Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 214
Center of Attention
While Aravis and Grey Wolf continue to talk shop with Chiswick, Kibi wanders out of the room and into the hallway. Even from the second floor, he can hear the chatter of dozens coming from the common room below. A small kobold-like creature approaches him from the direction of the stairs, and walks past him smiling and nodding before vanishing around a corner.
Something has been eating at Kibi since earlier in the day. He’s not sure if it’s anything, really, but he can’t get the idea out of his head that the gnome Aristus had given him a funny look, when he thought he recognized Kibi’s name. He tromps down the hallway and then down the stairs to the common room, but Aristus isn’t there. It’s crowded with a menagerie of folk of all kinds. He spots a particularly unusual fellow, nine feet tall with pale blue skin, sharing a drink with a table of humanoid types. Horny is there, roaring at a joke from someone at the bar. Mercury stands near the door chatting with an elven-looking woman.
“Hey Horny!” calls Kibi.
The minotaur breaks off his conversation and stomps over to him.
“Yeah? Kibilhathur? Can I get you a drink?”
“I wouldn’t mind a drink,” answers the dwarf. “An ale would be good.”
“Coming up! Two ales!” he bellows at a passing serving man. Soon the drinks arrive, and Horny polishes up his large mug in a single gulp.
“I was looking for Aristus,” says Kibi.
“He was just here,” says Horny, looking around. “Looks like you missed him. Hey Delilah! What room is Aristus staying in?
“Twenty-seven, I think,” answers Delilah. “But he’s not there. He went down to the basement to work on that… thing.”
“There you go,” says Horny. “So, are you… oop… hold on… Hey! Stop that!”
Horny breaks off his talk with Kibi and heads over to another table, where some patrons are starting to cause trouble.
Kibi heads to the basement door and goes down. It’s a wide stairwell lit by magical lights, with a stout wooden door at the bottom. He knocks at the door. When no one answers, he knocks again, louder.
“Who is it?” comes a voice from beyond the door.
“Kibilhathur Bimson!”
“Oh, come in, come in. And close the door behind you!”
Kibi emerges into a large brightly-lit workshop. Tools and materials and blueprints are scattered everywhere. A large stack of wood scraps leans against the near wall. Several large barrels are in various states of being dismantled. Coils of rope hang on the walls, and there are numerous bent iron bars.
From a side room he hears the voice of Aristus calling, heard over a cacophony of clangs, taps, and ratcheting sounds.
“In here!” shouts the gnome.
Kibi peers into to the side room. A strange contraption is raised up on a short wooden scaffold, and Aristus’ legs protrude from underneath it. The contraption itself looks like an enormous barrel with metal insect-like legs sticking out the sides. Whatever it is is obviously not finished; there are large gaps in the sides of the barrel, and bits of metal are everywhere. There’s a bright light coming from beneath the barrel, which goes out as Kibi watches. Aristus emerges a few seconds later with his face and hands smeared with something like grease.
“Is this a magic item?” asks Kibi, intrigued.
“It will be when I’m done,” says Aristus, smiling and wiping his brow with a dirty cloth.
The gnome looks at Kibi, then walks to the main workshop room and looks around.
“You by yourself?” he asks. “Good. Good good good.”
Kibi raises his eyebrows. Aristus goes into another side room and comes back holding a large folded-up letter..
“I promised that I would only bring this up to you personally,” says Aristus, fixing Kibi with a keen stare. “I don’t know what it means, but I had heard your name before. About four years ago, a woman arrived here from the Chaos. Her name was Lollys, and she delivered this to me. She gave me an instruction. ‘Some day you will meet a dwarf named Kibilhathur Bimson,’ she said. ‘Give this to him, and no one else. And do it in private.’
“Lollys was a sorceress, we think, and not a nice person. I’m not sure I would trust her, or trust what she gave me. Worse, about six months after she arrived we caught her trying to read minds in the Inn. She was expelled through the Way of No Return. But as I said, she gave me this to give to you. She never said anything else about it, or about her experiences in Chaos, for that matter.”
Aristus hands Kibi the letter, brown paper folded over and wrapped in string. There are some small dark stains – blood, maybe? – on the outside.
“Sorry to be so secretive about it,” says Aristus. “But a promise is a promise, even to someone I don’t like.”
“I wonder if I should cast identify on it before I open it,” muses Kibi.
“Good idea.”
Kibi turns the letter over in his hands. It feels there’s some small object inside the paper.
“Hey, while you’re here, can you do me a favor?” asks Aritsus.
“Sure!”
“Ok. I’m going to ask you some questions. Just tell me the answers.”
The gnome slides himself back under the barrel-like contraption. Kibi hears some strange clanking sounds, and then the right front “leg” of the machine starts to shake.
“Is the left front leg wiggling?” calls Aristus.
“Nope, just the right leg.”
“Really? Strange. Hm. Hold on.”
Clank. Tink tink. “Ow!”
“Now both front legs are wiggling!” says Kibi.
“No, no!” says Aristus. “That shouldn’t be happening. Grab the left leg! Stop it from wiggling!”
Kibi grabs the metal leg, and both legs stop moving. Kibi hears some ratchet-like sounds coming from under the device.
“Cursed machine!” complains Aristus. “I’ve been working on it for two years, and it still… ah, there. Check the middle set of legs now. They should both be wiggling a little bit.”
“Yeah, they are,” says Kibi.
“Good, good. Ok. Now, have they stopped?”
“Yup.”
“Well, at least something works. This thing had better stop when you want it to stop!”
“What’s it going to do when you’re all done?” asks Kibi.
“Oh, what won’t it do? A transport anywhere, for use in any environment, safely. A fighting machine in a pinch. And you’ll be able to survive in it for days, if necessary. Look inside, near the top.”
Kibi sticks his head into the barrel’s interior, and sees a large bladder stuck near the ceiling of the barrel’s interior. There’s a tube sticking it out of it.
“You could fill that with beer!” says Kibi, understanding.
“I was thinking water, but yeah, beer would do.”
“What did this Lollys person look like?” asks Kibi, looking down again at the letter.
“Short. Short-cropped blonde hair. Often wore green robes, I recall.”
Suddenly the whole barrel starts to shudder. A metal panel becomes dislodged from the side and clatters to the floor.
“Damn it!” cries Aristus. He slides himself out from beneath the machine and stands up.
“When it’s done, I’m going to call it the “Apparatus of Aristus.”
* *
Kibi tucks the letter inside his shirt and goes back upstairs. Ernie and Spinnizia are lounging by the fireplace closest to the kitchen.
“Thank you Yondalla,” murmurs Ernie to himself. “It’s really not so bad here.”
“I hope you can stay,” says Spinnizia, sipping from a wineglass.
“I don’t think I can,” says Ernie, his grin fading. “Back on my world, my parents don’t even exist anymore, and that stinks! We’ve got to fix things. But we’ll stay as long as we can. And if we’re successful, maybe we’ll come back and visit someday.”
Eventually Morningstar goes back to her room, after hours of shop-talk with Medina. There are plenty of rooms, enough that each member of the Company gets their own. (The Inn has had as many as two hundred people staying there at once, though there are only about half that number now.) Kibi goes around and knocks on doors, getting everyone to meet him in his own room. Soon they are all crowded in, sitting on the bed and the floor.
“I was just given something," he announces. “It was given to Aristus, to give to a dwarf named “Kibilhathur Bimson,” by a human woman who came from the chaos, and who wasn’t very nice, and got kicked through the Gate of No Return because she was going around reading minds.”
That takes a moment to digest, but Ernie’s first words are: “Black Circle.”
“She was wearing green robes, according to Aristus. Anyway, here’s the package. I do kind of want to know what’s in it.”
Grey Wolf casts detect magic, and yes, something inside the package is magical. He then hands it to Flicker who checks it for traps and finds none. They wait fifteen minutes while Ernie prepares an augury, but when he asks about the outcome of opening the letter, he gets no response.
Kibi uses mage hand to open the wrapping. A folded up piece of paper falls out of the package, and a small metal disk falls out of the paper. It’s the disk that’s magic – moderate enchantment and transmutation. It’s made of a dark metal, with three wavy lines engraved upon it. No one recognizes the design. The paper is not magical, though the writing is in a strange language. Kibi casts comprehend languages and reads the letter silently to himself, while the others look on anxiously. When he’s done, he picks up the disk and stares at it for a moment. One Certain Step detects no evil coming from it.
“It’s a stabilizer,” Kibi says, and then he reads the letter aloud to the others.
Kibilhathur Bimson,
You are trapped like the rest of us, but you are the key that will unlock our prison. In our meditations and prayers we have determined the way in which you can be our salvation. Come through the Chaos to our monastery and we will teach you what you must do. Beware the journey, which is perilous. Our chaos is not your chaos. Its nature and its denizens will try to consume you just as anyone else, particularly the Slaadi. Avoid them or flee from them if possible. Should you come to harm, it may be that our captor will enslave all of creation in this anathema.
With this letter is a Stabilizer. It will help you navigate Chaos, as you concentrate on the air and earth you will need to travel.
Please come quickly, so we might undo what has been done to us.
Gaz Mur
Abbott of Monk’s Rest
After a few seconds of silence, Flicker is the first to speak.
“Far be it for me to say,” says Flicker, ”but could that scream ‘TRAP’ any more?”
“We have a plan for that,” Ernie points out. “Spring the trap and fight our way out,”
* *
The next day the Company makes some long term plans. Their intent is to stay at the Eye of the Storm for three months or so, during which time they will train, scribe some spells, and craft a large number of magic items. They work out a schedule with Mercury to earn their keep – mostly taking shifts guarding some of the Ways into the Slice, but also in training others in fighting techniques and making some magic items for the defense of the Inn. Ernie will be spending much of his time in the kitchen with Spinnizia, and Kibi likewise alongside Gnard, a barrel-chested man in charge of the distillery.
The Eye of the Storm and its environs are like a big commune, with people coming and going at a slow but steady rate. A week after they arrive, a group of nine humanoids (humans and half-elves, mostly) is escorted in from the Formian territory. Two weeks later, a dozen young would-be adventurers gather in the common room, ready to head out into the Demon Slices. It seems that they had all come from the same Slice, and had left behind a number of their people to explore. They had made their way through the Demon Slices already, and had found the Inn a couple of months before the Company had shown up.
Dranko notices them conferring around a few pushed-together tables and walks over to listen. Eventually he finds an opening to ask about the Demon Slices, but the explanation offered is poor.
“Well, um,” says a young man who looks to be the leader, “It’s pretty bad. There are rivers full of foul stuff, and, and demons, of course. And the Slices all differ. Inhospitable, but different.”
“Rivers of foul stuff?” says Dranko. “What does that mean?”
“Er, you know,” says the kid. “Hot blood in one, acid we think in another.”
“There was one river with molten salt,’ chimes in one of the others.
“Was the blood river in the place with all the wind?” asks a third.
“No, the windy place was the one with the craters.”
“Are you sure?”
Soon the bunch of them is arguing. One of them pulls out an untidy map and slaps it on the table, but it doesn’t quell any of the arguments. A lad who looks about sixteen, sitting closest to Dranko, leans over and whispers to the half-orc.
“Our map’s not so good, ‘cause there’s a bunch of clusters of Ways, sometimes five or six in one place. We ran through a bunch of ‘em while Demons were chasing us – little Demons with long rubbery arms – and no one can agree on what the map looks like.”
Dranko gathers from the others that Demon Slices aren’t exactly teeming with Demons, but that there are occasional roving packs of them. If you’re smart and keep a good look out, you can hide from them most of the time. The one who was whispering to Dranko confides that, in his opinion, they were crazy lucky to have reached the Eye of the Storm without being killed, and that if they try to find their way back to their home Slice, they’ll never survive. Dranko gives the lad an encouraging smile before returning to the Company’s table and muttering in a low voice, “they’re doomed.”
* *
Chiswick turns out to be a wonderful source of magical supplies. His trunk is seemingly full of useful items, and appears to have different stuff in it each time. When Dranko casually asks about it, Chiswick assures him that he couldn’t open it.
“And you might get hurt if you try.”
The Company also, eventually, convinces Chiswick to accept money as payment. Dranko finds himself up in the old wizard’s room one night, seeking alchemical supplies required for augmenting the magic of his whip. Dranko hands over some small gems as payment, which Chiswick grudgingly accepts.
“Someday we might escape from this, and before I die, I guess I could find something to spend it on,” says the wizard.
“You’re welcome to come adventuring with us when we try to solve it,” says Dranko.
“Ah, my adventuring days are long over,” says Chiswick with a sigh. “I just like to read, think, scribble. I’m too old, too tired, too… much. No more adventuring for me.”
Dranko looks down at his whip, and a thought comes to him.
“Say, do you know what it takes to make a magic item intelligent? Where does the intelligence come from?”
“Oh, a bunch of different ways,” answers Chiswick. “If you were so inclined, you could suck it out of another living thing. Or it can come from the cosmos itself; that’s the most common, since the other ways tend to be… unsavory. That’s how I’d do it. Also, there are certain materials that have an innate sub-intelligence in them already, and the process of enchanting them brings that out. Those materials are very expensive, rare, and hard to come by, but it’s something you could try.”
“What would you use for a whip?” asks Dranko.
“A whip? Never made one of those before. What’s it made of? Leather?”
“Yeah. So maybe I should start with a really smart cow?”
“Hm. Interesting. Yes, that might be a good place to start. If it was really smart…”
Chiswick starts thinking about smart cows, pulls a book from his trunk, and begins to read.
* *
A month goes by, and all is going well. The Company has settled into a comfortable routine, made some friends, and has had a few inconclusive discussions on where they’ll go when they’re ready to leave. This particular day has been a long one for Kibi. He spent the morning and early afternoon working on a headband of intellect. After a break for lunch, he spent the rest of the day and most of the evening toiling in the brewery. It’s hours after sunset that Kibi has dinner with Gnard before heading up to his room to sleep. His bed is comfortable and a cool breeze wafts through his window. With Scree piled up at the foot of the bed, the dwarf is soon slumbering.
He has a dream. In the dream, he’s back in the distillery, working hard. Then his headband of intellect appears around his head, and with his mind thus expanded he realizes the way to make the perfect beer – beer so good, the Gods themselves would come down to drink it if they could. But Scree is distraught about the beer, and Kibi doesn’t understand it. Where did Scree come from, anyway? He wasn’t in the brewery just now.
“What’s wrong?” asks Kibi in the dream. “I know you can’t drink it, but it’s going to be good beer!”
But despite his assurances, Scree only becomes more and more agitated. Then, strangely, Scree says, “Kibi, wake up, wake up! Roll out of the way!”
Oh, it’s a dream! Kibi wakes up groggily to find that someone is leaning over him. It’s a man dressed all in black, with black bandages wrapped around his head and face, leaving only a gap for his eyes. There’s something amiss about him physically, Kibi thinks in the moment he wakes. And there’s something else, something heavy. Ah! Scree is heavy on his chest, and it seems that the earth elemental familiar has just deflected the knife away from his heart. Knife? Ah, yes, the knife that’s now buried into his side. There’s a sudden hot burst of pain.
Kibi screams.
…to be continued...
