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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CrazyGothBard" data-source="post: 1019574" data-attributes="member: 12311">New toys for the boys, and a disturbed hermit.A week later the group was ready to go.  Cassra, Wren & Shani were actually ready after the first day, despite Wren making a highly debatable trade of a Keen dagger for a Stormbrand spear of lesser focused magic.  They expected Skyr to launch a withering tirade at the Sauran who was constantly in debt due to the cards that the Deck had dealt him.  Instead, Skyr was busy for an entire week in the artisans’ district.  Cassra dictated a Sending demanding the bard’s attendance at breakfast on the seventh day, and he responded by asked Shani to pack for him (the only surprising part of this request was that the bard didn’t come up with a dubious reason for it).Wren and the girls were sitting in a tavern when Skyr walked in. “What happened to your face?” asked Wren, somewhat alarmed.Skyr ran his fingers across his cheeks self-consciously. “Did I cut myself shaving?”“No, you twit!” snapped Wren. “What are those black things over your eyes?”“Oh, these!” Skyr grinned.  “They’re my new invention!  I call them sunglasses.  I look pretty cool, hey?”The bard began posing to show off his new accessory.  Shani smiled appreciatively, but didn’t say anything.  Wren looked from a couple of different angles in a typically Sauran fashion, then grunted as non-committally as he could – the bard did look rather stylish.  Cassra scanned the sunglasses magically, then nodded.  “Very impressive.  Charm spell, and something else as well.  Where did you get the components?”Skyr took the glasses off.  “Mithral frames, taken from that golem we fought in Martek’s tomb.  The lenses I took from the edge of the Sea of Glass back in the Desert of Desolation.  That other magical effect you noticed, well…let’s try it out.  Pretend I’m a total poser and cast Ray of Enfeeblement at me – you can do that, right?”“I don’t have to pretend,” said Cassra dryly.“Right then.  Now I just say the magic word,” Skyr put a hand over his mouth and mumbled something, then continued.  “And now you do it.”Cassra cast the spell at Skyr.  The sunglasses glowed brightly for a second.  Cassra stared. “You’re immune!”Skyr grinned again. “Like I said, pretty cool, hey?”Wren grunted.  “I overheard your magic word.  Is there any significance to the word Rayban?”Skyr shook his head.  “Nah, it just sounded good at the time.”After breakfast, the group formulated their plans.  They took a private room at the tavern, then Skyr sanctified a rather ornate bowl of water, and scried the mountain range using the Archmage’s map as a focus.  There were six locations marked on the map, spread out over the mountain range.  Each was an entrance to caves in the region.  The first location showed a large cave inhabited by a small clan of frost giants.  The second  showed a rather unkempt old man singing to himself and scrawling words on the wall of his smallish cave.  The third view was of a high pass with a crevice to one side, and with a pair of nesting wyverns in close proximity.  Next was a series of shallow caves and recesses in a valley, which were occupied by primitive tribesmen.  The fifth scrying was a bit confusing for Skyr – he momentarily got the impression he was on a ship, then realised he was looking down from above a Freyan mistship, crewed by an assortment of goblins, bugbears and trolls.  Skyr tried to get a better look at the scene, moving around to view it from different angles but accidentally bumped the bowl, spilling the water and losing the opportunity to scry upon the last potential entrance to the caves.“So, what do we do now?” asked Wren.“Let’s go visit the old man,” replied Skyr.  “He’d probably welcome a bit of conversation.”Cassra scoffed at the suggestion. “The last old man we met was a gibbering idiot who nearly got us all killed…twice!”“That gibbering idiot also guided us to the Tomb of the Lizard King,” countered Skyr.  “Occasionally you have to trust people like that.”“Yes…occasionally,” said Shani with the hint of a smile.The hermit was busy meditating in his cave when his extra-sensory perceptions noted the sudden arrival of seven minds at close range.  Four were sentient humanoids, two were magically aware animals (an otter and a frog), and the last was a dragon.  The hermit quickly scanned their motivations – all except one were basically good, and the dragon was thankfully part of the majority.  The hermit focused his psionic powers upon the exception to the rule, and found an intriguingly complex mind, able to formulate intricate plans at a moment’s notice, then discard them just as quickly.  A person who could off-handedly betray the trust of close friends in the short term because he had unshakeable confidence in his ability to redeem himself.  A romantic bard who was conflicted between guilt over a past affair, and the looming potential of a new one.  This was going to be a tiresome morning, thought the hermit, as he began to hear the approach of his visitors.“Hey you!  Wise old man!  How’re you doing?” came Skyr’s greeting.The old man looked startled.  “Spare me!  I have nothing of value, and barely enough food to last you for a day.”The tension in the air vanished.  The old man could sense that any susspicions the adventurers had about him were gone.  The bard who was the slightly intriguing leader showed his open palms and grinned. “No, it’s alright.  We’re just here to talk.  You look like a wise man.  My name’s Skyr.  I’m not from around here – I’m an Asper, you know the cold bits up north?”“Shouldn’t your hair be silver, or white like your skin?”, asked the hermit quizzically.“I decided I prefer black.”“That’s…interesting,” said the hermit. “I prefer solitude.  Go away, please.”The female Azu – her name was Cassra, he sensed - spoke up. “Is there anything we can offer you in exchange for information?”The hermit glanced at her, and his eyes widened slightly as he perceived her powerful magical aura.  “Not that I can think of.”Skyr perceived what he thought was a crack in the hermit’s gruff persona.  Looking around at the sparsely decorated cave which had a ramshackle air to it, he spoke up.  “We could offer you a servant?  Someone to tidy the place up a  bit, attend to the cooking and cleaning.  How does that sound?”The hermit was momentarily baffled.  He then realised that the bard was baiting his friends. “I don’t know what to say…I have no real interest in aesthetic appearance.”Shani’s eyebrow was arched.  The hermit’s keen mind noted the beautiful paladin’s interest in the bard, solving that part of the puzzle.  But Cassra spoke up first. “What?  You’re offering him a paladin to do the cooking and cleaning?”Wren had been standing quietly in the background and now began to chortle, which was the Sauran equivalent of laughing hysterically.“Definitely not!”, said Skyr indignantly. “I’m offering Wren…we won’t need a lock-picker in a cavern complex, will we?”Wren stopped chortling suddenly.  Shani smiled, although mostly from relief.  “I think we may need Wren for other things besides lock-picking, Skyr.”“Oh yes, that’s right,” agreed Skyr. “Charging psychotically into battle, check.  Kind of important that it’s someone other than me.”The hermit had now had enough time to scan the group’s thoughts for their material possessions.  The Azu mage Cassra possessed an ancient artifact, a rod made of the magical material aurium which was aspected towards fire magic.  She also had a ring of invisibility, but the psion could tell that she would give neither item away lightly.  The Sauran called Wren had a new spear of the Stormbrand variety, but the hermit had no interest in weapons other than his own mind.  The Chuan paladin Shani had an interesting mirror – it increased her attractiveness, and had a few mirror-themed magical abilities.  The bard’s “sunglasses” were interesting, but since the hermit was more interested in escaping attention than drawing it to himself, he overlooked them.  Then he detected something useful.  “Look, I don’t know how you found me or how you got here, but I like to be alone, and ignore the rest of the world.  I would also like the rest of the world to ignore me, including nice people like yourselves – nothing personal, but I am a hermit…”“OK then!” exclaimed Skyr. “To answer your questions…we found you by scrying these mountains for the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and we got here through Cassra’s teleportation spell.”“You’re not gods, are you?”, asked the hermit, looking somewhat alarmed.“Um,” began Skyr before Cassra interjected sharply. “No!”Shani coughed politely. “Skyr, don’t you and the others have some invisibility dust?”Skyr nodded. “That we do!  That’s probably exactly what you need, eh?  Let’s haggle!”Next time: Against the giants?  Which adventure is this, anyway? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /></blockquote>

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