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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 2252100" data-attributes="member: 726">I'm glad my story inspires such erudite commentary.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />A short teaserrific post:Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 230A Snowball's Chance in the AbyssThe wind isn’t blowing as strongly today as yesterday, but the air is so cold that their vaporous forms are sluggish and slower than normal.  Beats walking, though. Morningstar leads, following today’s first find the path while the rest of the party follows her.  At two hundred feet in the air they can see the flat icy landscape for a good distance – snow-covered tundra, frozen boulders, roaming packs of ice-demons.  Only once that morning do they land, just long enough for Morningstar to cast a second find the path when the first one runs out.    Half-way through the second one they finally spot the hoped-for shimmer of blue light on the ground.  As they get closer, it resolves into two glowing blue doorways, one right next to the other.   A thorough search reveals a large, monstrous footprint in the snow, its owner leaving this frigid Slice, heading into one of the two Ways. There is no sign of foot-traffic headed into or out of the other one.  Aravis, who hasn’t tried using the Crosser’ Maze to any advantage since the flight from the Vree’s monastery, decides to do so now.  After a warning to the others, he focuses his thoughts on the artifact in his head and quickly finds himself perched on the metaphorical window-ledge between the Inner Maze and the Outer Maze.  Back in the Demon Slice, his body falls into the snow, Pewter resting on the shoulder in case he needs to drive his master in an emergency.  Aravis ignores the world of the Inner Maze (a stray thought:  has King Vhadish XXIII forgotten him?)  and focuses his attention on the model of the cosmos.  As before, the view of Het Branoi is much different to look at than that of the “normal” universe.  The whole of creation seems to be the single Slice he’s in, and it takes tremendous effort to get a sense of what’s beyond, but again as before, he manages to get a sense of the Slices adjacent to his own.  One of these two Ways, he sees, leads to a large Slice, clearly more Abyss, with many life-forces therein.  The other leads to a very small Slice, probably not in the Abyss, and with no living beings at all.Learning that much drains Aravis of mental wherewithal; he finds himself back in his body, lying in the snow with Pewter licking his face.   He gets up, dusts of the snow, and shares his findings.  The footprint, not surprisingly, heads into the larger of the two Slices.  “We should check out the smaller one first,” says Dranko.  “After all, look how useful that woman’s bedroom turned out to be.”The others agree.  Ernie volunteers to scout, by the usual rope-around-the-waist method, and with a ten-Abernathy count.   He jumps through, endures the seconds of pulling blackness, and emerges into... more blackness.   It’s completely dark, though he notices at once that the ground is solid stone, not crunchy snow.   All is quiet.  He fishes a coin from his pocket enchanted with continual flame and looks around for a few seconds before the others tug the rope.  “I got a piece of the house,” he announces to the others.  “It’s a store-room, with that blue-diamond pattern on the walls.  It’s really dark.  Morningstar should go first and get some thought captures.”“Watch out,” warns Flicker.  “Whatever horrible monster that’s lurking in there and saw Ernie, now it’s waiting to pounce on whoever goes through next.”Thus admonished, Morningstar pops into the storeroom Slice.  Her keen senses tell her that the room is large – certainly more than twenty feet on a side – and full of large stacked objects.   She pauses for a minute to listen; it’s perfectly silent.  Then she casts five thought captures.Capture #1 is a thought of someone well and truly fed up with excessive manual labor.Capture #2 is a clearer thought, that they really ought to procure a larger wheelbarrow.Capture #3 is the most interesting.  Morningstar gleans a specific thought:  “I never want to be in the room again when those two get into a fight.  I thought that Clouds and Words were going to kill each other.”Capture #4 is also specific, though more mundane:  “I’m not sure there are enough bricks left in this storeroom.”Capture #5 is a general thought of pain, suffered by someone who has just pulled a muscle lifting something heavy.Morningstar pops back out and shares the results with the others.  Some suspicions have now essentially been confirmed.  “Words” is almost certainly “Seven Dark Words,” whose home, according to the Eye Prophecy, is Het Branoi.  And given that “Clouds” is a person whom a) the Mad Sculptor holds in deep contempt, and b) apparently quarrels seriously with a person named “Words,” it is now clearer than ever that Seven Dark Words and the Mad Sculptor are the same person.   It’s not a huge surprise, but it’s always nice to have corroborating evidence.  Snokas and One Certain Step agree to stand watch while the others go in to search the storeroom.  (That way, the party won’t be surprised by anything waiting outside when they return.)  Once inside the rest of the party breaks out lanterns and gives the place a thorough combing.It’s a pretty large place – a 40’ x 50’ chamber supported by wooden columns every ten feet or so.  There are wooden crates, some large trunks, and piles of building materials including many black obsidian bricks, nearly identical to those used in the Mokad’s  ritual room back in Kallor.  Grey Wolf fires off a detect magic, and the only things registering are a dozen thin metal hoops, the size of hoola-hoops, glowing faintly with enchantment.  Flicker looks at them and declares in amazement they’re made of adamantium.“Whoa.  It must have been a royal pain to make perfect hoops out of the stuff.  Seems like a waste.”Aravis and Dranko launch into a brief digression about how, while these hoops might have no obvious use, it would be funny to “link” two of them together somehow.  Aravis suggests it could work with a careful use of dimension door. “This is what we’ve come to,” says Ernie.  “you guys are talking about using magic to do... to do magic tricks!”“It doesn’t sound so wrong when you put it like that,” says Flicker.  Most of the storeroom is filled with mundane building materials: planks, bricks, tools, slabs.  The most valuable item is a huge chest of perfect steel nails.  There’s also a crate full of green glass slabs (of varying sizes) of the same sort that were used in applications of stasis-magic, at the Black Circle bestiary visited by the Company years ago.  While Flicker takes inventory, Dranko goes out to make sure Step and Snokas are all right.  Both of them are still standing an uneventful watch.“You can come in if you want, and I’ll stand guard,” Dranko offers.“No, no, it’s fine,” says Snokas.  “Really.  I’m having a lot of fun out here.”Step stifles a laugh. “You know,” says Dranko just before he hops back through the Way,  “if you were being sarcastic, you just blew your chance.”  Snokas grins back at him.Scree discovers that the Slice ends at the walls and floor, and that there are no secret or hidden doors out.  So, having discovered that there’s nothing of particular interest here, Dranko decides there’s only one thing left to do before leaving and trying the second Way.  He spells out “Black Circle Suxks” (sic) on the floor with obsidian bricks.Aravis shakes his head.  “It’s one thing to provoke the Black Circle.  It’s another to make them think we’re stupid.”“It’s part of the plan to make them underestimate us,” says Flicker.* *Ernie again volunteers to be the scout.   Rope tied around his waist, he hops through.His first impression is:  red.  The light is red.  The ground is a mars-like red stone.   The air feels red.  Hot.  Dry.  Sulfurous.  The Abyssal nature makes his skin crawl.  The ground is pitted with shallow craters, varying is size from six inches to six feet in diameter.  A few dozen feet away is a small fissure in the ground, ten feet long and a foot wide.  Ten seconds later he feels the tug and returns to the others.   “It looks nasty,” he reports.  “Red rocks, red light.  Even with the protection spell up it felt warm, so it must be way over 100 degrees in there.   It still feels icky, though I didn’t see anyone.”So everyone steps through the Way,  Dranko scooping up a last handful of snow as he leaves.   It starts to melt the moment he arrives.   Kibi arrives a few seconds later and is quicker on the draw; having grabbed his own snowball he throws a strike at Dranko’s face.  Dranko tries to return fire but his snowball has mostly melted and so is ineffectual.Ah, the zany hijinks.  Pity that it gets interrupted by attacking demons....to be continued...</blockquote>

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