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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Altalazar" data-source="post: 3655750" data-attributes="member: 939">Book XVII    Sir Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Nineteen – Our Party goes through some Changes    I could have sworn that for a fleeing moment, Ee had become a great scholar, a wise sage, a learned professor of the world, whose insights, wisdom, and piercing intellect made him the most profound thinker that has ever existed.  Then it was over, and I just heard a single thought from Ee: “Nah, me just want be Ee.”      Still, there were some subtle differences.  Morwen kept her changes close to her chest, though I sensed that she might be asking me for a favor later.  Marcus barely changed at all.      Then there was Kyrnyn.  Emphasis on “was.”  What emerged from the cradle looked like Kyrnyn, in the sense that he was still an orc, but everything else felt different.  His mind was almost completely different except… it wasn’t.  It was rearranged.  Probing deeply, I saw back into Kyrnyn’s past, back to when he was cursed to walk the Earth as an ettin to learn the error of his angry ways.  Then I saw the spark I saw before.  The second head.  A second mind that survived the transition, that held all of his earlier, uncontrolled anger.  It was always there, biding its time.  Now this mind, strangely a female mind now still in male (and orcish) body, had come to the fore.  Kyrnyn was still there, but now he was the small spark and this new mind, this new voice, Ninrick, or Nin, was in control.  I could no longer sense the divinity in him, but I sensed a cunning and ferocity that was never before present.  It would be interesting to see how this manifests itself.      Posiedon underwent a transformation as well, similar to my own.  The others with us also changed, though it was difficult for me to discern exactly how, given my limited time spent with each of them.  Tuuvstar seemed as knowledgeable as ever.  Thus transformed, we all returned home, quietly contemplating the changes in each of us.      Sir Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Twenty – Some Growing Developments    Over the next four months, the construction on my new home, with much help from Higgins and my slowly accumulating followers, was completed.  The structure was in the most expensive portion of town, so the neighbors were appropriately noble.  It has three stories, and can house comfortably nearly 100 souls.  I intend to house the current bulk of my followers there, where they can serve me appropriately, but I have tasks for the rest of them that will take them far from this small town of Cauldron, which I will mention in a moment.      The entrance is impressive, with a two-story porch held up by six stone columns of proper judicial solemnity.  The entry doors are massive twin doors of steel that open up to a welcomer who sits at a desk to greet all who enter.      Inside the structure itself, I had a very large, luxury library, housing the best law library money can buy.  There is also a courtroom, jury room, and judge’s chambers on the ground floor, for use on real trials if that day may come, or for use on mock trials to aid in the training of my cadre of lawyers.  Study rooms outside the library double as client consultation rooms for those who seek our services.      My lower level servants are also housed on the first floor, the better to allow them to service to the needs of the ground floor denizens.      My kitchen is luxurious, providing food the likes of which most never see outside of the Cusp of the Sunrise.  The dining room / ball room serves a luxurious complement to it, seating over thirty in dining splendor.  Only the upper crust dine there, though I allow all of my followers to take a turn dining there, as a perk of my generosity, though they also have their own private spaces to dine in common areas on the second floor.      Which brings me to the second floor.  There, the bulk of my followers are housed.  Most share rooms like barracks, but some have a bit more space and privacy.  All can share the well-appointed common rooms that go down the middle of the floor.  Two small and one large fountain provides them with a space for reflection and quiet contemplation.      The third floor is where I reside.  My room is in the corner with the best view of the rest of Cauldron and includes a warm tub of water, ever ready for a dip.  Crystal resides there with me now.  Higgins’s room is on the opposite corner.  He usually resides alone.  Between the two is a secret warroom where we can meet with my other companions to discuss matters of importance.      The room outside these three rooms is the central hub of the place, though it is left of center.  This is where the scrying pool, the healing platform and bed, the guardian statues, and the rest of my private library are stored.  My followers are always busy in here, keeping track of various matters that require their attention.      The central portion of the third floor is mostly an open area, with its own fountains and another, more quiet place for dining.  I have four fancy bedroom suites there to house VIP guests as I have them, or some of my companions, though they usually have their own accommodations.  Ee, in particular, has made his own special arrangements, as I will mention shortly.      All told, the structure cost me nearly 270,000 gold coins, and that is on top of the 100,000 gold coins I spent just for the rights to the land.  But it is money well spent.  I still have additional funds granted by the King for further construction, and I plan to make use of those throughout the land, if need be.  Which brings me to the duties of my non-resident followers.      It has become apparent that there is much happening around the Kingdom, and even outside of it, that I am only dimly aware of.  This must change.  So I have sent my followers to live in places across the Kingdom.  My most noble followers reside in the Capitols of the land, attending court, keeping an ear to the intrigue there, and reporting it back to me.  My more common followers reside in more humble surroundings, practicing their chosen profession, perhaps running a tavern, and keeping an ear to the latest gossip and rumors in the street, gathering what information does not by happenstance already come their way, and reporting it back to me.      My followers of the more barbaric or druidic persuasion are on the outskirts of civilized lands, living among the more basic-living citizens, and listening to what tales they have to spin.  All of this information is transmitted back to my home, though mental reports, through scrying and listening by my more arcane followers.  They organize the information and keep it up to date, storing it and sorting it for my perusal as needed.      I am greatly aided in that task by two very capable followers in particular.  Johann and Kitiara, brother and sister, came to me in the same day, seeking me out because of my fame (in certain limited circles) as a psion of some reknown.  They were both of some skill already when I saw them, and they grow ever more skilled by the month under my tutelage, though it may be some time before they truly come in to their own.      Their skills allow them to do much of the coordination work and they are invaluable to me in that regard.  They also sometimes travel to gain further information for me when what they have gathered from my network does not suffice.  Over time, my network will grow until its tendrils reach into everywhere in the Kingdom, making me the first to know many things that others will hear only rumor of.  I will connect the pieces together and truly understand what is afoot.      One of the first things my network alerted me to was something of a more personal interest to one of my companions.  Ee’s Maxine, whom I was kind enough to transport to town, is pregnant.  Further, she was seeking Ee now to marry him.  Apparently the Law under St. Cuthbert requires such things.  She found Ee and dragged him before the authorities and demanded that he marry her.  Lest it seem too harsh on her part, I should mention that this was only after Ee treated her with disdain and refused to have anything to do with her or her unborn child.      When the time came to go to court, I offered to represtent Ee in this matter.  Ee at first asked me if I could transport her out of town.  I told him I could not do so without her permission.  He asked if I could wipe her memory of ever meeting him.  I again told him I could not do so without her permission.  White lies, those, since I probably could force her permission on both matters.  The big huge whopping lie was what was unsaid.  That to do either would defeat the purpose of my having brought her to town in the first place.  But Ee need not know that.  I think, in the end, it will be good for Ee to have a child.  At the very least, he should take responsibily.  If nothing else, it will give him more incentive to travel the planes in adventure, if only to avoid staying in town.      The only real legal help I provided Ee was with his assets.  Before the ceremony, he asked me to wipe his memory of the 54,000 coins he had to his name as he gave them to Nin (formerly Kyrnyn) for safekeeping, leaving him with a single gold coin.  Then, when they asked him about his assets, he could truthfully say that, as far as he knew, he had only one gold to his name.  What I did not tell Ee was that the trigger to remembering all of those coins was someone saying to him “I love you” or him saying that to someone else (and meaning it).  Of course, I could trigger it at any time even without that trigger, but this way, I figured, if he ever did find love with Maxine, at least then they could recover Ee’s fortune.      But this seems unlikely.  After the ceremony, Ee told Maxine that he had no home and that he lived in the woods.  Then, just to prove it, he went to live in the woods.  Maxine opted not to join him and instead stayed with Posiedon.  And so things went for four months.  Then I heard Ee’s voice call to me from the forest.      Sir Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Twenty-One – Ee gets us hired    “Cordozo, me Ee” I heard over the link.      “Yes, Ee?”     “Malvo here say he want hire us, find Earth Weird named Moonstone.  She prophecy.  They miss her.  They pay 40,000 coins.”      “What kind of demon is Malvo?”     “Huh?”    “Nevermind.  So Ee, what else did he say?”    “She Oracle.  She gone missing.  Him want find.  Oracle live in ground.  She gone long time.”    “Ok Ee, ask him how long we have to find her.”      “He say three weeks.”      “Ok Ee, come meet everyone at Tuvstarr’s tower.”      Soon we were all at the tower.  I always am linked now with the others, though sometimes Morwen balks at that.  Morwen likes to disappear for days or weeks at a time.  I sent a message to her anyway.  She usually shows up, even if she doesn’t respond.          Not having seen Ee in quite some time, I asked him, “where’s your wife?”      “Me don’t know.”      What a wonderful father and husband Ee must be.  I wonder what he’ll name the child.  Given the origin of Ee’s name and the state of his relationship with Maxine, it ought to be an interesting one.  I suppose we may all find out in another two or so months.      Thus assembled, we knocked on Tuvstarr’s door.      Skylar, an overly pompous-looking, self-righteous, formal teenager opened the door.      “Do you have an appointment?” he asked, with the false accent of those who aspire to nobility but never achieve it.       “Yes,” I said, lying with perfect smoothness and sincerity.      “Come in,” he replied, his voice making the “m” and “n” sound like a long, trailing song.  He told us to wait.      Ten minutes later, after we were left waiting to satisfy Skylar’s twisted sense of importance for himself and his mistress, Skylar appeared and said, “Madam Tuvstarr will see you now.”      Then we walked up this magical shaft to the third floor, where Tuvstarr was sitting behind a desk covered with books and papers.  Tuvstarr gave Skylar a withering look, but said nothing.  Deciding we had waited long enough, I asked, “Ok, just what the heck is an Earth Weird?”      Tuvstarr then explained to us a bit about the Chisel.  They are an organization that is apparently on good terms with Poseidon.  They were the first ones to take advantage of his regular teleportation circles created to travel from one city to another.  They knew about it ahead of time and even created special circular wagons to take advantage of them.  They set up contacts first and so they have prospered under this new trade system.      For years, they had an Oracle in the form of an Earth Weird named Moonstone.  They did not know where she resided exactly, they just knew how to call her so she would come.  Then just after the eruption in Cauldron, they called her and she did not come.  They tried everything they could to locate her, but could not.      And what she is is essentially a form of an elemental who can apparently foresee the future.  The implications for tort law overwhelmed me for a moment.  Proxmiate cause is based upon whether or not a given harm or danger is foreseeable.  I wondered if the Chisel had taken proper precautions to protect themselves from liability in their endeavors.  I’ll have to ask them about that once we’ve located Moonstone for them.  Back to the matter at hand.      Tuvstarr could not tell us where to go next, but we tried Poseidon.  He knew the same thing she knew, probably because he gets most of his information from her, but he did suggest we see the Mayor, Jenya, who was also High Priestess of St. Cuthbert.  He said she had an oracle item that may prove helpful.  And so we departed for the temple.      Sir Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Twenty-Two – Takes an Oracle to Find and Oracle    We knocked on the door to the temple of St. Cuthbert and asked to see Jenya.      “Do you have an appointment?”      “Yes,” said Ee, rather unconvincingly.      The acolyte turned and left, presumably to fetch her.  After the required ten minute wait (I wondered if there was a handbook somewhere that said that ten minutes was the appropriate time to keep important guests waiting), Jenya walked in, flanked by six Samurai bodyguards.  Where she found them out here, in Cauldron, I wondered.      What was interesting was that, while they usually eyed all of us suspiciously, this time, all six pairs of eyes were focused solely on Nin.  Apparently that summer course he took in “ninja” training, despite being buried deep in his mind, and in his past, is somehow visible.      We asked Jenya about the Oracle.  She had heard of the Chisel (of course) and said she would do what she could by consulting her Star Mace.  She said, “Make yourselves at home” and left to consult her artifact.      When she returned, she had this cryptic answer:The seer found what she was looking for.What she was not looking for found her and sent her home.At home she went looking for what she lost.She was again found and is now waiting to be found, so she can find what she wants.      Wonderful.  I wondered if we should also “drink lots of water.”      Tuvstarr, upon later consultation, seemed to think that “home” for Moonstone would be the Elemental Plane of Earth.  Great, that really narrows it down.      I must have expressed that sentiment aloud because Morwen responded by saying, “It’s not like it’s an infinite expanse of Earth!”    “Uh, actually, it is.”  I said.      “Oh.”      Tuvstarr did suggest to us a location to try, a major city on the plane where we might find more information.  Unfortunately, shifting between the planes can be imprecise at times, so we just aimed as best we could and prepared to depart.  But first, I wanted to consult with Malvo personally.      Malvo, the man who hired Ee from the woods, was helpful.  He explained that the power used to summon Moonstone only had a five to ten mile range, so her residence here must not have been that far from Cauldron.  He gave us a symbol of their order that we could use to identify her.  He said Moonstone would recognize it if we showed it to her.      I also asked Malvo about the Brawlers.  He had no new information to share, though he did mention that they came to town only within the past year.  We’ll have to get back to them later.      Our preparations complete, we joined hands in a circle and I then shifted us from Cauldron to somewhere near the Major Elemental Metropolis on the Elemental Plane of Earth mentioned to us by Tuvstarr.  And then the bashing began.      Sir Cordozo – Chapter Two-Hundred Twenty-Three – Spelunking the Earth    We arrived in a medium-sized cavern.  Unfortunately, it had no exits.  Even more unfortunately, it was a sacred place to elementals, so they did not want us “invaders” in it.  And in the ultimate of misfortunes for us, there were ten huge earth elementals in the room, in a circle around us, who saw it as their personal mission to punish us for our trespasses.      Higgins quickly hasted us, and then Nin and Ee began to fight them.  They barely made a scratch in the thick stony bodies of the elementals.  Morwen did a very impressive acrobatic move to stand between two of them, but then also made nary a scratch in their thick stoney bodies.  Then their massive fists came down like avalanches, nearly killing Morwen, knocking Marcus unconscious, and severely wounding Higgins as well.      This did not look good.  Four were within pounding distance of Higgins and though one, incredibly, missed him despite Higgins almost total lack of protection, the others did not, and so I quickly grabbed the minds of the four closest elementals and dominated them.  Unsure of where this was headed, I simply had them stand still for now while we dealt with the rest.      We still did little damage to them.  I considered trying to disintegrate one or perhaps crush one of their minds, but decided that it would be best to deal with as many as possible, so I managed to dominate three more.  One shrugged it off, and the other three who were slightly wounded retreated down into the earth.  It was at this point that Nin decided to try conversing with the one undominated one who was left.      They spoke in deep, guttural, almost resonant tones for a few moments before I decided to try and link my mind to it so I could converse with it as well.  While Nin could speak their words, he was about as eloquent with them as Ee.  I gave them the most eloquent speech, profusely apologizing for our trespasses, and promising to leave immediately, without even touching their sacred walls.  I just asked for distance and direction to another open space, one less sacred.  I also asked if he could help us with locating Moonstone, assuring him that our intentions were entirely benign.  In the end, he found me quite persuasive and told me that there was an open space just over 400 feet from here.  I transported all of us there and then he and his companions escorted us to the vault of their leader.      We traveled far, through tunnels made by the elementals just so we could pass.  Then we reached the chamber of the High Leader, who was an impressively huge earth elemental who also knew our own common tongue.      The stonework in her chamber was beyond belief.  Dwarves would cry and tear their beards out at how beautiful it was.  The walls were opulent, covered in gemstones that dwarfed the treasuries of any Earthly Kingdom (in the non-elemental sense of the word “Earthly” of course).      To give more goodwill, Marcus took this opportunity to offer to heal one of the injured elementals.  His touch healed him completely, impressing the Leader.      They took us to another chamber, non-sacred, and closed us off, telling us to wait while their Leader saw if she could find out information for us about Moonstone.  Her last command to our escort was that he was in charge of us and that if we hurt things, he would pay.  Such brutal efficiency.  I guess that is what one would expect of one made of the earth.      We waited in the chamber for five hours.  Then our “guardian,” who’s name was Morphysis, came back and said he would take us to see someone who could help us.  Apparently Moonstone went through a portal, looking to get back to where she came from, and never came back.  They did not know to where the portal leads.  They know it is located some three weeks travel away (if you’re an elemental) or three months if you were us.  Not wanting Ee to miss his baby’s birth, we asked if someone who knew its precise location could talk to us so we could teleport there.  And thus, we were taken to see the Earth Wizard.      Morphysis took us down many more passages until we reached a wooden door.  I could tell from his mind that this indicated great wealth, since all trees were imported from other planes.  We knocked and asked for the owner.      An assistant answered, and asked us if we had an appointment.      “Yes,” Morwen said, lying somewhat better than Ee.      “Oh, you have brought the soft ones,” the assistant said back.  We were escorted inside.  “Wait here and make yourselves comfortable.”      Ten minutes later (ten minutes now having been established as the universal waiting time when seeing someone important, holding true even across planes and even for creatures made completely out of granite and with rocks for brains), the Earth Wizard appeared.  She was very pleasant, as far as earth elementals go.  Her name was Mantle.      She offered us food and drink and we had a nice meal with her.  Her great wealth and his ease of manner with us “softies” clearly identified Mantle as amongst the “upper crust” of earth elementals.      Her assistant, Stalagmite, offered to help us purchase goods if we wished, particularly potions to help us “beathe earth.”  It took me a moment to realize that this was not a eumphism for having us all killed.  Higgins and I purchased a few of the potions just in case.  We had to watch our spending, my funds having been mostly depleted on permanently enhancing my intelligence.  (Courtesy of the cradle, I was able to make a certain fund conversion).      After the meal was over, we were shown the location of the portal through Mantle’s scrying.  We then thanked her and I transported us to the portal’s location.      It was unclear where it led.  Not wishing to go in blind, I began to manifest my interplanar correspondence power.  Once complete, I summoned Moria, and then sent her through the portal.      She communicated back to me that she was in a small cavern that was hot (with a lava pool in the center) and had a large anvil.  Working the anvil was an efreeti that took notice of her, but otherwise ignored her, continuing his assigned task.  There was an exit to the cave to a hall, but that was not what caught her attention.      In one corner of the room stood imprisoned a creature of earth.  Moria approached her and discovered that this was indeed Moonstone.  Moonstone, for her part, looked grateful to see Moria, though she apparently already knew we were coming.  Oracles must not have much fun reading mysteries.      Now we needed to decide the proper approach.  Moria had but a few moments left.  I contemplated what I would have her do before our next move.  It might be wise to rest, but then it might be wiser to move quickly.  But which was the better move?</blockquote>

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