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

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BoldItalic" data-source="post: 7211244" data-attributes="member: 6777052">"My name is Will. I am your mentor." "Why?" "You have taken the first step on the way. The way that we call The Way. Others have trodden that path before you, and more will follow after you, but we are few in numbers and we do not like to see those who set out on The Way stumble and fall by the wayside for lack of a helping hand." "What do you want me to do?" "I want you to make your own way along The Way. There is one Way but there are many ways to follow it." "You've lost me again." "Try to tell me what you did with your mind, just then. Put it into words. Don't worry about getting it exactly right, just tell it in your own way." "Well, I stepped outside myself, with my mind. And I could see other people's minds." "Good. That "stepping outside", we call Detachment. Even for those who have the innate capability, it often does not appear until a time of great stress, when the mind is compelled to force its way through the veil. This is what happened to you. You have always been capable of Detachment, Tasha, but you just didn't know it. I want you to practice doing it over the next few days. Now that you have experienced it, you will find it gets easier. And practice Reattachment too, of course. You need to be able to get back into your own body! With that, Tasha felt the contact with her mentor fade but she knew he would return when the time was right.Mirzak had collapsed on the floor, writhing and convulsing, and uttering inarticulate cries. Goatee was non-plussed. "What did I say?" he asked. "He said something about walking the staves, which made no sense, and then had some sort of seizure." He looked to Adeliva for help and she looked to him. Neither of them knew what to do."Is it heatstroke?" wondered Albert, "Should we throw a bucket of water over him?""There's never a cleric around when you need one," remarked Footnote, unhelpfully.Tasha shifted her halberd on her shoulder. She had Reattached. "I could perform a cephalectomy," she offered laughingly, "to put him out of his misery?" She realised as she said this, that she sounded callous but she was back in her body and her glands were still reacting emotionally to the remark about slaves. She had to be careful, she thought; she wasn't at all sure that she wanted the others to guess what she had done; technically, she had struck a blow without rolling initiative but did it count if you were only doing it with your mind? Anyway, without a DM, who's going to make a ruling? She realised, even as this thought occurred to her, that she had made some sort of alignment shift towards Neutral and she felt she needed time to reflect on that."I don't think that's a very nice suggestion, Tasha," said Adeliva reprovingly, "even as a joke." Then she pulled the requisition pad out of her pack. "I could put in for a healing potion but I don't know what sort to ask for. Any ideas?"Goatee consulted a medical manual, thumbing through the index to try to find something that matched the symptoms. "I think he's got rabies," was the nearest he could come up with. "We mustn't let him bite us, or we'll catch it too." They all backed away from the still-convulsed Mirzak. "It's apparently incurable and death is inevitable within days," added Goatee."Any way we can get a cleric here?" wondered Albert. "Do they even have clerics in this world? Or do people just die a lot? Look, you lot wait here and I'll explore the tower to see if there is anything useful up there. He might have some healing stuff put by.""Wait, there is something," mumbled Footnote, awkwardly shuffling his hoof, "I can do Lesser Restoration but I don't know if it will do much good. If it is something like rabies, it might work, though, it does cure diseases." He looked at Tasha. "Up to you, boss. Do you want me to try?""Yes, anything," Tasha said, dissembling madly. She knew perfectly well that it wouldn't restore a mind that was slashed to pieces but she didn't want anyone to guess that she knew.Footnote began to play an eerie melody and pace out a complex stamping dance. It was his way of weaving magic. At first, it seemed to work and Mirzak grew quiet but as Footnote went on, his tune was increasingly drowned out by the howling of a wind from outside the window. A mighty sandstorm was brewing up and twisting vortices of sand began to fling themselves into the chamber, swirling about and stinging their unguarded faces. "STOP!" cried Goatee, who realised what was happening. "Your magic is unstabilising this crazy world!"Just then, there was a commotion on the stairs below and the ferry-woman came rushing in. "We must leave! NOW!" she cried, "We must run before the storm or my ship will be sunk beneath the sand within minutes!" At that moment, she spotted Mirzak lying at their feet and saw instantly what the situation was, or at least what it looked like. "Bring him with us! There is no time!"The sands of time are indeed running out for Mirzak. Does he survive? Do we want him to? Does the sand ship escape the storm? And who is the mysterious Will? Is he a powerful psychic, or is it all in Tasha's deranged imagination? Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting installment!</blockquote>

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