Jackylhunter
First Post
Instead of Bumping, how about we all wish Sagiro a happy B-day (blame P-cat)
oh what the heck...BUMP
oh what the heck...BUMP
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The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
Lord Pendragon
First Post
Happy Birthday Sagiro! Looking forward to more Abernathy's Company goodness whenever you get around to it. 
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Thanks for the birthday wishes! 35. <shudder> Fortuately, the games keep me young.
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 215
Party in the Dwarf’s Room!
When one is in the adventuring business, one tends to develop an uncanny ability to go from slumberous to battle-ready at even the slightest nearby scream. Dranko hardly realizes he’s awake before he finds himself on his feet and grabbing his Heward’s wide-mouth pouch from his bedside. He listens long enough to discern that the cries are those of a dwarf, and even as he heads for the window (figuring even in his groggy head that the hallway is going to be choked with would-be rescuers), he starts shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Wake up! Kibi’s under attack!”
He slips out the window and quickly shimmies along the outside wall of the Inn toward Kibi’s window. He almost bumps into Flicker, who had the same idea and is moving from the other side, a dagger clenched in his teeth.
With Kibi and Dranko both raising a racket, everyone else is up and moving in a matter of seconds. Grey Wolf grabs his sword and shield from the floor even as Edghar snags the spell-component bag and hops on his master’s shoulder; they burst into the hallway. In his own room Aravis leaps to his feet, and much like Edghar, Pewter grabs the spell-components and leaps onto Aravis’ back.
“Ready, boss!” thinks the cat. Aravis casts teleport directly into Kibi’s room. He sees the black-clad assassin and Scree on top of Kibi. The assassin has one knee up on the bed, and is pulling a dagger out of the dwarf’s body.
“I wouldn’t do that again,” says Aravis angrily.
Morningstar just rolls out of bed and charges into the hallway, dressed only in her nightshirt. She doesn’t bother to bring anything from her room; she sleeps with her holy symbol around her neck, and that’s all she needs. Kibi’s room is directly opposite her own, so she slams her body into the door, sending it flying open. She sees Aravis, and beyond him the dwarf, earth elemental and assassin. The floor around the bed is slick with blood. As she watches the assassin raises his dagger again, but with Kibi now struggling and Scree still trying to protect his master, the strike goes wide and the blade plunges into the bed right next to Kibi’s head.
Thinking that he needs as much help as possible, Kibi tries to summon another earth elemental to help protect him. (And his Earth Mage powers allow him to perform such a summoning in less time that it would take others.) But the struggling of Scree and the Assassin on top of him knocks his hands awry as he casts, and the spell fizzles out.
Ernie, Snokas and Step come crashing out of their rooms into the hallway, all armed with grabbed weapons but otherwise just in nightclothes. (Ernie is wearing red footie pajamas with a flap in the back.) Step reacts the fastest and barges into Kibi’s room on Morningstar’s heels. After a second of assessing the situation, he shoulders past Morningstar and Aravis and leaps onto the assassin, wrapping his arms around the man and trying to wrestle him off the bed.. Watching from outside on the wall, Dranko and Flicker suddenly see Step’s arm flail against the half-open shutters. Kibi grimaces in pain as the extra weight stresses his wound.
Dranko wrenches the shutters the rest of the way open and gets a good view of the tussle. “Step, duck your head to the left!” he shouts, even as he instantly calls his mace from the widemouth pouch. Dranko dives halfway into the room and swings the mace, grunting in satisfaction at the impact with the back of the assassin’s head. There’s a meaty “thump,” but not quite the gush of blood he was expecting, and the man in black doesn’t even seem to notice.
Aravis decides that enough is enough, and pulls out the big gun – power word stun.
“STOP!”
His allies in the room can feel the ripple of power sweep over them, but Aravis is appalled to see that the assassin isn’t fazed in the slightest, and just continues to try wrestling free of Step’s grasp.
The hallway outside is starting fill up, not only with various members of the Company, but also with other guests. Omar is one of the first on the scene, dressed in a sleeping robe and clutching his rapier. He’s babbling in a strange tongue – whatever translation effect he was using earlier isn’t turned on. Grey Wolf, unable to squeeze into Kibi’s room, is standing guard outside, looking for other assassins. When Omar looks at him expectantly, Grey Wolf uses hand gestures to indicate that there could be more hostiles about. Omar nods and moves to the other end of the hall, weaving through other sleepy but curious guests. Snokas goes with him. Ernie realizes he’ll do no good either in the hallway or Kibi’s room, so he activates the flying ability of his shield and flies back to his own room and out the window. In the light of the moon and some outside torchlight, he starts to scan the grounds for suspicious figures.
Morningstar squeezes toward the bed, intending to use her power of protective sleep on Kibi. But luck isn’t with her; with her fingers less than an inch from Kibi’s shoulder, the scrum atop the bed suddenly shifts position, and the power is dissipated instead into the assassin – again, with no effect.
“Sorry Kibi!” she blurts.
Flicker squeezes into window next to Dranko and takes a stab with his dagger, but it proves too difficulty to strike the assassin while avoiding Step, Kibi and Dranko. The blade goes wide, tears the mattress, and Flicker himself becomes overbalanced. He falls into the room, on top of the bed. Kibi hears the bed start to groan and splinter under the combined weight of five people plus Scree. He’s starting to feel light-headed with blood loss. With a flailing grasp he wraps his fingers around his spell-component pouch on a small bedside table, and casts dimension door. Having seen Morningstar in the room with him, he chooses her room as a destination, guessing it will be empty. The chaos around him vanishes, and in an instant he is lying on the wood floor of the room across the hall, Scree piled up next to him. He rolls onto his back, gasping in pain, and jams his fist into the wound to staunch the bleeding. With his other hand he reaches instinctively for a healing potion, which of course he doesn’t have on him.
Back in his room, Step, the assassin, Dranko and Flicker all drop eight inches through the space left by Kibi. That’s all for the bed – its legs crack and splay out and the frame breaks in two, dropping them all another three feet. Step continues to grapple the assassin, who can’t escape the paladin’s determined grip. In Kivian common, Morningstar cries out, “Kibi just dim doored out! Someone find him!”
Dranko doesn’t lose focus. He lands two more telling blows with his mace, the second of which knocks a large chunk out of the assassin’s neck. He stares, morbidly fascinated, at the hole he made. It’s flesh, and some blood, but there are no veins or arteries or muscle showing in the gaping wound.
Aravis makes himself useful by casting mass haste. He along with Step, Dranko, Flicker and Morningstar all get hasty. With muscles a-quiver, Morningstar lands three powerful blows with her morningstar. The first opens a gash in the assassin’s side. The second shears away a chunk of flesh from its shoulder, which sticks on one of the weapon’s spikes. The third smacks it in the head, tearing away the wrappings that cover its face. She recoils instinctively at the sight of a face with no nose, no mouth, no ears – no features at all except the eyes, and from this close view, she can see that the eyes look like they’ve just been jammed into a head-shaped lump of molded flesh.
Grey Wolf spots movement across the hall.
“Found him!” he yells to the others. “Morningstar’s room!”
Aristus Fuller finishes pushing his way through the crowd and reaches Grey Wolf in the hall.
“What’s going on?” he asks breathlessly, his voice translated on time-delay into Charagan common.
“My friend has been attacked!”
“By whom? By what?”
Kibi turns his head and sees Aristus and Grey Wolf.
“Aristus! I was attacked by an assassin!” groans the dwarf. “Do you know anything about it?”
“No, of course not!” replies the gnome, affronted, but moving into the room and kneeling with Grey Wolf by Kibi’s side.
“No, I didn’t mean…” says Kibi.
“Are you going to be okay?” asks Grey Wolf?
“I could use some healing, but I’ll live,” says Kibi.
Aristus leaps to his feet. “There could be more attackers around. I’m going to go organize search parties.” He dashes out into the hallway.
Back in Kibi’s room the assassin still struggles in Step’s iron grip.
“You’re not going anywhere!” shouts the paladin angrily, as the two roll around atop the bed’s wreckage.
Dranko calls for ‘manacles and leg irons’ from his widemouth pouch. The leg irons will be impossible with all the thrashing, but Step has the assassin’s arms clamped in front of his body. With a deft maneuver, Dranko is able to manacle the assassin’s wrists together. It turns out to a moot point, as Aravis fires off a greater dispelling followed immediately by a single-target sonic chain-lightning.
Wa-BOOM!
What’s left of the bed shatters, the shutters are blown out of the window, and the assassin explodes. Flesh splatters everywhere, even out the open doorway into the hall. The manacles fall to the ground a second later, still with wrists bound inside them. In the silence that follows, Dranko picks up the manacles.
“Look, I disarmed him!”
* *
Morningstar heals Kibi’s wounds, but the dwarf still looks weak and feverish. She guesses poison, so Grey Wolf runs to his room and fetches the undead-bane sword that casts restoration once per day. Soon Kibi is back to full health.
Morningstar also manages to shoo everyone out of the dwarf’s blasted room. She steps gingerly across the threshold, trying not to step on the larger pieces of meat. The smell is horrific; the bits of the assassin are visibly decaying and the stench is nearly overpowering. She blankets the room with thought captures, but gets nothing from the assassin. The thoughts she picks up are mostly panicky ones from Kibi. It’s now obvious to all that the attacker was some kind of necromantic construct – maybe a flesh golem?
Flicker examines the lock on Kibi’s door and concludes that it was expertly picked. He searches for a few minutes in the fleshy muck and finds a set of thieves’ tools, as well as a rolled up piece of leather with two small glass vials. The vials contain a dark slimy substance that matches what he finds on the bloody dagger. Yep. Poison, all right.
Aristus’s search parties don’t turn up any sign of other assassins. After an hour or two, most of the other guests have gone back to bed, the excitement seemingly over. But Aravis decides to cast one more spell before going back to sleep. He casts vision, hoping to learn something of the assassin.
>> Aravis’s player: “Is it considered to be ‘at hand?’”
>>DM: “It’s kind of a rotting hand, but yes.”
He sits down next to the decaying wrist and hand still clamped inside Dranko’s manacles. As he casts the spell, a small portion of his life force escapes through his fingertips and settles into the assassin’s remnants. Everything around him grows white, and the vision begins.
The world fades back to near-darkness. He’s underground. All around him is a chittering, insect-like sound. Is it language? His sight adjusts to the dark. There are many strange creatures around him, ant-centaurs, the formians he has heard about. Their insectoid faces are inscrutable. They are looking down at strange books, and they are sculpting something.
The vision fades, and then refocuses on a different cavern in the dark. Another insect creature is reading from a cracked stone tablet, and chittering at a naked humanoid figure whose only features are human eyes jammed into the flesh-head.
The vision fades, but there is still more. Now Aravis sees a group of creatures, mostly humanoids of various types, and also a small intelligent lizard. There are maybe a dozen people altogether, some of whom he recognizes from the Inn. In his vision there’s a space among them, which they all avoid but don’t notice, as if there’s someone invisible in their midst. There’s a blue portal in front of this group, and a formian gestures to it, and the whole bunch moves through the portal.
Aravis’s eyes snap open; he finds himself lying on the ground. He sits up, blinks, and recites every detail of his vision to the others while it’s still fresh. The Company knows that every few weeks, the formians round up people that have stumbled into their territory and send through the Way that connects to the Inn’s Slice. But why would the formians want to kill Kibi? How did they find out about him, if divinations don’t cross the Ways, and the Way into the formian-controlled territory is always guarded? Grey Wolf, thinking about Kibi’s off-again, on-again excursion (back when he had been summoned), speculates that maybe there are prophecies about Kibi in any number of worlds.
They talk with Aristus, Gloriana and Mercury. The formians have never given them any trouble before. Their relationship with the ant-creatures is not exactly congenial, but there have never been hostilities, and the folk expelled from their Slices have always reported good treatment. While some in the Company contemplate a foray into the formian Slices, Ernie points out that it could upset the relationship between the insects and the Inn, which in turn could put more innocent people in jeopardy.
Morningstar admits right away to their hosts that she used thought captures in Kibi’s room after the attack, and Mercury is forgiving given the circumstances, though Gloriana shakes her head and says nothing.
“I’m sorry that our Inn was not secure,” says the centaur. “We’ve never had anything like this happen. Oh, our Slice has come under attack, but always through the Ways, overtly.”
“Do formians ever stay here, at the Inn?” asks Morningstar.
“The last time that happened, it was over six years ago,” says Mercury.
“It could be the Black Circle,” says Morningstar, thinking. “If they knew Kibi was prophesied to ruin their plans, they may have placed safeguards here against him.”
The next morning Dranko decides to have a chat with one of the people who came into the Slice with the assassin. He finds a peasant woman who looks about thirty, with her two-year-old son. He starts to talk and the woman babbles back at him in a foreign tongue, so Dranko casts a pair of comprehend language spells to expedite discussion.
“You understand me now?”
“Yes, yes!” says the woman.
“You came in with the others, from the place with the formians, right?”
The woman nods.
“How many came in with your group?”
“When they sent us through? Twelve, I think. I did not make careful count.”
“How long did the journey take?”
“We passed through four of the portals. Maybe… a week?” She scrunches up her face, trying to remember.
“What do you think the chances were that you had an invisible assassin with you the entire time?”
Dranko leans in as he asks the question. The two-year-old son in her arms doesn’t cry, and it occurs to Dranko that the kid could be much older than that.
“Invisible Assassin? The assassin was invisible? I heard about what happened! But no, I didn’t see anything…er… invisible.”
“Did you notice anything else odd?” asks Dranko.
“Yes! There was a small talking lizard in the group. Very odd, very odd!”
“Small talking lizard. Who’d he belong to?”
“He didn’t belong to anyone. He was a person, like you or me. And he could talk. If I understand correctly, he decided to go through the Way of No Return.”
“Huh. Fascinating. You know anything about how to fight Formians?”
“Fight them? Heavens no! I make sweaters.”
Dranko sighs.
…to be continued…
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 215
Party in the Dwarf’s Room!
When one is in the adventuring business, one tends to develop an uncanny ability to go from slumberous to battle-ready at even the slightest nearby scream. Dranko hardly realizes he’s awake before he finds himself on his feet and grabbing his Heward’s wide-mouth pouch from his bedside. He listens long enough to discern that the cries are those of a dwarf, and even as he heads for the window (figuring even in his groggy head that the hallway is going to be choked with would-be rescuers), he starts shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Wake up! Kibi’s under attack!”
He slips out the window and quickly shimmies along the outside wall of the Inn toward Kibi’s window. He almost bumps into Flicker, who had the same idea and is moving from the other side, a dagger clenched in his teeth.
With Kibi and Dranko both raising a racket, everyone else is up and moving in a matter of seconds. Grey Wolf grabs his sword and shield from the floor even as Edghar snags the spell-component bag and hops on his master’s shoulder; they burst into the hallway. In his own room Aravis leaps to his feet, and much like Edghar, Pewter grabs the spell-components and leaps onto Aravis’ back.
“Ready, boss!” thinks the cat. Aravis casts teleport directly into Kibi’s room. He sees the black-clad assassin and Scree on top of Kibi. The assassin has one knee up on the bed, and is pulling a dagger out of the dwarf’s body.
“I wouldn’t do that again,” says Aravis angrily.
Morningstar just rolls out of bed and charges into the hallway, dressed only in her nightshirt. She doesn’t bother to bring anything from her room; she sleeps with her holy symbol around her neck, and that’s all she needs. Kibi’s room is directly opposite her own, so she slams her body into the door, sending it flying open. She sees Aravis, and beyond him the dwarf, earth elemental and assassin. The floor around the bed is slick with blood. As she watches the assassin raises his dagger again, but with Kibi now struggling and Scree still trying to protect his master, the strike goes wide and the blade plunges into the bed right next to Kibi’s head.
Thinking that he needs as much help as possible, Kibi tries to summon another earth elemental to help protect him. (And his Earth Mage powers allow him to perform such a summoning in less time that it would take others.) But the struggling of Scree and the Assassin on top of him knocks his hands awry as he casts, and the spell fizzles out.
Ernie, Snokas and Step come crashing out of their rooms into the hallway, all armed with grabbed weapons but otherwise just in nightclothes. (Ernie is wearing red footie pajamas with a flap in the back.) Step reacts the fastest and barges into Kibi’s room on Morningstar’s heels. After a second of assessing the situation, he shoulders past Morningstar and Aravis and leaps onto the assassin, wrapping his arms around the man and trying to wrestle him off the bed.. Watching from outside on the wall, Dranko and Flicker suddenly see Step’s arm flail against the half-open shutters. Kibi grimaces in pain as the extra weight stresses his wound.
Dranko wrenches the shutters the rest of the way open and gets a good view of the tussle. “Step, duck your head to the left!” he shouts, even as he instantly calls his mace from the widemouth pouch. Dranko dives halfway into the room and swings the mace, grunting in satisfaction at the impact with the back of the assassin’s head. There’s a meaty “thump,” but not quite the gush of blood he was expecting, and the man in black doesn’t even seem to notice.
Aravis decides that enough is enough, and pulls out the big gun – power word stun.
“STOP!”
His allies in the room can feel the ripple of power sweep over them, but Aravis is appalled to see that the assassin isn’t fazed in the slightest, and just continues to try wrestling free of Step’s grasp.
The hallway outside is starting fill up, not only with various members of the Company, but also with other guests. Omar is one of the first on the scene, dressed in a sleeping robe and clutching his rapier. He’s babbling in a strange tongue – whatever translation effect he was using earlier isn’t turned on. Grey Wolf, unable to squeeze into Kibi’s room, is standing guard outside, looking for other assassins. When Omar looks at him expectantly, Grey Wolf uses hand gestures to indicate that there could be more hostiles about. Omar nods and moves to the other end of the hall, weaving through other sleepy but curious guests. Snokas goes with him. Ernie realizes he’ll do no good either in the hallway or Kibi’s room, so he activates the flying ability of his shield and flies back to his own room and out the window. In the light of the moon and some outside torchlight, he starts to scan the grounds for suspicious figures.
Morningstar squeezes toward the bed, intending to use her power of protective sleep on Kibi. But luck isn’t with her; with her fingers less than an inch from Kibi’s shoulder, the scrum atop the bed suddenly shifts position, and the power is dissipated instead into the assassin – again, with no effect.
“Sorry Kibi!” she blurts.
Flicker squeezes into window next to Dranko and takes a stab with his dagger, but it proves too difficulty to strike the assassin while avoiding Step, Kibi and Dranko. The blade goes wide, tears the mattress, and Flicker himself becomes overbalanced. He falls into the room, on top of the bed. Kibi hears the bed start to groan and splinter under the combined weight of five people plus Scree. He’s starting to feel light-headed with blood loss. With a flailing grasp he wraps his fingers around his spell-component pouch on a small bedside table, and casts dimension door. Having seen Morningstar in the room with him, he chooses her room as a destination, guessing it will be empty. The chaos around him vanishes, and in an instant he is lying on the wood floor of the room across the hall, Scree piled up next to him. He rolls onto his back, gasping in pain, and jams his fist into the wound to staunch the bleeding. With his other hand he reaches instinctively for a healing potion, which of course he doesn’t have on him.
Back in his room, Step, the assassin, Dranko and Flicker all drop eight inches through the space left by Kibi. That’s all for the bed – its legs crack and splay out and the frame breaks in two, dropping them all another three feet. Step continues to grapple the assassin, who can’t escape the paladin’s determined grip. In Kivian common, Morningstar cries out, “Kibi just dim doored out! Someone find him!”
Dranko doesn’t lose focus. He lands two more telling blows with his mace, the second of which knocks a large chunk out of the assassin’s neck. He stares, morbidly fascinated, at the hole he made. It’s flesh, and some blood, but there are no veins or arteries or muscle showing in the gaping wound.
Aravis makes himself useful by casting mass haste. He along with Step, Dranko, Flicker and Morningstar all get hasty. With muscles a-quiver, Morningstar lands three powerful blows with her morningstar. The first opens a gash in the assassin’s side. The second shears away a chunk of flesh from its shoulder, which sticks on one of the weapon’s spikes. The third smacks it in the head, tearing away the wrappings that cover its face. She recoils instinctively at the sight of a face with no nose, no mouth, no ears – no features at all except the eyes, and from this close view, she can see that the eyes look like they’ve just been jammed into a head-shaped lump of molded flesh.
Grey Wolf spots movement across the hall.
“Found him!” he yells to the others. “Morningstar’s room!”
Aristus Fuller finishes pushing his way through the crowd and reaches Grey Wolf in the hall.
“What’s going on?” he asks breathlessly, his voice translated on time-delay into Charagan common.
“My friend has been attacked!”
“By whom? By what?”
Kibi turns his head and sees Aristus and Grey Wolf.
“Aristus! I was attacked by an assassin!” groans the dwarf. “Do you know anything about it?”
“No, of course not!” replies the gnome, affronted, but moving into the room and kneeling with Grey Wolf by Kibi’s side.
“No, I didn’t mean…” says Kibi.
“Are you going to be okay?” asks Grey Wolf?
“I could use some healing, but I’ll live,” says Kibi.
Aristus leaps to his feet. “There could be more attackers around. I’m going to go organize search parties.” He dashes out into the hallway.
Back in Kibi’s room the assassin still struggles in Step’s iron grip.
“You’re not going anywhere!” shouts the paladin angrily, as the two roll around atop the bed’s wreckage.
Dranko calls for ‘manacles and leg irons’ from his widemouth pouch. The leg irons will be impossible with all the thrashing, but Step has the assassin’s arms clamped in front of his body. With a deft maneuver, Dranko is able to manacle the assassin’s wrists together. It turns out to a moot point, as Aravis fires off a greater dispelling followed immediately by a single-target sonic chain-lightning.
Wa-BOOM!
What’s left of the bed shatters, the shutters are blown out of the window, and the assassin explodes. Flesh splatters everywhere, even out the open doorway into the hall. The manacles fall to the ground a second later, still with wrists bound inside them. In the silence that follows, Dranko picks up the manacles.
“Look, I disarmed him!”
* *
Morningstar heals Kibi’s wounds, but the dwarf still looks weak and feverish. She guesses poison, so Grey Wolf runs to his room and fetches the undead-bane sword that casts restoration once per day. Soon Kibi is back to full health.
Morningstar also manages to shoo everyone out of the dwarf’s blasted room. She steps gingerly across the threshold, trying not to step on the larger pieces of meat. The smell is horrific; the bits of the assassin are visibly decaying and the stench is nearly overpowering. She blankets the room with thought captures, but gets nothing from the assassin. The thoughts she picks up are mostly panicky ones from Kibi. It’s now obvious to all that the attacker was some kind of necromantic construct – maybe a flesh golem?
Flicker examines the lock on Kibi’s door and concludes that it was expertly picked. He searches for a few minutes in the fleshy muck and finds a set of thieves’ tools, as well as a rolled up piece of leather with two small glass vials. The vials contain a dark slimy substance that matches what he finds on the bloody dagger. Yep. Poison, all right.
Aristus’s search parties don’t turn up any sign of other assassins. After an hour or two, most of the other guests have gone back to bed, the excitement seemingly over. But Aravis decides to cast one more spell before going back to sleep. He casts vision, hoping to learn something of the assassin.
>> Aravis’s player: “Is it considered to be ‘at hand?’”
>>DM: “It’s kind of a rotting hand, but yes.”
He sits down next to the decaying wrist and hand still clamped inside Dranko’s manacles. As he casts the spell, a small portion of his life force escapes through his fingertips and settles into the assassin’s remnants. Everything around him grows white, and the vision begins.
The world fades back to near-darkness. He’s underground. All around him is a chittering, insect-like sound. Is it language? His sight adjusts to the dark. There are many strange creatures around him, ant-centaurs, the formians he has heard about. Their insectoid faces are inscrutable. They are looking down at strange books, and they are sculpting something.
The vision fades, and then refocuses on a different cavern in the dark. Another insect creature is reading from a cracked stone tablet, and chittering at a naked humanoid figure whose only features are human eyes jammed into the flesh-head.
The vision fades, but there is still more. Now Aravis sees a group of creatures, mostly humanoids of various types, and also a small intelligent lizard. There are maybe a dozen people altogether, some of whom he recognizes from the Inn. In his vision there’s a space among them, which they all avoid but don’t notice, as if there’s someone invisible in their midst. There’s a blue portal in front of this group, and a formian gestures to it, and the whole bunch moves through the portal.
Aravis’s eyes snap open; he finds himself lying on the ground. He sits up, blinks, and recites every detail of his vision to the others while it’s still fresh. The Company knows that every few weeks, the formians round up people that have stumbled into their territory and send through the Way that connects to the Inn’s Slice. But why would the formians want to kill Kibi? How did they find out about him, if divinations don’t cross the Ways, and the Way into the formian-controlled territory is always guarded? Grey Wolf, thinking about Kibi’s off-again, on-again excursion (back when he had been summoned), speculates that maybe there are prophecies about Kibi in any number of worlds.
They talk with Aristus, Gloriana and Mercury. The formians have never given them any trouble before. Their relationship with the ant-creatures is not exactly congenial, but there have never been hostilities, and the folk expelled from their Slices have always reported good treatment. While some in the Company contemplate a foray into the formian Slices, Ernie points out that it could upset the relationship between the insects and the Inn, which in turn could put more innocent people in jeopardy.
Morningstar admits right away to their hosts that she used thought captures in Kibi’s room after the attack, and Mercury is forgiving given the circumstances, though Gloriana shakes her head and says nothing.
“I’m sorry that our Inn was not secure,” says the centaur. “We’ve never had anything like this happen. Oh, our Slice has come under attack, but always through the Ways, overtly.”
“Do formians ever stay here, at the Inn?” asks Morningstar.
“The last time that happened, it was over six years ago,” says Mercury.
“It could be the Black Circle,” says Morningstar, thinking. “If they knew Kibi was prophesied to ruin their plans, they may have placed safeguards here against him.”
The next morning Dranko decides to have a chat with one of the people who came into the Slice with the assassin. He finds a peasant woman who looks about thirty, with her two-year-old son. He starts to talk and the woman babbles back at him in a foreign tongue, so Dranko casts a pair of comprehend language spells to expedite discussion.
“You understand me now?”
“Yes, yes!” says the woman.
“You came in with the others, from the place with the formians, right?”
The woman nods.
“How many came in with your group?”
“When they sent us through? Twelve, I think. I did not make careful count.”
“How long did the journey take?”
“We passed through four of the portals. Maybe… a week?” She scrunches up her face, trying to remember.
“What do you think the chances were that you had an invisible assassin with you the entire time?”
Dranko leans in as he asks the question. The two-year-old son in her arms doesn’t cry, and it occurs to Dranko that the kid could be much older than that.
“Invisible Assassin? The assassin was invisible? I heard about what happened! But no, I didn’t see anything…er… invisible.”
“Did you notice anything else odd?” asks Dranko.
“Yes! There was a small talking lizard in the group. Very odd, very odd!”
“Small talking lizard. Who’d he belong to?”
“He didn’t belong to anyone. He was a person, like you or me. And he could talk. If I understand correctly, he decided to go through the Way of No Return.”
“Huh. Fascinating. You know anything about how to fight Formians?”
“Fight them? Heavens no! I make sweaters.”
Dranko sighs.
…to be continued…
Last edited:
KidCthulhu
First Post
Uzumaki said:
Now that I think about it, Sagiro's game is generally better than a good buzz. You get silly, laugh a lot, do amazing things that you can't believe you even tried to do, all with no vomiting, hangovers or unpleasant social consequences. And it's free!
Well, ok, we pay for food. And PC seems to buy a lot of peeps.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
I was starting to wonder whether Kibi's vanishing off to other planes a few years ago might turn up here... it looks as if I'm not the only one that this might have occurred to.
I love the apparatus of (not)Kwalish making an appearance - a logical choice for attempting to navigate the ways.
I wonder if the powerful aged wizard has anything in his little book of divinations that would help in understanding something about the assassin? I guess that anything further than the vision has been blocked by the ways effect.
Cheers,
I love the apparatus of (not)Kwalish making an appearance - a logical choice for attempting to navigate the ways.
I wonder if the powerful aged wizard has anything in his little book of divinations that would help in understanding something about the assassin? I guess that anything further than the vision has been blocked by the ways effect.
Cheers,
Duncan Haldane
Explorer
Bump!
Phew. Finally caught up again.
How far is this last chapter from the in-game action?
And what level are the characters now? I assume the time spent at the inn making things and so on is levelling?
Oh, and one more question: Sagiro, have you read Neil Gaiman's Sandman? The inn reminds me of the one on the finally section of Sandman, where travellers stranded across different times gather.
Thanks Again, Sagiro and players, for making such an interesting story.
Duncan
Phew. Finally caught up again.
How far is this last chapter from the in-game action?
And what level are the characters now? I assume the time spent at the inn making things and so on is levelling?
Oh, and one more question: Sagiro, have you read Neil Gaiman's Sandman? The inn reminds me of the one on the finally section of Sandman, where travellers stranded across different times gather.
Thanks Again, Sagiro and players, for making such an interesting story.
Duncan
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Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Duncan Haldane said:
Hey there!
First, to answer Duncan's questions: The characters are now between 12th and 14th level. Yes, time spent at the Inn was "training time" for them. Judging by my tapes, I'm about 8 runs behind right now, soon to become 9, since we run again tomorrow. And yes, Neil Gaiman's "World's Edge" was a direct inspiration for the Eye of the Storm, and the centaur physician therein was an inspiration for Mercury. Nice catch... I try to steal from the best!
And while I'm here, have the next update.
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 216
Srapa
Aravis knocks on the door of Aristus Fuller’s basement laboratory. No one answers, but Aravis can hear sounds coming from inside, so he knocks again, louder. The noises stop.
“Wait outside for a minute!” calls Aristus. “Who is it?”
“Aravis.”
“Hold on, hold on!” shouts the gnome.
“No problem, I’ll wait.”
From inside the lab comes a furious cacophony of strange noises: clanking, clattering, a loud hiss of escaping steam, an otherworldly hydraulic sound. Then, after a few seconds of silence, a new noise. It’s a steady chunk-chunk-chunk, getting louder, as though something large and heavy is walking toward the door.
“All right! I just need to turn this, and adjust these levers, and…”
A metal claw comes smashing through the door, just missing Aravis’s head and sending wood splinters flying. It’s followed immediately by a high-pitched shriek of dismay.
“Oops! Stand back!”
Aravis has already done so. He watches as the claw tries to retract, but it’s stuck in the door. It shakes and wriggles, while Aristus curses and mutters from the other side. Suddenly the whole door is wrenched from its hinges, pulled free by a metal arm. Aravis peers through the now gaping doorway.
“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” Aristus is climbing out of his barrel-like machine and looking ruefully at the door. When he’s all the way out, the machine tips up, overbalanced by the wooden door dangling from one extended arm.
“Guess I’ll have to fix the door again,” says Aristus ruefully. “In theory I should be able to turn the handle with either front claw and open the door the proper way. It’s just these fiddly bits that are so.. so darned.. fiddly! What can I do for you?”
“I hear you have a scrying mirror,” says Aravis, unfazed. He’s seen stranger.
“Yeah. I’m borrowing Gloriana’s. What you want to scry?”
“I had a vision about the assassin. It was sent by a group of Formians, and I want to try to scry them.”
“You mean, scry them in the Slice where they are now? Not gonna work.”
“You’ve tried it?
“Not me personally, but there have been wizards who have tried it. You can’t scry across Slices. Sorry. You can still borrow the mirror if you want.”
Aravis figures it can’t hurt to try, so he takes it and wrestles it up the stairs.
“Don’t break it, or Gloriana will kill me!”
* *
In the days and weeks following, the Company makes numerous inquiries about the Formians. Ernie asks around about their military capabilities, but none of the current residents of the Inn have ever fought a Formian. There are stories about battles against them, and the moral of these stories is “don’t try it,” not because any individual Formian is too dangerous, but because of their numbers, and their ability to fight in groups with perfect coordination. Kibi is more interested in the motives of his would-be assassins, but on this subject no one has even the slightest idea. Even those who occasionally interact with them consider them alien, their thoughts opaque, inscrutable. Mercury and Gloriana opine that perhaps the Formians are enjoying the status quo within the Slices, and don’t want to see them dispersed. And if Kibi has something to do with the Slices, as the monks from Chaos imply…
Kibi also asks about the talking lizard that came through with the assassin, but no one has much to say about him, except that he apparently told great stories when he was drunk.
Training continues apace. The Company crafts magic items (including arrows and potions for the Inn’s general supply), helps train other Inn residents in fighting techniques, and takes turns at guarding the Ways in. Ernie helps make food, and Kibi helps make drink, and in all the party is very popular. Kibi keeps an alarm cast on his door, but there are no more attempts on his life. Aravis tries to scry the Formians, but as expected it doesn’t work across Slice boundaries.
The Company also learns that the translation magic some people enjoy comes from specific items. They are small discs worn around the neck on chains – someone in Het Branoi must have made dozens or hundreds of them long ago, an attempt to solve the communication problems inherent in the system. Since then they’ve become a kind of currency in the Slices. Chiswick had a store of them he picked up somewhere, but he has since sold or given away his supply, and he has no extras.
Another month passes before the next person comes looking for Kibi.
Half the Company is in a bit of the basement that Aristus is letting the Company use as a workshop, an area similar to the party’s setup in the Greenhouse. One of the guests working as a table-server pokes his head in.
“Kibilhathur? You have a visitor.”
Kibi stops what he’s doing and looks up.
“Are only its eyes showing?” the dwarf asks suspiciously.
“No. I mean yes… er, his whole face is showing, I mean.”
“Does it speak?”
“Of course,” answers the server, confused. “He asked for you by name. I don’t know his name, though he’s reptilian. A lizard-man, I think. He said: ‘I’m here for Kibilhathur Bimson.’ Should I tell him you’re here? Tell him you’re out?”
“I’d like to have my friends present when I talk to him. But tell him I’ll come to meet him soon.”
Step has been serving as Kibi's bodyguard since the assassination attempt, and he stands up quickly. Dranko offers to use magic to disguise himself as Kibi and meet the lizard man himself.
“That way I’ll take the first shot, if there is one,” says Dranko.
“No, thanks,” says Kibi. “You’ll just do something embarrassing and he’ll think it was me.”
“I was just making the offer,” grumbles Dranko.
“You could cast shield other, though, if you want to help.”
A flurry of spell-casting follows. Dranko casts some protective spells. Morningstar gets a bunch of them on a telepathic bond. Grey Wolf makes himself invisible, and also casts see invisibility on himself. Dranko cast detect magic right before he goes upstairs. Before Kibi and Step come up, the rest of the Company takes their places around the common room, ready to intervene if necessary. Dranko notes right away that nothing on the lizard man is magical, which of course makes him suspicious.
The lizard man seems normal enough. He’s short, not much more than five feet tall. His skin is dark green scales, and he wears a long robe of a similar color. He sits at a table near the center of the commons, drinking from a tall mug. When he sees Kibi he stares immediately, watching the dwarf intently. Kibi walks over, Step at his side.
“How do you do? You must be the visitor who asked for me.”
“Ahhh…. You are Kibilhathur Bimmmmmssssson. A pleasure to meet you at lasssssst.”
The lizard-man’s accent is sibilant and drawn out, and a little disturbing.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you too,” says Kibi affably. “What’s your name?”
“I am Sssssrapa,” answers the lizard-man.
“How do you know me? I’m sure we’ve never met.”
“I was sssssent to retrieve you.”
“Retrieve me?” Kibi’s eyebrows go up. Scree grinds two of his rocks together in agitation.
“Invite you to come back with me. To meet my masssster, the Lord of the Rosesssss.”
The name’s not ringing any bells.
“Why?” asks Kibi.
“Because my massssster assssked me to retrieve you. Beyond the demonssss, he said. And he gave me a figurine of you.”
“Ah, may I see it?”
Srapa reaches into a pouch on his belt. Ernie gets tense and grips his sword hilt at the next table over, but the lizard-man does pull out a figurine, made of wood. Like Omar’s, it looks just like Kibi, though it’s in a slightly different pose. It also has small painted grey rubble at its feet. Kibi convinces Srapa to lend it to him.
“Did your master make this for you, so you would know me?” asks Kibi.
“I don’t think he made it himssssself.”
“Oh. Does he have more like it?”
“It’s the only one I have sssseen.”
“So you came through the Demon Slices just to find me? I’m sorry. That must have been a rough journey.”
“Not as rough for me. I have wayssss to keep mysssself hidden. It will be rougher for you.”
Kibi frowns.
“So, um, you’re asking me to go through the Demon Slices, to meet some king I’ve never heard of, or met, for an unknown reason.”
If Srapa detects the skepticism, it doesn’t show.
“Yessss. He told me to ssssay, that he can tell you how we can all be free, but he needs you.”
“Huh. I seem to be hearing that a lot these days,” says Kibi under his breath.
“Really?” says Srapa, hearing him and suddenly sitting up straighter. “Who else wantssss you?”
Kibi pauses, thinking, and decides not to answer the question. After a few silent seconds, he says, “I have a group of friends with whom I travel.”
“Yessss. I was told to expect that. They may accompany you. The Lord of the Rosssses looks forward to sssseeing all of you, but you in particular.”
“How do we know if we can trust you? If we get permission from the owners here, could we cast truth spells on you, to make sure you’re being honest?”
“I do not know the rulesssss here, but such magicssss would not work on me. Nor would I allow it. I must ssssimply ask you to trusssst me. I have no ill will toward you, but it is very important that I ssssucceed in my mission.”
Srapa’s stare is unblinking, and a small forked tongue flickers in and out as he talks. Kibi shifts uncomfortably in his chair.
“Can you tell me more about this Lord of the Roses?” he asks.
“Ahhh… I do not know much. He is our masssster. He is very powerful. We cannot ssssee him. He issss as bright light when one lookssss at him.”
How unhelpful.
“Can I have a little while to think about it?” asks Kibi.
“Yessss, but not too long. I will assssk again tomorrow.”
Most of the Company are thinking the same thing at this point. Who is Srapa to give them a timetable? Is that some kind of a threat?
“What would happen if I decide to say no?” Kibi asks.
“That would be unfortunate.”
Now that’s a threat!
“If you are content to live out the resssst of your life ssssstuck in this prison…” continues Srapa.
“If you were to, for example, attack me,” Kibi interrupts, “I wouldn’t be able to do whatever it is you need me to…”
“I will not attack you!” says Srapa. “You are too important. I will have to convincssse you.”
Kibi sighs. “I’m amenable to reason. But I’ll need something more than just you asking me to take this all on faith.”
“You should discusssss it with your friendssss. I do not wish to compel you, againsssst your will. I hope you will come with me because it’s the right thing to do. Sssso that you will sssspeak with the Lord of the Rosssses.”
Srapa looks at though he’s done with the conversation for now, but as usual Kibi can’t stop trying to wring out every drop of information he can.
“Back there, where the Lord of the Roses is, is everyone like you? Reptilian?”
“No, no. There are all kindsss of people. Like here. Eventually people find their way to his casssstle, and he protectssss them.”
“This castle,” says Kibi. “It’s on the ground, right. It’s not some kind of floating thing up in the clouds or anything?”
“There’s nothing on the outsssside of it. It is it’s own Sssslice.”
“Does the Lord of the Roses protect people in other Slices, too?” asks Kibi.
“He protectssss those who come to him. He does not leave the casssstle. But the people who find him, they are happy, because they find that they are ssssafe.”
“Are they free to leave?”
“Yessss, of course. But they do not leave, because they ssssee that he is wise, and good.”
Over the mind-link, Morningstar thinks, “He didn’t send an assassin. He started out talking instead of stabbing. That’s promising.”
“He wants Kibi alive and not dead,” thinks Aravis. “That doesn’t mean he’s any better.”
“How did you know to find me here?” asks Kibi.
“The Lord of the Rosssses told me you would be here.”
“Well, how did he know?”
“I don’t know. He knows many thingsssss.”
* *
Later that night the Company is crowded into Morningstar’s room, discussing their options. Only Kibi and One Certain Step aren’t there -- they’re in Kibi’s room, where the dwarf is casting Legend Lore on the wooden statuette. Through mundane expertise and know age spells the party has concluded that the two statuettes were made by the same person a couple hundred years ago, but twenty-nine years apart. Srapa’s wooden one is older, but Omar’s is of higher quality, implying that the sculptor got better with age.
After half and hour of casting, Kibi’s head snaps up and he speaks aloud the results of the spell:
Carved by a madman who once was king. He did not understand the Eye. He wanders now the maze of his own making, littering his creation with the image of his savior. It is all he has left. A hope that his mind knows not, though it is burned there.
He and Step join the others, who have been talking among themselves about which of the three likely ways they might go when they finish training. They can go through Chaos to find the monks who sent the letter, or they can go with Srapa to meet the Lord of the Roses, or they can try their luck with the “Gate of No Return.”
Kibi shares the results of his spell with the others.
“So I guess that the guy who created this place is leaving little carvings of me,” says Kibi in conclusion.
“Because you’re the key to undoing this,” says Grey Wolf.
“He’s the canary,” says Morningstar, referring to the original prophecy from the Eyes of Moirel.
“And his creation broke him,” says Ernie.
There’s a few minutes of meandering speculation, ranging from talk on old prophecies, to the nature and motives of the “madman,” to guesses as to how he’s scattering statuettes of Kibi.
“Just when you thought this couldn’t possibly get more complicated,” sighs Grey Wolf during a lull.
“Now you understand the world’s desire to kick us in the shins,” says Ernie.
“I think my shins have been kicked too many times.,” says Grey Wolf. “I’m starting not to feel it.”
“I did notice you haven’t said ‘we’re doomed’ in a long time,” says Ernie.
“I still think we should go through the Gate of No Return,” says Aravis.
“But it’s the only place from where we haven’t gotten a message saying ‘come here Kibilhathur!’” says Ernie.
“Exactly!” answers Aravis.
“The problem with that is, if we’re wrong, that sure leaves us out in the middle of nowhere,” says Kibi. “And the monks did send me that nice letter, and a magic item, too.”
“And I’d rather deal with Chaos than the Demon Slices,” says Dranko.
The Company breaks for dinner and some more information gathering, but it’s fruitless. No one at the Inn has heard stories about a crazy guy spewing prophecy, or (except for Srapa) have heard of the Lord of the Roses. Back upstairs later than evening, the debate continues.
“I say ‘first come, first served,’” says Dranko, continuing his push for Chaos.
“The woman from Chaos wasn’t trustworthy,” says Step, “but I don’t trust the lizard-man either.”
“At least we’d have a guide, though, if we go with Srapa,” says Morningstar. “In the Chaos, we’d be on our own.”
“Chaos scares me less than Demons,” says Dranko.
“Let me read that letter from Chaos again,” says Morningstar. She scans it, and stops when she gets to a certain phrase.
“'Meditations and Prayers,' say the monks. Our spells to contact our Gods don’t work. But theirs do? Who are they praying to? They’re getting in touch with somebody. This place was created by the Black Circle. So who’s talking back?”
“And what are Slaad?” asks Kibi.
“I think Slaad are big frogs,” says Aravis.
“How tough can a big frog be?” asks Dranko.
“How tough could a big turtle be?” says Morningstar.
“That’s an awfully good point,” says Dranko. “Anyhow, we don’t have to decide now,” says Dranko. “We should finish training. In the next two weeks, we may get three more offers!”
* *
It’s the next morning. To test Srapa’s failure to detect as magic, Kibi casts magic mouth on the statuette before giving it back to Srapa. Dranko casts detect magic just before walking in. The party approaches Srapa in a group, Kibi and Step out front. The lizard-man is sitting at the same table as before, an implacable expression on his scaly face.
“Ah! Have you made your decsssision?” asks Srapa as the dwarf sits down.
“Kind of. We’re in the middle of training, and we have two weeks left before we’re ready to journey.”
“But in two weekssss you will come with me?”
“Well, we decided that since we have to wait here for two weeks, we don’t have to decide just now.”
Srapa pauses, thinking. At least, Kibi thinks he’s thinking.
“I will give you two weekssss.”
“Thank you. Oh, and here’s your statue back.”
Srapa takes the statue, and to Dranko, the magic immediately disappears.
“Would you have any way of protecting us, if we cross the Demon Slices?” asks Kibi.
“I have magicssss, but I do not know the mindssss of demonssss. I hid from them. I have my wayssss.”
His forked tongue flicks in and out of his mouth.
“Two weekssss. I will not wait longer. The Lord of the Roses expressed a need for hasssste.”
“How long has the Lord of the Roses been waiting?” asks Dranko.
“I don’t know,” admits Srapa.
“I bet it’s been a very long time,” says Dranko. “So two weeks, not a big deal. We’ve got other offers. Why should we go with you instead of one of the others?”
“Other offers? Explain!” For the first time, Srapa sounds upset.
“You want us to go with you. Other people want us to go with them,” says Dranko.
“I would not trusssst their motives,” says Srapa. Grey Wolf snorts.
“And why should we trust yours?” asks Kibi.
“Because the Lord of the Rosssses is good,” says Srapa, either ignoring or unaware of his own circular logic.
“Ok, that’s great,” says Dranko, “and that’s what you say, but we don’t know him, so we can’t tell. Maybe he’s good at eating people. We just don’t know.”
Srapa makes a strange noise. Laughter? Exasperation?
“He doessss not eat people,” he says.
“How many days did it take you to get here?” asks Dranko.
“I traveled for weeksssss, but I went sssslowly.”
“Well, I was thinking that since we’ll be here for a while, you could pop back there and bring him here in person.”
“He does not leave his casssstle,” says Srapa.
“How come?”
“I don’t know. But it is proper that you come with me,” says Srapa.
“Well, thanks for asking,” says Dranko. “We’ll let you know in a couple of weeks. But let me ask you one more thing. If we decide not to come with you, what are the consequences of that?”
“I don’t know,” says Srapa again.
“What would you guess?” prompts Dranko.
“I know that the Lord of the Rosssses would be dissssappointed if I came back without Kibilhathur Bimmmssssson.”
“Would you decide to take him by force?” asks Dranko, leaning in.
“I would have to conssssider. But I do not wish to incur his, or your, enmity…”
“That would certainly be a side effect,” mutters Grey Wolf under his breath,
“…so I would be inclined not to,” Srapa finishes.
* *
The next two weeks pass quickly. The Company finishes up their training, puts some final touches on magic items and scribed spells, and engages in yet more debate about where they’ll go next. Many in the party are dubious about going to either the Chaos or through the Demon Slices with Srapa. Aravis and Ernie wonder aloud why, if Kibi is so darned important, the monks or this Lord of the Roses person don’t come to them.
“It’s the classic adventure,” says Ernie. “With Kibi at the end of it. They should have to go on a long quest through terrible perils to reach their ultimate goal…” He gestures toward Kibi, and then adds, “…and perhaps learn a little something about themselves along the way.” *
Kibi, though, just wants to go.
“And if we just go somewhere, it will be harder for assassins to track us.”
“Another reason to go through the Gate of No Return,” says Aravis.
The night before Srapa’s deadline, the Company holds a vote.
Dranko votes to avoid demons if at all possible, and chooses the Chaos. One Certain Step has changed his mind, and now also prefers the Chaos.
“I don’t trust the lizard-man,” he explains.
“I vote Chaos,” says Ernie. “Like Kibi says, they sent us a very nice letter.”
Aravis and Grey Wolf, not trusting either place, both vote for the Gate of No Return.
Morningstar lets out a frustrated breath when it’s her turn to vote. “It’s a waste of time. If Kibi’s so important, they’d have come here. I abstain.”
Flicker is the only person who votes to go with Srapa. Snokas points at Kibi. “I think we should do what he wants to do. His life is more at stake than ours.”
Morningstar looks at Snokas, nodding in approval. “I change my abstention to that,” she says. “What Kibi decides, I’ll vote.”
Which leaves the deciding vote in Kibi’s hands
“So, given that we don’t know much about either, the Chaos monks at least promised me information; the Lord of the Roses just says that he needs me. So I vote Chaos.” (Scree agrees, though he’s worried that there may be parts of Chaos which don’t have any Earth element.)
Aravis thinks they should just leave without telling Srapa they’re going, but Ernie insists they should be polite and tell the lizard-man their decision. Everyone is worried about Srapa, and if they’ll have to fight him when they decline his offer. Their inability to detect magic on him is troublesome. But with their decision made, they drift back to their own rooms one by one.
Flicker, who does much of his training at night, grabs his equipment and his short sword and heads out into the hall after the others are asleep. Aristus is usually up late, and Flicker wants to borrow one of his tools, thinking to try it out as a lock-picking device. He moves down the hall toward the stairs to the commons, and almost bumps into a human woman coming the other way.
“You’re Flicker, aren’t you?” asks the woman in a quiet voice, and smiling shyly.
“That’s me,” says the halfling.
“I hear you have a good eye for valuables,” says the woman, digging into a small pouch at her side.
“I might,” says Flicker, grinning. “Want me to appraise something for you?”
“Yes, I would,” says the woman. “It’s a gem, a sapphire I found in a Slice near my home. I think it’s valuable, but I’m not sure if it’s a fake or not. If you can give me an accurate estimation, I’ll let you have some of the profits if I can find a buyer.”
“Let me take a look,” says Flicker. The woman hands him the sapphire. He pulls out a magnifying lens and takes a good look.
The woman smiles appreciatively.
* *
The next morning the party gathers in Ernie’s room for the ritual casting of preparatory spells. Part of the plan is to make Aravis magically look like Kibi, in case Srapa tries anything. But about half way through their casting, they realize that Flicker is not with them. He’s probably off training – he often comes home at mid-morning and sleeps until lunch. But Grey Wolf has a feeling in his gut (no, not that one).
“Why do I think our lizard friend has kidnapped Flicker?” he says. To put his mind at ease, Morningstar casts a sending to the halfling.
There’s no answer.
Dranko and Snokas go to his room, expecting to find that he’s still sleeping, but the room is empty. Most of the stuff he takes out for training isn’t there, and there’s no sign of a struggle.
“Sh*t!,” exclaims Morningstar when the half-orcs come back. He could be asleep somewhere else, or unconscious, or dead, or in another Slice – there are no good options.
“If he was kidnapped, lizard-guy would have to have left by one of the Ways out,” says Dranko. “I’ll check ‘em out.”
After Dranko gets put in a telepathic bond with Morningstar and Kibi, he and Snokas dash downstairs. To Dranko’s great surprise, Srapa is sitting at his table, looking as calm as ever.
“Hey, you seen the little guy?” asks Dranko, approaching Srapa’s table.
“Yesssss,” answers Srapa with a flick of the tongue.
“Where?” Dranko demands.
“I have him sssssafe,” says Srapa.
“Oh, you do, huh? You made the wrong decision, my friend.”
“No,” says Srapa earnestly. “Now that I have your friend, you will come with me to make sure he sssstays ssssafe.”
“Noooooo,” says Dranko slowly. “Now that you have our friend, we’re not coming with you.”
Because he can’t resist, Dranko adds, “We were going to, but now…”
“You assssked what I would do if you were to ssssay no to me,” says Srapa, still sitting. “I thought about it. I decssssided to make sure that you wouldn’t.”
…to be continued…
* This last utterance by Ernie caused the entire table to collapse into laughter for almost a full minute.
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