NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Chef BBQ" data-source="post: 2973118" data-attributes="member: 1844">What comes of taunting (run of 05-04-04)Our band of adventurers stands around the body of the dead hag.  Caerwyn glowers at Lucre and Borin, angry at their lack of will, allowing themselves to be possessed.  Marja thinks he’s being hard on the two fighters who are always putting themselves out front.They search the hag’s body and find all kinds of useful things, but as usual, they can’t tell what any of them do so they set out to experiment.  Kira finds a small gray metal cube.  She picks it up, and an image comes up from it.  The face is twisted and hideous.  “Is that you?” it asks.  “Do you have it?”  Kira drops the cube to the ground, looking at the group in horror.  Using all the common sense the gods gave a cockroach that can’t remember to crawl under things when the light comes on, Lucre picks up the cube and threatens to use the face to wipe his backside.  Caerwyn, already angry at the dwarf, smacks him in the head causing him to drop the cube.Lucre puts on the hag’s cape and feels more confident.  He gives the cloak to Kira who gives her cloak of resistance to Kel.  Lucre then puts on the hag’s ring.  He feels nothing.  “Hit Borin,” someone suggests.  “Whenever I hit Borin, he knocks me unconscious,” Lucre quips.  “Hit Caerwyn then,” Marja offers, but they decide against it.  (Once identified, it proves to be a ring of counterspell.)  The hag had a small bag tied to her waist.  Kira reaches in and feels something furry.  She pulls out a weasel by the scruff of its neck.  Kalina says it wants to know what they want it to do.  “Gnaw on a dead bear,” she offers.  “Thanks, can I have the eyes?”  Kalina nods yes, and the happy creature sets about its meal until it disappears 10 minutes later.Borin puts on a pair of gilded and embossed bracers.  “Hit Lucre,” someone laughs.  He smacks the gilded patterns together, and Kel and Marja, who are watching intently, are blinded by a flash of light.  “Cool,” says Kel as he gropes around.  Secretly Kel isn’t feeling well.  He was bitten in the last battle, the wound burns white hot.  He feels very weak, but holds himself together with all his might.Kira and Lucre are experimenting with the potions.  Kira sips one that is silver and shiny.  Briefly there are two more of her, but they disappear.  Lucre sips a purple one.  His armor shimmers.  Marja is pretty sure it was momentarily enhanced.  Terri joins in and sips a blue one.  She feels a fire run through her veins.  She is startled for a moment, but the fire feels cleansing.  She thinks is might cure poison.Kalina asks animals in the forest if there is a part of the forest where they will not go.  She assumes that if there is a piece of Mormo buried here in the forest, it will have created a dead space.  As a squirrel chatters away, Kalina gets a blank look on her face.  “I can’t understand him anymore,” she says.  “What do you mean?” asks Caerwyn.  “Isn’t that a druid thing?”  “It is with the correct spell, but I have never had to cast it,” Kalina explains.  “I received that gift from the cave water.”  “That’s right,” Marja remembers.  They quickly explain to Caerwyn, Terri and Kira that they were in a Cave months ago where the water was blessed by Mesos.  Several of the group drank from the water, and each one received a special gift.  Kalina could speak with animals.  One of their group could walk upon water.  Now Kalina’s gift seemed to be gone.  She felt an emptiness inside.There’s nothing more to be done today.The next day Kalina again speaks with the animals of the forest, this time by casting a spell.  Neither birds nor ground animals avoid any place nearby.  She changes into a bird and takes Lucre’s heartstone of awareness and searches the forest, but finds nothing.  She tracks where the dire animals came from.  The moose tracks lead to a near by area.  She finds a two-day-old patch where the moose used to bed down at night.  There is a round scar in the ground where all the grass has burned away and it smells of rot.  There are faint echoes of transformation magic and large humanoid footprints.She casts another spell and speaks to the tree near the spot.  “Small one, what do you want?” a whisper blows through the air.  She asks about the moose.  “He is gone,” answers the tree.  She asks what replaced him.  “Something wrong.  Bad water.  No sun.  Dry.  Felt it at my roots,” came the cryptic answer.  She asks about a bad part of the forest.  “There are no bad parts.  We are happy.”They sit down to eat breakfast perplexed about what to do next.  Kalina knows of a spell that would let her commune with the ground to try to find anything buried there, but she doesn’t know the spell.  Marja feels a tingling.  “Something’s happening,” she says cautiously.  Everyone stares at her, and she looks like she is listening intently.  Borin begins to speak to ask her what is wrong, but she raises her hand to silence him.  She nods her head.  In her mind she hears Beltray speaking to her.Marja.  Beltray.  Know anything about a Cliffside cave near Ontenazu?  Why would your name be written there?  Why cave destroyed?  Reply 25 words or less.The group watches as she carefully counts on her fingers.  Then she says out loud, “Been there with Kalina, Borin, Naxos.  Kalina got Mesos magic there.  Magic gone yesterday.  Don’t know why name there, why destroyed.  Mesos body gone maybe?She grows silent again, listening.  Wall says I ♥ Marja.  Mesos never had a body.  What more do you know?They watch as Marja thinks.  Her brow furrows, and then she gets a sick look on her face.  She replies, “Mesos water was in cave.  I charmed spider guy.  I’m sick now.  Piece of Mormo here in forest.  Can’t find.  Need commune with nature scroll.”  She feels the connection break suddenly.“What was that all about?” Kel asks.  She explains the conversation they only heard part of.  “So that cave was destroyed,” Kalina says.  “That must explain why that magic left me yesterday.  The water must have been destroyed.”  “Or worse,” Marja muses.  “They took Mesos’s essence out of the water to use it in their Titan puzzle.”  “What was written on the wall?” Kel asks again.  “I ‘heart’ Marja,” Marja gags as she says it and draws a little heart in the air to demonstrate.  “Remember when I cast charm on the guy with the spider tattoo?  The charm worked although he didn’t want to do much to please me.  He must have written it.”  “Why,” asks Caerwyn, “He can’t think you’ll be impressed.”  “Maybe, or maybe he’s baiting us.”  They all get quiet.Lucre feels a prickling on the back of his head, like he’s being watched.  At first he thinks maybe Beltray’s trying to talk to him this time, but as he looks around he sees a weird hazy shimmer and three figures in robes appear out of nowhere.  They are human sized women all wearing porcelain masks.  The first is tall and slender with flowing blond hair.  Her mask has the image of a beautiful face, and she wears a fine silver girdle.  The second seems older.  She’s pudgy and has short red hair with a jolly mothering mask.  She wears a bronze girdle.  The third is shrunken and stooped.  Her gray hair flies out behind a crone’s mask, and beneath her robes is a girdle of iron.The Maiden steps forward.  “You should not taunt Fell-Vralla.”</blockquote>

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