Seren, you head off into the marketplace of Wislayn, searching for a place to trade out your cyphers for something more suitable for your travels, or maybe just shins. It'll depend on what catches your fancy. There are stalls here that are outfitting mercenaries for their trips across the Sheer, selling rations, exploration gear (rope, light globes, sleeping bags, and the like), and similar things. Several places sell some the fantastical costume similar to what the Augurs wear, embroidered in strands of light and shimmering color that seem to flow and shape according to the wearer's thoughts. Though it's apparent, watching a few actual Augurs, that these clothes are not of native make, and it seems to take a great deal of practice to wear them. At least, so it seems, as you presume no one wants their new set of clothes to refuse to unfold.
A group of mutants, the frontman of whom is a red-skinned man whose arms are long, boneless, and covered with fluffy pink feathers, hawk a variety of scavenged parts and numenera. Much of it seems to be the sort better suited for repair of what is broken - a variety of wires, struts, small batteries, widgits, gigits, and whatsits that could be used to patch together ailing machinery.
Furniture formed of synth and twisted wood is at another booth made of the same material, and the deadly shine of metal, synth, and ceramic winks in a booth dedicated to the sale of weaponry and armor called the Deadly Edge.
Exotic spices, fruit, grain, and other foods are being hawked at several other stalls, small fuzzy balls with wide, limpet eyes and little crystals pressed into them are being sold as pets at a booth run by what seems to be a three-year-old human girl, a consortium of scholarly-sorts are looking over various papers and bits of numenera other people bring to them, and, of course, aneen are being sold by Kolos Githian down at one end of the market.
You ask around as you peruse about where Jastor Kannop could be found. It takes a little time, as you pause to press the flesh and be friendly, but eventually learn that Jastor is often found in the Violet Sun eatery at this time of day. It's claim to fame is that all the food is purple. Making your way there, you find the Violet Sun lives up to its name, taking full advantage of Wislayn's natural purple coloring to enhance its décor. There are dishes with purple meat, purple vegetables, and various varieties of purple fruit. There are juices or milk to drink, also purple. The bread is a particularly vibrant shade of purple. The pie gives off a purple aroma. The steam above the hot beverages is purple. The smoke given off by the grilling meat is purple.
"Eating? Drinking?" a young man asks you, wiping his hands on a purple rag. Oddly enough, aside from the rag, and clothes, the only thing purple about the man is his freckles. He gestures to tables and chairs seemingly made of the same purple crystal as the walls of Wislayn. "It's two shins for a full meal, one shin for either food or drink on its own. A discount if you have anything purple to give."
There is a very muscular man happily enjoying an extremely large purple steak, washing it down with purple milk, a group of three assorted scholarly types looking at bowls of purple soup, salad, and bread with extreme dubiousness, and a Augur with a large, elegant silver-and-blue orb hovering next to him trying several different glasses of purple wine. Ah, that would be Jastor. There probably aren't two Augurs with a person-sized orb following them about.
--
Xaion, you look about the marketplace and stores, seeing much of what Seren saw, trying to find a place where the written word is prized.
You see a few places where one hunting for a quiet(er) place to eat or converse: the Yellowjacket tea room (which is fuzzy inside, outside, and on all surfaces, including the teacups and saucers), Klavin's (a tavern favored by drovers looking for a quiet drink), or the Violet Sun (a small eatery where all the food is purple).
You also learn the best place to stay for the night for less money in Wislayn is Common Ground, a rooming house that provides neat little slots in the walls for people to rent by the evening. It includes a run under a sonic de-grimer and a cup of nutritious brew for a meal with your stay, all for a shin. There are much more luxurious options, of course, Common Ground is just supposed to be the best bargain for a traveler.
One storefront arrests your gaze, a shimmering haze of words in dozens of different tongues seeming to serve as a door. Inside are books, but books in so many different mediums, you aren't certain you recognize them all. Some are scrolls, others flat pages bound along one edge, some dance across a plane of glass, some speak into one's ear, some are contained in an injection, some are poured onto the body, some are meant to be eaten or drunk! Some must be painted on the skin, others are inhaled in a mist, others are a powder to be throw into a fire and read in the smoke. Some project onto the user's eyes, some project for all to see in a mile's radius, some apparently can only be accessed in dreams. The name of the place is Vocum. The proprietor is an androgynous being with words seemingly holding all the parts of the body in place. A couple other scholars are perusing the shelves, a lattimor with lenses of crystal implanted down his arms, and a bald woman with faint blue tattoos that glow, looking like a map, all over her body, visible through the translucent sheath she wears.
-------
For all of you, even those who haven't decided where to go yet...
The purple light of Wislayn seems to grow bright, then suddenly fade, and with the fading comes a new vision before your eyes. You've seen something like this before, felt it before, and had perhaps wondered if you'd ever feel it again.
The inverted, hovering mountain haunts the far distance, but the glinting city at its base (or rather, point) seems marginally closer now. You see a string of figures along the route that goes there, some closer, some farther, some alone, some in groups. Some solid and real, others ghostly and fragile, wearing antique clothing as if they had come from another time.
You are not the first. You know this in your heart.
You will not be the last. It is broken, time is broken.
But you are the now.
Abruptly you are flying along the route, past ancient, massive, broken numenera, past cities of tall and handsome people, their faces curiously vacant, holding their sophisticated devices with an air of bewilderment. Suddenly you are there before the city, a city of staggering raw newness cheek-by-jowl of brittle antiquity, with ragged bolts of energy crackling through its streets. The mountain looms, hovers, and its point is descending somewhere in the city, as if it is the only thing keeping it from completely flying apart...
Then you are back again, your eyes your own once more, seemingly little time having passed.
Also, spending XP on a new Esotery (Scan), and a boost to Intellect Edge.)
