distant laughter. Just as soon as the laughter leaves their ears, they feel cold, and each begins to suspect they might be dead.Their sight, however, returns, each to each. They see two torches free-floating in the center of a large cavernous chamber of obsidian-seeming stone. Each sees the other figures standing with them. Cerne, Ezekiel, and Shink are present, all strangers to one another, all baffled by what has presented itself to them.Ezekiel stands up straight, the image of stoicism (though strangely seeming to have aged beyond his years, looking more the part of a 42-year-old than a 22-year-old, as previously). The light of the torches shrinking away from Shink, toying with his rather misproportioned pouch nervously. Cerne stands still, betraying nothing.The image of the chamber gets clearer, stalagtite shapes jutting from the ceiling, the two brass-lined torches flickering with flame, marking the start of a single path of silvery, wonderfully polished silver cobblestones, working their way up towards an exit from the chamber—a swirling door-shaped darkness, a mouth in the wall of mysterious nature.Ezekiel speaks: “Who are you… both of you? Why have you brought me here?” He slowly eyes the two strangers. Shink merely hisses at the light, and begins to slink toward the door. Cerne eyes them.Cerne turns his eyes from them to the figure of a tall young man with long, straight, almost feminine red hair, irises of his eyes black as night, looking just as bewildered as the rest of them. He wears dark brown robes, finely trimmed with silver threading. He comes walking as if from nowhere, simply appearing. Cerne decides to eye him instead.Shink stops his slinking, turning over his cloaked little shoulder to hiss at the new stranger. Ezekiel yells after him with a resounding, “Halt!” He moves forward a bit. “I demand to be returned from whence I came!”Cerne begins to pander around the chamber, touching the floors and the walls with his gauntlet-bearing hands. Shink stares up in curiosity at the red-haired stranger, pattering his little feet, walking over to him to smell him. He sniffs the air.The fellow looks somewhat dim-witted and rather out of his mind. He wanders about the chamber, seeming bebuggered indeed, but paying no particular attention to any specific strange detail about the room, including the floating torches. He seems totally unaware.Ezekiel harumphs. “I see I am being ignored… very well.”Shink looks to the humans around him and peels back his lips in disdain. At this, the red-haired fellow snaps out of whatever trance he is in, looking down and smiling softly at Shink innocently. “Oh… hello, creature.”Ezekiel crosses his arms across his tightly armored breast, plates a’scraping. He decides that he hasn’t given up. “Which of you brought me here? Where is that crazy sorcerer that lead me to that stone?!” The red-haired man looks around the chamber again in bewilderment, as if he had not quite snapped out of his reverie. Shink eyes the man and his quarterstaff, and decides to slink back some distance.Cerne looks around, finally speaking, scraping his fingers along the ground. “T’hell’s going on here? Where the &%$#’sa paper?” Shink fingers something in his pouch. A surprised look wisps over his face. His little hands stop moving.The red-haired stranger stalks backwards, turning his head to stare at Cerne. Cerne stares back, blank-faced.Ezekiel, tired of being ignored, shouts, “Where is this place?!”The red-haired man turns his eyes to Ezekiel, finally seeming to notice him, and even wears a refreshingly aware look of horror on his face. “What is this place?” He looks around, frowning, lips twisting. “Oh… gods… what am I doing here?”Shink gets interested in the shouting human now and decides to scamper up behind Ezekiel, sniffing him. The knight looks down at the thing. “Who… or what are you?” he demands, a stern look upon his face. Shink sighs and slinks back.Cerne throws his arms up a bit in his bronze suit, “Oim leaving! You &$#@%&ds better not follow me!” He heads towards the swirling darkness. Shink decides to scamper towards the door as well. The red-haired man collapses to his knees on the floor, sobbing. His fine-looking, smallish wooden crossbow clacks on the ground.Ezekiel eyes the whole scene with suspicion. “No, you are not leaving. Not until I get answers!” Cerne ignores him, as does Shink, who is now examining the door-shape.“Where does it go?” little Shink asks to no one in particular, his voice choc-full of gravel and high-pitch.The chamber echoes with the slither of the knight’s blade being released from its sheathe. “Halt!” shouts Ezekiel, his eyes narrowing. He waits a moment, Cerne looking over his shoulder, irritated. “Now that I have your attention, who are you? What is this place?”Cerne turns fully to him. “If you aren’t gonna use that thing, you best put it away…” he says quietly, calmly. He draws his own sword.A wind blows then out of the darkness, filling the chamber for the smallest moment. “&#@@%mn wind…” mutters Cerne, his eyes looking around for a brief instant. Then he looks back at Ezekiel. “Well? Anything else you want to say a’fore I head out that door?”Shink holds his little hands up. “It is unknown! Where doesss it lead?!” he squeaks with a hiss.Both of them ignore the black little fey. “You head out that door, you do it in pieces…” says Ezekiel, “unless you decide to cooperate.”“Cooperate my @^&, you can go to &%$$, mate.” He turns to leave again.Ezekiel starts to breathe heavily, the sword shaking in his hand for a moment. He sneers and sheathes the sword, his breath calming. “Very well, leave. But if I find you brought me here, there will be %^$# to pay.”Cerne turns. “Use your brain,” he barks. “If I brought you here, what chance would you stand against me?”Ezekiel ignores him, approaching the sobbing red-haired fellow, still absorbed in his own grief. “You look vaguely familiar. Who are you?” Ezekiel notices that the man almost resembles a younger version of his sorcerous guide from before.The stranger, now on his back, lays with eyes wide and looks blankly up at Ezekiel, his sobs departing. Ezekiel cocks his head to the side. “Are you well?” he asks the red-haired man. And again, as if snapped out of a trance, the man startles and speaks:“OH! Yes… yes…” Then he turns his head to Cerne, urgently speaking. “Sir! I don’t believe you should leave this place alone. Whatever brought us here obviously brought us here for a reason… and that reason may not be our continued well-being.” Cerne swivels.“I don’t see why not. I certainly don’t need any of you to help me. I’ve died once… this time I’ll try to embrace that.” Cerne clearly suspects that he has died. He turns to look at the swirling darkness, steeling himself to step through. “Who are you and what is this place?” Ezekiel says firmly, looking at the red-haired man and then at Cerne, a desperate look in his eyes.The red-haired fellow once again speaks: “Perhaps for our sake, then?” He seems frustrated by Cerne.Ezekiel crosses his arms again. “If this place doesn’t kill you, the king surely will when he hears that you have disobeyed the commands of one of his officers.”Cerne turns yet again. “Your sake?!” he cries, sounding a bellowing guffaw. “And KING? I don’t have any clue what you’re talking about… frankly, I don’t care, either.”The red-haired man gets up. “Wait! Perhaps we can… offer our help to you, then? I need to find something, and I think it might be here…” He has a worried look in his eyes.Ezekiel, however, seems to have had enough of Cerne. “You dare flout King Edward’s authority?!”Cerne’s eyes flare up. “I’ve said it once… I need no one! I don’t even known what you mean by a ‘king’, so you can stop your drivel… and LEAVE ME BE!” Ezekiel’s hand shoots once again to his sword. A peculiar glint crosses the eyes of the brown-robed, red-haired stranger.Cerne challenges, “Like I said before, don’t touch it unless you plan to use it.”As if he hasn’t heard a bit of the shouting, he announces what he has been looking for… “A… stone.”Ezekiel turns abruptly, his hand resting on his sword’s pommel. “Did you say… a stone?” Cerne peaks with a bit of surprise. “A stone?”The red-haired man nods. “A flat stone. About… three knuckles wide?”Ezekiel nods. “Grayish?” he asks. Cerne begins to mumble.“Yes,” the man mumbles himself, “worn by… time, one might say. I was supposed to find it at the bottom of a river, but instead I found myself walking from the open air into this…” He looks around. “…place.”Cerne growls. “That stone &^mn near killed me!” He seethes with anger.“That stone was in mine hands when I was brought her by some means,” speaks the knight, Ezekiel. Shink stands near the exit still, curiously eyeing the goings-on.The red-haired fellow once again looks worried and bewildered. “What? I… don’t understand. It’s just an old sitting stone… used for milling wheat and corn….” He seems uncertain of his own words.“Yes!” Cerne says, glaring at Ezekiel. “Stop talking gibberish. No one can understand you, you pompous fool!” Ezekiel’s brow furrows.“That… is it. Draw thine sword! This be settled now.” Ezekiel draws his sword.“If you want some, I’ll be glad to fight you. I promise no mercy.” Cerne taps the tip of his blade on the ground.Ezekiel scowls. “I shall not need mercy.”“Wait! We cannot fight each other!” the red-haired stranger shouts.Cerne shrugs. “I don’t see why not. He wants to fight.”Near sneering and fuming now, the stranger stamps his foot, red hair falling in front of his eyes. “I don’t know about you, but I want out of here ALIVE!!”At this, Cerne merely shrugs. “I don’t really care either way.”“Agh! Then kill each other later… by all means!” He seizes his quarterstaff from the ground and brushes himself off.Ezekiel nods. “I shall do just that.” He sheathes his sword once more. Cerne does the same.The stranger, despite the end of the brief bout, shouts, “FOOLS!” and storms off through the swirling darkness. The stranger fades from view, as if dissapearing into a fog.Cerne smirks at Ezekiel. “He called you a fool. Are you going to kill him, too?”Both Cerne and Ezekiel continue to bicker. Cerne decides he is done, and exits himself, fading into the darkness just as the red-haired man had. Ezekiel follows behind after a moment or two, giving barely a look to Shink as he leaves.Shink looks about suddenly, long ago having lost interest in the argument. “Where are they?” He turns and turns, and locks his yellowy little eyes on the exit. A dark maw of blackness sits in silent answer. Shink shrugs, sighs, and scampers into the darkness after them… with a little smile of bliss at the lightlessness._______-________Stay tuned!</blockquote>

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