Lost Lore 24: The Quiet War
General Summary
Another two quiet months rolled sleepily by. Somehow, Charity, Ospher and I managed to make contact with 3 separate persons in Ghal Pelor, Donovo Flameglade, a warlock of sorts, Irufan Rimer, a sorcerer, and Tomlin Ackley, a monk who specializes in Manacite adulteration into alcohol. They came to Frial with the Red Word, who still hold Ospher and I in some esteem for having financially saved their company from ruin by recapturing Digby's books and they arrived in Frial with a cartload of bandits in the former employ of Klagget, the Tengu who was stealing from caravans. Our teachers killed the so-called God of Thieves in Becklinberg and took his stolen goods back to the Abbey, with the mixed up help of Ms. Love Birdie who was there because Bianca had seemingly lost an important shipment that had a device called the Mana Gauge to Klagget's banditry and she wanted to stealthily recover it. Ultimately, neither she, Love, nor our new hires were critically injured in the escapade, and if not for her skullduggery, we wouldn't have obtained some other interesting items, so I don't really hold it against her. Ospher and Charity may yet though.
Ospher held onto the manipulative Digby's fabled Tesseract, in addition to a fancy new ring from Klagget's loot horde, and I took an Amulet of the Devout and rededicated it to The Lady Midnight and continued guiding the students in repairing this vehicle and promoted Ms. Birdie to Teacher's Aide for her exemplary service in the field. Ospher ended up researching a fitness regime and started directing the students in team sports and provided cooking instruction that focuses on nutrition while casually working with Charity and Bianca on the gate. Charity was also in the lab with us and was focused on familiarizing herself with the science that Bianca is more in tune with. She even learned a cantrip from Ms. Loame, which was pretty impressive since I wasn't really sure that that dynamic would have a positive outcome on the two of them. Between the three of us, we also got more funding secured for the instruction of poor unfortunate children in addition to our adopted Downpour persons who Ospher trained as gardeners in some spare time, showing that of all of us, his dynamic skill set is really the only one that can be trusted to not accidentally starve. Dalyn, after a few weeks of negotiation, agreed to remain with us, after marveling at the magics that rebestowed upon him fully functioning limbs and revived (and regrown) organ, in the capacity as a security chief, with the understanding that he would eventually lead a team of persons to keep our denizens safe. If this turns out to be a long term agreement, that will please me, but I understand he has his family yet to return to in the Elven Farmlands.
At the end of an early Arroc's Prophecy's weekday's classes, I was trying to push some kids into getting projects done and Love was giving me some status updates, Charity was prepping notes, and Ospher was getting dinner prepped when we were gathered because Tyrom had knocked on the door and requested to speak with us privately. He was pacing and fidgeting quite a bit when we arrived to meet him and he quickly explained that Neville and Norynor were missing and were last known to be in Trentpoole, attempting to make peace between the Lords of Trentpoole and the Lily Street Youth Club, as it was understood by him that auxiliaries or members of both gangs were in the process of negotiating a betrothal, with one party or the other being in the employ of the Kreastos which is a prima facie case of out of bounds arcane underground interference, even before romantic relationships are involved. Admittedly, I haven't bothered to learn the entire extent of these rules of self-governance or secret peace but that was something I wouldn't overlook on hearing the facts from him. Tyrom clarified that the tensions related to this brought the two gangs to a boil that Tyrom and Neville (as his agent) sought to cool and bring to peaceable talks and some sort of agreement allowing the young couple to go on about their lives, and ideally, avoid the governmental backlash.
Below photos created by Christopher Dravus
Do we know his problem is? Seems like they only come to us with problems.
Well, we help each other right? But no, he hasn't said what he wanted yet.
The place makes money, but it could make, you know, more money.
I need your assistance with something, a matter of the utmost importance. Norynor and Neville are missing, they have not returned since last night.
They were in Trenpoole on a matter of a... delicate nature, and they haven't reported back in and I'm afraid they might have gotten entangled in something in that awful district that maybe they should not have.
We stepped in to help meidate the issue only because of this Kreastos involvement, one of them is tied to the Kreastos. If it goes poorly, and we know things already teeter on the edge...
We'll help, we don't want anything terrible to the two of them. Unless it already has.Evidently, this conflict was brought to their attention by The Oracle of 8th Street, Rowna, and so Tyrom agreed to get them involved before violence could erupt on the streets. Tyrom concluded by offering to watch after our students while we set out (HIS TRUE GOAL!?) and we called in the new teachers as well to be on their guard while we would be out in the town. Tyrom went into the kitchen to help the older headchildren begin lunch service and we roped in Lorgan and Tadlo to lend us a hand in Trentpoole, they've also moved out of the 12 Carrots into a single room apartment in City Center. They met us closer to the edge of Trentpoole, where we then traversed to the market and met the Blacksmith and paid our required tithe (five darkness marbles of the kobolds' make) to be passed up the chain. Tyrom's directions and address led us to an abandoned metal foundry that we quickly recognized as having signs to recent use and after Lorgan made quick work of the lock, we opened the door and saw a crowd of people hooting and hollering in some sort of fighting ring, we dashed off to avoid the bouncer that was quickly approaching from the commotion and went to blend in with the crowd.
We havene't had the opportunity to really slum it anywhere, to potentially get invovled where we could get involved in some breaking entering or breaking a lock on a treasure chest. The skills, they don't hone themselves.
I was starting to get used to the idea of not having to slum it and commit crimes, maybe moving in the direction of opening a little artificer's shop here. But here we go.
We're not saying we're guaranteed to commit any crimes, we just want to make sure our investigations go as smoothly as possible and with your particular set of skills, we think that will be a lot more likely.
With my particular set of skills, it's very UNlikely we WON'T be committing a crime.
Oooooook.
As long as it's more likely than not that we'll be coming back alive from this one, then sure.
Alive AND still as a gnome!
What if mediations aren't done and you have to step in and take over? Any thoughts on how you'll resolve it?In the center of the group of people, the fight unfolding was that of a mismatch. A big burly dwarf looking man was boxing against what appeared to be a child, maybe 13 years old and was dodging as if blessed by lightning, though she had a number of tattoos and indications that she was part of the Lilly Street Gang. I looked about and noticed Mr. Brick and some dark skinned hired muscle knife in the dark type cleaning his fingernails with a dagger and standing off to the side and looking towards me. He pulled his shades down and grinned, so with everyone in tow, we went to speak with him and his associate. With a regal tip of his dilapidated top hat, we spoke about what the situation was and he explained that he was prepared to murder his own member to conclude the possibility of a relationship with the Lily Street ally in the Kreastos, but Neville and Norynor had already gotten Auntie Shae to come to the table and engage with a diplomatic resolution, but they disappeared into the night and now Mr. Brick is ready to just fight and he's ready to lay the blame with Tyrom for giving them the thought of acceptance of this. He said Auntie Shae wouldn't be far from her 'fingerling' fighting in the ring, and that we're welcome to talk with her now but once tomorrow comes if this isn't solved, all bets are off.
Certainly! Execute the person from the circle that is knowingly interfering with the Kreastos member.
Whoa.
Oh!
To what do we owe this pleasure?
You owe this pleasure to Tyrom Klogheim, he asked us to come by and check and see how things went yesterday.
Yesterday was a bit of a shitshow. His men showed up to something we had completely under control and turn what would have been a very east night into arguments, back stabbery, some veiled notion of a peaceful conversation when we could have wrapped it up the way we wanted.
We were going to going to ambush them there, ice the lothario, and be done with it before the Kreastos could have an opinion one way or the other. But instead they showed up, organized this whole attempt at conversation and working things out, promises to keep the Kreastos out of the relationship. We all fell in line, gave them the chance to do so, and in theory we were making progress, but the two of them never showed back up to conclude things. So now we're all left hanging in the air and wondering what's going to happen, and liekly tomorrow night we're just all going to kill each other anyway.
Do you know where they went after the first meeting ended?
If I knew where they went, I would have dragged them back by their hair and made them finish the mess they started.
Yeah, fair.
But I don't, so what I have is a bunch of Lily Streeters hanging about in my territory waiting for the conclusion of a meeting that never should have been started in the first place.
First and foremost, Tyrom is chaff as far as I'm concerned. A group of six people that can barely weave a spell together is nothing but chaff, so chaff is coming to clean up chaff problems, then so be it. But I would like you to clean it up if you can, and hopefully tonight otherwise I'm going to take things into my own hands and I'm certainly going to drop the bill at Tyrom's feet. I will consider us even once I burn down his little book store.
I take it a stern talking to wasn't going to get them to just drop it?As we finished our conversation with Brick, his associate a very skinny, gaunt and oily long haired individual, shrunken eye sockets and rancid breath with a big bandolier of different knives was introduced as Donatello Vydel. Brick claimed to have brought him in to locate Neville and Norynor as well as the lovers, who had evidently gone to ground in the meantime to avoid probable assassination by the Lords of Trentpoole. He claimed the city would miss the woman, a mid level whip in the Kreastos, supposedly, and he didn't think that letting them leave town would work since they probably would be back. Overall, a very dour outlook and pessimism abound.
People love dying for love!
I don't know if that's true, I think they love talking about dying for love.
It's both really, you'd be surprised.
Well, what was it that Neville and Norynor suggested? Well, just Neville.
Good point.
Some drivel about allowing the relationship to continue, both sides, staying hands off, this could be a bridge between the two gangs and a foot in the door with the Kreastos.
And as a matter of fact, if the two of you really are here to solve the problem the rest of the chaff started, if you find my man, you'll kill him, and if you find a way to off his Kreastos lover, all the better. That's a loose end that we can't have meandering about.
Mr. Vydel understands the importance of this particular course of action, eliminating the loose ends, I hope he won't step on your toes during the course of the investigation, but he's going to be carrying things through as I have laid out.Lily's fighter won the first fight as we stepped away to find Shae in the midst of the commotion, and we realized that the situation is probably a lot worse than we originally guessed. We used the Eye of Basul to check in on the two of them and saw both of them bound in darkness, gagged, and in a semi-drugged state, it looked sort of like webbing holding them and surrounding them. Neither Ospher or Charity could place anywhere in the Frial region that would have man sized spiders, and since we knew they couldn't have gotten far in as short a time had gone by, then they couldn't have gotten down to Illsemine's former residence. We couldn't tell if they'd been bitten or ingested something, and Neville couldn't telepathically communicate from the dazed state he was in, and Norynor didn't remember leaving Frial and then was too out of it to answer anything else. The webs didn't look like those of a Web spell either, so instead we set about the area looking for clues to their departure from the Foundry. Tadlo and Lorgan quickly came back with having run across a LSYC kid who say they saw Neville and Norynor leave made us pay him to bring us to Auntie Shae who seemed to be using the payment for information as a teachable moment to some of her other kids as we walked up.
There's a lot of awful things here, but giant spiders aren't in any of the gazetters I've read. There's probably too many frogs here, making it hard for giant spiders to get any nests going.
I once heard an interesting story from Ghal Pelor about Werespiders, you wouldn't necessarily know if someone was a spider until they changed into a spider. Just thought I would throw that out there.
I've heard through my networks that you've been working closely with the Orchestra of necromancers.
Not the whole Orchestra, we have a friend there now, yes.
That's good, we don't have many friends there, none really. They're a sort that really can't be trusted, considering what they get up to at night, I wouldn't want to. But I wouldn't judge you for having the connection.
It sounds as if one person's pragmatism isn't easily understood by another, and that's just the way it is in town here. One circle has their brand of what they percieve as the right the way they do things, and whatever laws are transgressed, moral failings are seen aren't so easily forgiven by another.
I appreaciate that it's easy to say people can just do what they want as long as they're not hurting anyone else, but they also happen to be the only circle that recruit with murder and cavort with vampires.
Completely right.
Neville and I have a history, and I'll say it's not a good one, so I do my best to have eyes on him.Shae was pleasant enough on the surface, she was glad to no longer have to worry about the Rat King but mentioned some scarcity issues with manacite to assist in some of her recovered youth's memories. She explained that she did have a tail on Neville and Norynor as they came into and out of Trentpoole and when they left, they eluded her tail up towards the docks. From her tail's info she said the two of them were headed to Craenus's house, the LOT associated half-elven man in the relationship at the heart of the issue here. Shae also knew that Craenus is fairly high up in Brick's organization and mostly ran the docks himself for the Lords and oversaw the ledgers for goods receipt by vessel.
What's your plan, how are you going to resolve this? Are you gonna do his business, am I going to lose my friend?
These are all questions. You know, I'm not in the usual method murdering persons that aren't trying to murder me, but I also don't know what's going to happen on the way there.
Ultimately you're going to have to figure out what you want the outcome to be, cause now someone's in the middle of it and while it can go one of a few ways, before you may notice it, we're going to just kill each other tomorrow night, or you're the one that comes up with the solution.
If those two are dead, it's gonna fall on you.Shae, in wondering what we planned to do to resolve all this (blatantly putting the cart before the horse), mentioned that she will be trying to kill Mr. Brick if she can, which, to us, seemed rather blunt, but she explained he's always known that and if she has to lose a few people to take out one of the worst people in Frial, she's fine with that. She never thought that Brick would abide by whatever sort of peace Neville tried to broker, and he would attempt to get the lovers killed by worming around the nature of whatever agreement was reached. In reiterating the time limit of the next sundown, she explained that whatever happens, we'll want to be quick since once the first blood is drawn, it will be much more difficult to stop from there, I advised restraint in at least her part of this since a mage war on the streets will definitely make life harder to lead in Frial with less manacite available and more laws on sorcery.
Wonderful.
Perhaps so, it's just harder to tell if we'll be better off under Brick's foot or the Kreastos'.Finally, she explained that she was worried for her friend Rosamin, as she was in a Lily Street bolthole, but either way after all this she worried Brick would hunt her, regardless of the outcome, since Brick doesn't like loose ends. Stepping away from her, we agreed that Shae seemed like she'd had enough of Brick in our conversation with her and that she would likely launch her gambit to kill him if she got anything resembling the opportunity. It also seemed to us that the Order of the Basilisk members disappearing was part of something else totally from all this, the two of them were interfering and someone wanted them gone to avoid the possible consequences of averting this war. I pointed out that someone paid for the billboards around town and someone had put in the work to turn Adeley Kint into a bodak and restrict the flow of manacite into the city, these things in tandem indicate a larger conspiracy in the "peaceful" city. The tailing youths were pointed out for another handful of gold pieces, and Bastille their leader was happy enough to put down the liquor bottle and let us know that they specialize in tailing Neville and saw the two headed to Craenus' shanty near the docks where they waited for them to come out but somehow the two of them slipped their tail and they never saw them leave the shanty and never went in. We paid for him to lead us to the house directly and along the way I used the Eye of Basul to communicate with Neville's familiar Whiskers and he joined us en route. Based on what I could infer, he didn't know where Neville had gone and was confused since he was also near the docks and scouting the area when he couldn't contact him anymore, and passed on the image of a half-elf (presumably Craenus?), along with the smell of water, fish, chocolate and tea. Ospher tipped Bastille for the good reliable work with a jade statue we found and they left to head back to reinforce Auntie.
Not to say that we couldn't miss it, we're not flawless, we ain't Nisaba's angels, that's for sure, but we're pretty good at what we do.Based on Whiskers' memories of the disappearance, I noted that chocolate is a fairly rare food stuff and Slevin is someone we know who trafficks in the substance, but considering he likely doesn't have anything outside of the Flagstaff district, we tabled that idea. Ospher noted that the fae were also well-known to favor chocolate flavors in teas and other consumables, and it's really only popular in Melanthris, but there's some areas where it's being adopted by bougie sorts of people. Approaching the "shanty" we circled the couple story house and observed that it appeared to be unoccupied by the lack of light inside, but the front door was locked with a very good lock, according to Lorgen, that had been scuffed up and caked in grime to conceal its high quality make. Nevertheless, it yielded to his skills and in short order we entered quietly into the foyer and it did not match the drab exterior, everything was well-kept, orderly, and clean and faintly down a hallway, we heard some string instrument music as well as the crackle of a fire oddly enough.
I believe it.
And look, we didn't rob ya or pick your pockets or nothing, so Lily Street does what they says they're gonna do.
The cleaner the abode, the better the booty that's hiding.Drawing my shield and the Mortality Masher we crept down the hallway and walked into a sort of living room with a large chair, fireplace, armoire, fancy table with tea and boozes laid out, with it smelling heavily of chocolate and near the fireplace an enchanted violin and bow was playing itself for someone sitting in the chair that couldn't see us. Sitting in the chair was a larger, heavily set half-elf that resembled Craenus as he was described to us, handsome in the face though. His pants were unbuttoned and his gut hung out, he was very into the music and was swaying with eyes closed to the tune which I didn't recognize. Also, as I crossed around the chair, I noticed a Terrarium off to the side with some strange mouse sized bluish white speckled spiders that moved oddly about the container, ghostly skittering though the objects. I shoved the chair to get his attention and he opened an eye, revealing an flustered countenance and stood up rapidly with a small belch. I confronted the man, who was understandably indignant about having aspersions cast in his own home, who identified himself as Craenus, but as Ospher and I walked around him asking questions we noticed his eyes able to focus in two completely different directions at once which confirmed suspicions of it being some kind of impostor. He claimed that the "peacekeepers" came to discuss the relationship with Rosimin and ultimately couldn't reach an agreement with him and gave up and departed the house into the night, contradicting Bastille's story which I then threw in his face. He refused to tell the truth in the light of this unassailable fact and so I then began to assault his possession to see if that would make him come to terms with this interrogation, which ultimately had sort of the reverse effect I'd hoped.
The cleaner the abode, the more blood that was spilled here beforehand.
Below photos created by Christopher Dravus
Uh ahhh, you are... who?
You are who?
Craenus, of course, this is my house.
You live here?
I do and I live well. Who are you!?
You are not Craenus.
And whom do I address that would dare breach my abode?
You are not Craenus, otherwise Mr. Brick would have already killed you.
I am indeed, madam. I'm not going to stand here being accused of fraud and forgery in my own home.
I've never met you before, I'm looking for two friends of mine who came here last night, who were hoping to talk to, assumedly you, which is the actual owner of this house.
Not the owner?! Don't you just seem to know everything!? You can pick all that up by simply breaking my lock and breaching my home? What questions do you have for the master of this Manse??
I don't care if you're actually Craenus or not at this point, I will kill you for hurting my friends.
Ah, yes a pointy a stick. It always comes to a pointy stick.
History has borne out the effectiveness of a pointy stick.
History? What do you know about history?
Well it's come to this then!
He frowned and grew quite angry and the droop of his lips turned into a terrible frown which then drooped further and wider. His eyes grew wider and larger and little knotty rocks began to appear on his flesh and his body growing larger and larger and changed, obscuring the firelight in the room as he towered over us in the room, bursting forth for his formerly half-elven form, now dripping with rancid slime. His strangely amphibious gigantic appearance didn't really register to me as he launched himself at me and dug his strange proboscis like fingers into my shoulder as it felt like something was being pumped into me. I felt it afflict me in addition to the physical pain from the muscle being rended in my shoulder, like something swimming around in my stomach. Ospher thought the creature might be a fae nobility that he'd heard from Kay, a Saudra-tai or War's Tallyman, some fae adjacent race. He then launched the Butcher's Chain at 'Craenus' with the Catapult spell while I then cast Aura of Vitality to start healing myself from the grevious wound dealt.
Charity's Ice Knife was less than effective on him as he bragged about our world's elements not being willing to harm it's master, which probably ranks up there for crazy shit I've heard bellowed in Frial. Tadlo's Eldritch Cannon's flame were similarly damped and Lorgan's Lightning Lure also resisted harming the monster. The Skyriran boomerang's Shield of Faith now bolstering me, I interposed myself in the way of this creature being able to harm anyone else. Ospher's Dagger of Venom was Catapulted into his flesh and we could see it's black poison start to flow freely beneath his flesh, though we noticed some of the wounds from moments ago healing over, much like the Ogre Mage we fought in the grain silo what felt like ages ago. Charity's next Ice Knife was able to deal a stronger blow with a direct hit to it's large body, suffering in the restraint of the chains, while Tadlo's Cannon and Crossbow continued to do minor wounds to the beast and Lorgen's rapier with Green Flame Blade was cruelly effective with his knowledge of wicked weaknesses in living beings, though like other elemental attacks that portion was less effective.
Ospher then enchanted me with Haste and I found out that the disease communicated to me by the Saudra-tai inhibited being able to heal myself by my Aura of Vitality, so afterwards I bolstered myself with Lesser Restoration, which seemed to purge myself of one of the two parasites within me. The extra speed from the Haste allowed me to make a cruel attack on him. 'Craenus' tried to break free again, but could not best the strength of the metal of the chain and attempted to bit me, chipping a tooth on my shield which then regrew (very weird to behold), and then was able to land his wicked claws into Lorgan, injecting him with this disease afflicting me as well as she shredded his exposed arms. He took advantage of the beast's restraint to disengage from the monster and get out of its meaty arm range, Tadlo's firebot was able to scorch the beast further and two arrows from his shortbow struck true followed up by Charity's next Ice Knife to his gut, dripping blue ichor and pungent with the smell of rot mixed with chocolate.
Lorgan, now out of range of the monster, was as deadly with his shortbow at a distance as he was with his rapier, lodging an arrow into an artery in Craenus' leg. Unfortunately, the chain was shattered at this point and he took a couple of wild swings at me before attempting to barrel through the fireplace wall and escape from us into the alleyway night. Ospher's high-powered Magic Missile winking into existence from every angle battered the hulking frogman into submission and he ended up flopping backwards in the grime of the alley. Ospher then glided over and continued to attack the creature to keep it down as its rapid regeneration was going to bring it back to consciousness very quickly. I healed Lorgan and my diseases at this point before joining Ospher and Charity in the alleyway to help dismember the creature so we could question it. While doing so, I noticed that it seemed like it had grown from the body of a different being, similar in bone structure to a human or humanoid, something else of this world that wasn't born.
Ospher rapidly moved the large bastard inside with his Phantom Caress and Charity pointed out that at the bottom of the Terrarium there was a hole seemingly going around and beneath the house at the size of Whiskers and the Phase spiders. 'Craenus' briefly came to consciousness and prattled on about how he was beyond the pains able to be caused by this world, so while my Spirit Shroud was still able to do so, I ended his exsistence. He did not appear to resist radiant damage to any significant degree as I put an end to him.
How rude! If you would expect me to talk, I would have to feel pain first.
Who were you?
Who was I? I don't know, I am who I am now. You will be who you will be soon.
Once the infection, the phage, takes place, she will become grander, perfect, perfected, from the inside out.
Where are the elf and human who visited here last night?
Why should I tell you? Slice me apart, throw me in the river, I'll be back. Turn me to ashes, I'll cobble together. Freeze me, I'll thaw.
Wha what don't we need him?! He knows where they are!
He wasn't going to tell us, there wasn't anything we were getting from him.
I feel like we asked one question, we could have tried a little harder!
Whatever his price was gonna be, was going to be way too big of a price for us to want to pay.
I guess.
We then used a Speak with Dead to force his spirit back here to ask our 5 questions:
- Where are Norynor and Neville? - I fed them to my beauties.
- Who dispatched you to be transformed in 'Craenus'? - I serve the Court of Shadow.
- Is the Court associated with a Circle in Frial - They are our pawns.
- How long ago were you transformed - My shape is malleable, I can be who I chose, but I was birthed into this form centuries ago.
- You fed them to your beauties, is that underneath the house here or where? - I used my potion, and then dropped them down the hole. I like to watch them feed.
Lorgan found a tiny eyedropper with a faint pink liquid within by his armoire that radiates with magic, with sixish doses left that Ospher cast Identify upon and ascertained that they would shrink someone down to about Whiskers' size. While a search of the area between Charity and Lorgan didn't yield any other droppers that could cure this shrunken condition, they did spot some indentations in the rug that conclusively showed there were two to three other creatures of similar size and clawed feet. Grimacing at what we knew must come next, we devised a trap to catch as many phase spiders as we could at the surface here and then advising Lorgan and Tadlo to discern what they could about the house and its contents before anyone came back. After a couple quick conversations with Crisnos and Tarre for information on these ancient Fae horrors, we sprung the trap then Charity, Ospher, and I took the draughts (they had a strong tart cherry taste, lots of things being ruined for me today) and with Tadlo's tiny fashioned protectobot and Whiskers, and we steeled ourselves for the next stage of this rescue.
We left the Eye of Basul with Tadlo and Lorgen, asking them to get Brightshine and Crisnos and Servos headed over from the Orphanarium to help them turn over this house in the case that more Berrises arrive.
Are you familiar with a 'Saudr-tai'?
I don't know what you're saying.
It's a Fae monster.
Can't say I've heard of it specifically, but I've killed a lot of Fae.
Hulking and Blue, has things it can inject into people from its claws. Toad like.
That sounds awful. I've only been after these things for a few months, you're probably better off speaking to the 'good' ones you keep at Grandmother's Tree.
Even if we find them down there, we're going to need to find a way to reverse the effects.
I would have thought it was just maybe for an hour, uhhh.
If it was for an hour, they would be back, wouldn't they?
Well a figurative hour, for a while that isn't the rest of our lives.
It seems that everybody these days is into the permanency of magic.
I guess I appreciate that?
Maybe we should just limit it to two of us just in case we don't find their supply of antidote?
I'm not letting the two of you take it by yourselves, presumably. I'm not gonna let you get killed by spiders on your own and I'm not gonna let you stick me with the school either.
to OspherShe caught us!
Well it is in your name.
We've encountered some creatures called the 'Saudra-tai' here in Frial?
They're in Frial?! They're members of the Shadow Court but that shouldn't exist anymore!
This one was blue?
Blue is bad, red's not as bad, but green's really bad and the dark one is the worst.
So there's different flavors?
As far as danger, yes, but they're all really the same one. They're not a race, so much as they're all copies of each other. It's really just one sort of thing that can copy itself in other people.
They can shapechange into just about anything they want. Their preferred form is just a rotund old man. And I guess they can make it younger too, and their 'true' form is the big old frog. But they like that form, they prefer it and can be lazy.
So if they're hiding as people, they will look something like that?
If they've got a choice, yeah. But they could be you, they could be me just as easily.
Reds will fill you with a bunch of tadpoles that eat their way out but Blues can make more of them and Greens. And Greens if they go on surviving get older and meaner and darker until they become one of the Dark ones. One of the shadow court is run by one of the Dark ones.
Since they're all copies they all kinda use the same name or some sort of variant or a nickname. Orgastus Lycenius Berris, sometimes just one of the names, or Fat B.
It's incredible to think how the world must look to someone the size of Whiskers. Forty Eight hours is probably my limit of this though.
Very specific!
I feel like I could probably handle it for a day and still find some whimsy on day two.
That's one way to escape your troubles.
This is just a thought, but if there is a way to reverse this and do it again, this would be an interesting way to save on food costs.
They moved the tank aside so we could access the hole without having to go through whatever hell was in the terrarium, and took a look at the hole. The start of the hole was very nearly vertical and with the kobold looted goggles, Ospher and Charity could see down it as well. With some rope and Ospher's ring, we made it down without injury though Charity was spent by the exertion of the climb. Down towards where the tunnel levelled off, it started to veer off into several different paths, most of them flat ground level, with a f ew other above us in various different directions, a muddled nest of holes to be navigated. The sound of chittering was omnipresent, accompanied by fast movements and tapping, with my understanding of the situation being that the spiders were aware of us. Most of the tunnels were very narrow and one wide enough for two of us to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Whiskers picked up on Neville's scent and intimated that the narrower path was quicker but it would also be more dangerous. We set out with him in the lead and me in the back and Ospher and Charity between us, and gave the Skyriran Boomerang over to Charity and we were able to effectively remain quiet enough and aware of loose rocks to avoid direct attack en masse by spiders. The noise we heard initially approaching grew and grew in strength and as we progressed we started seeing glimpses of the spiders at a distance. Much more unnerving when they're the relative size of a horse, mostly pale white and mottled blue, their eyes seemed to have a bit of glitter to them and we saw them spinning various prey into their webs, ants, moths, other spiders and terrifyingly, rats in the alcoves. The way their webs flowed out of them in a sort of ethereal haze through people from their spinarets.
Whiskers gave most of the branch paths a sniff to make sure we we're going the wrong way in this maze, but as our path connected into another, we saw a slow procession of spiders coming down the tunnel we needed to traverse next. They were carrying large webbing sacks full of something and we quickly concluded a head on assault on seven spiders would be foolish. I ascertained that the sacs were likely full of organic debris, the spiders performing a bit of housekeeping from elsewhere. Ducking further back into our tunnel, we all did our best to conceal ourselves from the group of them, but that wasn't quite good enough for the three of us non-mice.
Ospher saw four of the spiders wheel off from the group down our tunnel, while Charity and I both had the unfortunate experience of feeling a warm wet thumping behind us and seeing a Phase spider crawling and halfway through the wall, bearing down to attack. The spider attacking Ospher found an opening in his guard and bit down hard injecting it's venom into him though he was hardy enough to resist its enervating effect. The one going for me couldn't get past my shield though Charity had no such luck, taking a full course of venom via bite as well and then drooping with a lack of energy. Whiskers took this opportunity to land a savage bite to the one on Charity, and Ospher unleashed the Wand of Fear on the four spiders that were coming down the hallway, chasing three of them away from joining in the fight here and then backing away from the spider atop him. I unleashed my Spiritual Weapon on the Phase Spider by Charity and Whiskers, slaying it as it unerringly struck the overwhelmed spider, cast a Guiding Bolt, barely missing the the one Ospher fled from and then tapped the tiny Turtle-bot to renew Tadlo's artificer vigor on all of us. Charity's Ice Knife struck true on the spider I missed, killing it outright and causing the one by Charity it to only take limping steps afterwards, but it still pressed the attack.
Are you ok? It bit you too, I'm hurting REAL bad.
I'll be ok for now.
I can feel it clouding up my head, cold flowing through every one of my veins.
The remaining two of the spiders on top of us closed in on me and with their keen tactics one landed a blow on me, but their venom was not stronger than the fire flowing through my veins. The three running down the passageway abandoned their assumed detritus, and the final one that shook off the wand's effects then drew in on us but couldn't fling itself into combat with Whiskers holding his ground next to Charity and Ospher. Whiskers attacked one, latching onto where it's head attached to the thorax and held tight as it tried to shake him loose and my Spiritual Weapon and the Immortality Malady killing it and freeing Whiskers in time to defend himself as the one approached. Ospher's Ray of Frost struck the one caught in the blast of the Ice Knife, slowing it, but it was able to get in and bite and poison Whiskers though Tadlo's Turtle likely saved his life as he looked perilously close to surrendering to the pain afterwards and the final spider attacking me couldn't get around my combat training with Ser. Another of the spiders shook off the Fear effect though was down a good ways in the hallway. Ospher's next Ray left a solid layer of rime around the injured spider, sending it back wo whatever spider hell awaits it. Charity activated the Turtle bot, renewing our vigor, while Whiskers and I distracted the creature with our successful attacks enough for her subsequent Firebolt to immolate it slightly. It tried to flee through the wall after realizing it was going to be ganged up on and I landed a solid blow with the butcher's blade as the phasing started to kick in leaving it's scrabbling corpse partway in the wall.
Let's go.
Where? Are we hiding? Are we taking the ones in the tunnels? Are we just going to blaze through? What's the plan?
Whiskers lead on. There's a lot of dead spider right here and we know they eat their own kind.
The remaining three spiders still a good ways off, I ran over to open the sack of webbing they carried and spotted only a couple dead birds, some drained mosquitos, nothing resembling humans. I chased down the spider closing in, getting the jump on it while ushering the others after Whiskers, wounding it grievously between my attacks and the Spiritual Weapon and it couldn't land a hit in kind. From behind me, Charity's Firebolt and Ospher's Ray of Frost went wide while Whiskers swept in around me to sever it's head in his mouth and then bullwhipping back around down the hallway. We put our skills together again to sneak down the tunnels of their nest that actively sought us and collectively avoided any more of their patrols.
Avoiding more of the feeding and storage tunnels, we came out into what must have once been the houses' wine cellar. It was absolutely full of webs and had the look to have been a sort of large crate that was installed under the house after seeing use aboard a ship at the nearby docks. The spiders here moved and glided the various strands and we spotted all kinds of different things bound here looking dessicated and drained, and among the dozens of potential pairs that could have been Neville and Norynor, and it was hard to discern visually at a distance with all the clogging webs in the space between us. Whiskers sniffed about again and tested out a few strands for climbability and locked into a few strands we could traverse that were only to support the greater web as opposed to bind up interlopers. Ospher rode atop Whiskers, pointing out where to go while I carried Tadlo's turtle in one hand and Charity came up behind.
I know what I'm doing, I know what I'm doing. This is disgusting! I really don't want to die down here.
We ascended and noticed that the further we got, the fresher the carcasses looked. A number of things here looked like they would be alive, a mouse that was slowly breathing in one spot, a pidgeon that was attempting to get its wings free in another, with other masses of webs being too thick to make out what was in them. Whiskers was looking around at this higher level, and based on where he was kind of pointed until we found the both of them, bound up together in the same clump of webbing, very thick and they were both drooling and unconscious, covered in puncture marks, and groaning in agony. Whiskers was chewing up the fibers while I worked from the other end. We activated the Eldritch Cannon again here, bestowing some vitality to Norynor and Neville. Ospher and Charity, acting as lookouts noticed some strands connected to this... platform, for lack of a better word of it, vibrating more and more intensely. they spotted a small group making a direct line for us.
About four of them were Phase spiders, and at a distance, they could see they were larger than the ones we'd seen before. But in addition to these, a much much larger, almost crab-like in appearance dwarfing these large ones with a gigantic abdomen, and Ospher instantly recognized it must fill some sort of Queen or Egg layer role within their hierarchy. They were moving very rapidly and would close in a moment and he got Whiskers and my attention before they could close. Charity attempted the Banishment power from the Skyriran boomerang on the Queen, which didn't work due to the Queen's strong willpower. Ospher launched a Slow spell boosted by the Tesseract critically catching all five of the approaching horrors and buying us a little more time to create trouble in their nest as they now ran like they were underwater. I identified four strands on the platform that were crucial to this particular structure, which should bring down their entire nest to the next level. Taking my shield back from Charity, I directed her away from the approaching melee to the strands after cutting one myself and she cut the next one.
Something big is coming guys! Gotta hurry it up.
What is that? What is happening? Why are these spiders worse than every other spider we've ever seen?!
I mean, because we're as big as they are now?
That makes a lot of sense acctually. I don't think I could deal with this for more than 24 hours, I take it back.
Two of the guard rushed over to attack Whiskers, one got caught in a sticky spot adjacent to Neville, but the other grazed his skin, while the remaining two guards performed similarly against me, one finding a spot to get at my less covered leg, and the second getting stuck due to its error in judgement from the Slow spell. The Queen launched herself at me dealing a cruel hit as it used its mass to slam my shield arm into me. The one stuck next to me, tried to phase out to escape its situation, but I cracked it on the forehead while it tried that making its eyes swim. Charity ran over and cut the third structural strand and then unleashed Bane from the boomerang, getting Ospher an extremely wide opening for his Dynamite thrown with a Catapult spell, cracking a lot of her chitin, dripping a sort of green phlegm from her body and mouth from the brutal concussive force. The explosion was also strong enough to rend the final strand, and everything collapsed down. The Queen's did not give her enough space to maneuver in this mess and ultimately she was bound up in all of the falling debris and webbing falling to the ground of this crate with a loud crack, but still alive. The strands above us gave way in the explosion as well, bringing down even more trapped things in these webs, and the Royal Guard died from distance of the fall. I unleashed the Feather Fall, greatly slowing the fall of Neville, Norynor, Whiskers, Ospher and Charity and giving them the freedom to maneuver the falling chaos and I found a piece that only suffered a short drop and caught myself.
From our height advantage, Charity launched Firebolts, I shot Guiding Bolts, and Ospher dropped a jug of Lantern Oil on the Queen and her webbed mess. My bolts dealt penetrating hits on her but the fire and accelerant proved too much for the Queen, between the smoldering and burning, cooking her to death amid chitters and guttural wails. Following the explosions and collapse, the remaining Phase Spiders that hadn't defended the nest with her fled in the tumult, deciding that they would likely survive much better independently than face whatever apocalypse had visited them. Considering we saw other things alive and subdued in the mess when we came in, we took a look around for more people that had been caught recently and while we didn't find anyone alive, we did find some older remains that were awaiting being cycled out with some garbage. The the male elf body had tattooing indicating that they were a Lord of Trentpoole, and the other, a female in Kreastos' professional uniform with some damage to her skull.
That answers that.
Indeed. I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but it seems someone completed Mr Brick's request for us.
What a tragedy.
So I guess they killed them straight away?
Oh no! The woman, she's under guard by Shae's circle. She must have been already replaced by one of these shapechangers.
Oh. Oh! I guess if we weren't goddamn mice, we could say something!
Ospher was combing the area looking for hidden caches in the basement to hopefully find something to reverse this magical curse afflicting us and found crates and crates of chocolate tea recipe, fineries of furniture, some somewhat fresh well made baked goods. But ultimately he spotted two figures approaching through a grimy window, identical to the fat man that was upstairs prior to changing over into the beastly blue toad. One was dressed as a dock worker and the other was older with a beard and dressed as a member of the Lords of Trentpoole and both were headed towards the house while conversing. Ospher communicated with Servos to tell Lorgen and Tadlo to evacuate the premises, after a bit of confusion in messaging they ran. We agreed that hiding and observing them would be the best course of action since they'd be observing quite a mess in their place, they'll work to secure their most precious things first and then determine if it is safe to remain.
Hiding among chocolate tea like a sweet smelling haystack and some behind wine bottles, we watched them converse and discover the destroyed spider's nest. He had two captive Lords of Trent poole he was going to toss into the crate but he opened his human-looking mouth unnaturally wide and tossed them down with a "For the good of the brotherhood, I'll stomach two more." The dockworker then went to the wall and transformed its hand there back to a red frog hand and then there was a glowing effect and then the wall opened. Inside there were four tied up, shackled and unconscious peoples, drolling from their mouths and chests and bellies distended and occasionally writhing. They called the obviously infected people Gracious Hosts and ran upstairs to check on the rest of their things.
I can't wait to get myself a cup of chocolate tea! It has been a long day I cannot stand the taste of these people.
First things first. he produces two shrunken unconscious people from his pocket and removes the lid from the crate, planning to drop them into the spiderwebs and is greeted by a large plume of smoke I think we have a problem. The spiders are... dead!
with an extremely sad look on his face All dead? Every one of them? What happenend?!?
All the gracious hosts are still here. Upstairs, let's go! Upstairs!
We went into that room after the two of them ran off and saw also some crates and boxes and high up shelves. A brief assessment of the people confirmed most of them as either members or allies of the LoT that the Fae sought to convert, people we mostly recognized as magicians of theirs, meaning these would breed the green ones that Tarre warned us about. The only thing of inquisitive value we found was a very simple metallic lockbox set on the wall, with no runes or etchings on it. Ospher used the Phantom Caress to lift himself up towards the box and while peering through the hole, he saw skin, flesh and vitals and immediately realized this box must be a shape changed Saudra-tai as well. Again, based on Tarre's warnings from earlier, we assumed this must be one of their "tadpole" stage growths mimicking a box.
It doesn't matter if its a baby, we can kill it. These things are awful.
It's not even that, but thanks for putting that moral quandry into my head?
After a brief discussion, Ospher flung a small rock at it and on the lid an eye we didn't know was there opened and the door opened a little and sprouted teeth. Through its wicked grin, we spotted a number of little blue vials that it was keeping inside itself and then it dropped to the ground and reshaped, twisting and writhing until it looked like one of the Saudra-tai but in miniature like us, so cat sized, and stalking about looking for whatever threw the rock. Each step it took we could hear the bottles rattling about inside it, and eventually started calling out for us in a weird broken pidgin for food and ... chocolate. Ughhh. I grabbed a bunch of the chocolate tea dust and smeared it on myself and lured him in with stupid comments and the smell of chocolate and it unhinged its jaw bigger and wider until the lower jaw was down to the belly button as it ran towards me. Being ready for his shenanigans, I dove onto his lower jaw with my feet and braced his upper jaw open so someone could retrieve the bottles, and stuck the spear up through his jaw out the top of his head to assist.
Very embarassing, apologies, apologies. Please don't tell the others.
I won't tell if you won't.
If you could kindly help remove this from Orgastus' mouth.
Its tongue was flitting around attempting to grab at me and Ospher as we reached in to grab at the bottles and got all of them out while it was talking about how embarrassing this all is and once Ospher was clear I drank one potion, instantly feeling a cold vapory feeling and then a sudden shift of perspective to the right size surroundings. It was now rubbing at the roof of it's mouth where the Immortality Malady had been and then attempted to dive at Ospher who drank the next bottle before it could close the distance.
Very confusing. Very confusing. I will eat you then.
Ospher then pinned the 'tadpole' to the ground with the Dagger of Venom and we took stock of the situation for a moment. There were eight vials in total, Ospher distributed vials to Neville, Charity, and Norynor, leaving us with three bottles yet and two miniature corpses of the lovers to deal with. I set about killing the Gracious Hosts and beheading them to make sure I had proof for later when I needed to convince Mr. Brick of what was happening. We packed up the tadpole in a box with chocolate tea bags with the knife still impaling him. We heard the two upstairs started yelling and stomping around and decided it was time to make a hasty retreat, and after some brief communication through Servos, we met back up with Tadlo and Lorgen.
I don't even know that 24 hours would have...
Well, I don't know that we chose the best place to be tiny people. Don't let it discourage you from future possibilities.
Where is the best place for tiny people to have fun?
I don't know, a bakery?
Just being tiny on top of warm dough?
No, in the display case maybe.
Oh that too. I just thought the dough would be like a return to the womb.
No more chocolate though. I'm done with chocolate.
For a little while at least.
I make a deal! I make a deal!
Crisnos and Brightshine were waiting in the alley outside the house too, we set them to task of monitoring them to see where they would go after we've interfered with their plans to see if it would cast any light on their backup plans. After agreeing to some code words to make sure we hadn't been replaced by Berrii, we set out for the Abbey to meet back up with Tyrom and as we walked Neville and Norynor slowed regained actual lucidity as the poison metabolized. He was relieved to see the two of them ok and began questioning us as to what the current state of things. We explained that Craenus had been replaced and when these two went to the house they were overcome and left to rot, oddly, instead of being turned into additional hosts.
How are things? Are things killable?
HUSH!
Do we have some sort of code to know that each other is each other?
How about "The Portal is safe"?
Yeah that sounds like something we would never say, sure.
Yeah, that's about as true as anything else.
And the question can be "Where are we going next month?"
With some discussion, we agreed that there's something sinister going on in general, either to put a couple of circles under their thumb or to leverage the Kreastos in their favor eventually. Maybe to snatch wizards during the cover of a street war? Tyrom said he could try and get in contact with them to avert the war while we decided that our best current course of action would be to work on Neville, Norynor, and Charity first and then assess after Tyrom's return in an hour. While I went to meditate in the lab, Ospher took the tadpole and the blue 'antidote' to the lab to analyze it. After brief distraction by the tadpole, he determined that the liquid could immediately cease the spell effect of any spell that was anything but the strongest spell effects known to mortal kind.
Can you put something together to help these three out?
I believe I can do that, intravenous or mixed drink?
I'll take a drink.
Excuse me!
Can I help you?
What is this place?
Nowhere you need to know about.
It looks like a laboratory.
You're smarter than you look my young friend.
I look very smart! This a WARCRIME!
By what law??
You cannot experiment on a diplomat or a prisoner, by the laws of warfare and chivalry, enacted by the queen herself!
The queen of what?
The queen of Tairos.
There is no queen of Tairos.
Communing with Nisaba, she shared some visions of the ancient past with me, various tendrils crawling out of the gate with the Autumn queen herself, each with their own purpose and design. Worming their way into the ground at the base of other trees, some strangling the life of trees and smashing them down, and two symbols, the first a shadowy hand and the other a golden apple. Different agents with different ways they got things done, but all of it was in service to the shadow or the apple.
Tyrom returned and said the meeting would happen at the Oracle's house. Attempts to contact Brick and Shae was met with static, but we couldn't see them. Donatello was skulking about the docks in Trentpoole. I told him that we already killed Craenus and that Rosamin but he thought I was lying to him and ignored my further comments.
Sitting in the teacher's breakroom with some hot tea, Ospher baked chocolate cheesecake for Charity, Neville, Norynor and we discussed our options. Neville and Norynor, between mouthfuls of cake that I cannot understand how they could stomach after what we just went through, explained they were sneaking around the house and conceal themselves, but there were other people there that were invisible there and brought them to a creature that shrunk them after interrogating them as to who they were and what their intentions were. He swore he would come come back to get more information when they were more eager to talk and that's when he shrunk them and tossed them in with the spiders in the basement. In Trentpoole, Craenus was tightlipped and this was usual, according to Neville, Rosamin was very distressed at the whole thing and was new to the magical underground of Frial and vacillating between crying and demanding they be allowed to be together. While the body was still shrunken, Norynor couldn't exactly say the body was exactly Rosamin but it was similar for sure. Craenus left the meeting in a hurry and was doing his best to avoid conversations on the way out, neither of them noticed anything out of the ordinary in terms of his usual people hanging out, and he mentioned dockhands are normally with him since he's in charge up there.
If this body isn't her, we have a very different sort of problem on our hands.
We did our best to make the peace there and when we left to seek out Craenus by himself, that's when things fell apart. I wish I had more news for you.
Why are you keeping these heads now?
Ultimately, the two of them didn't recognize any of the four heads of the Saudra-tai victims but didn't dismiss them immediately as only possibly LoT allies. Checking in with Crisnos, he said the Berrii went into a dock warehouse and had been in there for a while, and that there were more people than just dock workers there, some people from some other magic circle, though he couldn't identify which, and then a boat from Rylan pulled in, which they started to offload. He also mentioned there was a large and long big box with a lot of holes cut into it being offloaded.
None of these were kids.
She's got people other than kids that work with her. It's what she's know for, but you know. Can't get anything done with only kids as your allies.
Yeah, fair, ok.
You run an Orphanage, and you talk to a lot of people that ain't kids.
But I'm also not known as Auntie Adjenna.
That's probably a matter of preference? I'm sure they call you whatever you want.
He keeps Trentpoole in line. If he was gone, my guess is it would break up into a dozen different gangs and that would spill out everywhere. As much as I hate Brick, he maintains a status quo that we don't want falling apart.
There's a saying among my people, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't."
Do you want us to sneak in?
Not especially.
Do you want us to stay by this crate?
I sort of think we may need your sinister-fae-killing expertise.
Yeah, I'm here for that.
Tadlo and Lorgen explained that while they were ransacking Craenus' house that they found a lot of bodies in there, partially eaten and shredded by a large mouth like we saw multiple times. And that's all they found, the place (and the corpses) with picked clean, and the corpses had a weird scented powder rubbed onto them, which Ospher conjectured as a rubbing powder. We attempted to contact Shae once more and she seemed to be contactable now and we could see her, she was in a squalid house in Trentpoole (based on the architecture) with a number of her kids, we saw her move past what must be Rosamin, a young woman sleeping in Kreastos garb in a nearby chair, fairly similar to the corpse we found and collected from the basement.
Did you happen to find any of that powder?
Its still on the bodies on some of the parts they missed, if you're really curious.
I wasn't going to scrape it off of them, but thanks anyway.
Sack of heads... looking for body powders...
Are there any parts that they avoided eating out of morbid curiousity? Or did they messily eat them and just discard whatever was left in a wild frenzy?
Tadlo just stared at Ospher in response
What? I'm trying to look at this objectively and learn more about the nature of them.
The faces? They didn't eat the heads. and uh, and uhh I guess the bowels were still there. They didn't eat the junk. They ate limbs, bellies, ribcages were opened up.
Very pedestrian.
Speaking with Shae, she agreed to meet up, and we warned her that Donatello would not give up pursuit considering we told him we found Craenus' body. She said that's who they're worried about finding them since he's got a reputation to keep up. We explained what we found and what we think we found, to some skepticism, but when we explained the fight we had against Berris/Craenus, she was much more cuatious about the situation. We contact Brightshine and Crisnos to meet us in Trentpoole and so Tadlo, Lorgen, Charity, Ospher and I set back out to meet up with them and then proceed to Shae's location.
Shae, this is Adjenna.
Ohhhhhh.
You can talk to me telepathically if you so choose.
I don't choose for any of this to be happening.
This is the magic.
I didn't know you could do that, it's somewhat invasive, ok. What do you want?
It's not like I can read your thoughts.
Do you know where I am?
No.
What do you want?
Two things: 1) We need to met back up with you to discuss our investigations of the night and 2) Neville is here at the Orphanarium in case you need to get Bastille and his team back to work.
I'm glad he's ok, I guess. Sure, we can meet up with you somewhere, somewhere safe.
How long have you known Rosamin?
Not too long, maybe two three months.
Is she a friend of one of your circle or?
Yeah, she is. Her cousin started to manifest some abilities that I recruited which is how we started to meet. And he's one of my people.
Well I'm going to tell you something that's a little crazy on its face so I'm not surprising you with it when we arrive. Where would you like to meet up?
Maybe you should tell me this crazy thing before I decide to tell you my location?
It's mostly about us. We found the body of Craenus, it was shrunken down, it's currently in miniature size. The person who killed him has access to very strange magic.
So he's dead, I guess this whole thing is moot now.
Not completely.
You tell me when you're done, but I think we found Rosamin's body too.
What do you mean? She's here, she's been with me the entire time.
Craenus and another person who is dressed in Kreastos garb, and looks a bit like Neville and Norynor we found as well in affecting their escape.
I'll tie her down and we can figure this out when we get here, but you better have some proof.
I don't think tying her down would be smart.
Ok, I'll pretend like nothing's wrong until you get here.
This reminds me of the time we fought the Were-Horses at the swamps of Rylan. They bite you, you turn into a Were-Horse. They kick you with their hooves, you turn into a Were-Horse. Turns you against your friends. Turns not just your body but your mind. Turns you into a mad, wicked horse.
This is worse the the Were-spiders I think.
You lose not just yourself, but your other form, but it ain't a person like those other Weres, you're either a man-horse or a horse. The trigger ain't the moon, but hay. But anyway this ain't that bad, let's go pike 'em.
Arriving at the meetup, Shae met us outside, waiting on our arrival and remarked about the size of the group we brought over with us. We pulled out the miniature corpse of Rosamin to show her and she showed inside since a human corpse in a street would draw attention. Inside, we saw six of her youth fighters guarding the place on lookout, and Rosamin asleep in a chair. We briefly floundered about what to do and then after she confirmed that none of the 4 people from underneath the house were hers, I got her people out of the room to watch for Donatello and then we woke her up.
I didn't think you were bringing a small army with you over here.
These are dangerous times.
These are dangerous creatures.
Well there's no way you made it all the way over here without getting Donatello's attention, so be quick about it.
So assuming that tiny little thing is her, and unshrinkable, what are we doing?
Well she's a fae, so we just kill her.
We don't know is the point. We don't know for sure.
Well did you just want to gently nudge her back to consciousness and ask her? Make her a nice breakfast first? She's a monster!
I have, again, this is going to sound crazy
My god.
a number of heads in a sack that
Of course you do, why wouldn't you?
from Craenus' residence that were also infected, can you look in and confirm that none of them are your people?
Rosamin, Shae needed us to speak with you.
Who are you? Who are all of you?
We're friends of Neville and Norynor.
I'm not.
She understood that we found and rescued Neville and Norynor from a day hence and she was genuinely concerned for them. She answered my questions genuinely about Craenus' behavior that it was typical for him and not out of character. She was distraught but willing to help us try to identify the second corpse we found, so with everyone gathered around, we un-shrunk the corpse, filling the room with a sweet smell since there was more chocolate dry-rub on the corpse. She screamed and turned away and I asked her to turn back and look. We debated briefly about the nature of this body and after Crisnos confirmed that she is a Fae creature with his divine sense, I used a second vial of disenchantment on her, causing her to contort and twist while screaming and warped and flopped backwards and she revealed herself as a red one that was unconscious on the ground.
That's just the thing, when we got there and found our friends, we found that he had already been killed. I'm very sorry.
What?!
I have another question, we found somebody else there and I need to know if you recognize them.
Ok.
Just give me a moment here.
She is also dressed in Kreastos uniform, do you recognize her?
Who is that? What is that?
That's Rosamin.
I'm Rosamin! What is that, why are you carrying around a corpse?
That's Rosamin, we found her with Craenus.
I'm Rosamin! You found a corpse and you're naming it after me, that's all you're doing! I'm me!
This looks like a ragged corpse that's been nibbled on. That's not me! That's not me.
How about now?
Uhhhh, start at the leg?
We should preserve the brain though, somebody else already tried.
While stabbing her, Brightshine pointed out a strange stitched up scar on the Saudra-tai's skull and we realized she wasn't lying, and her brain had been implanted into a Red which is why she was so insistent that she was fine. After taking a census of all of us, the majority decided that killing her would be cruel and unwarranted since she wasn't even aware of all this. Ospher's assessment of corpse made it appear that the body was probably about two months deceased after accounting the preservation of the spider venom.
Niaba, why? What?! No! Why!
I can't believe how convoluted this scheme is.
Is it a fae or not? Where do we all stand?
She doesn't know that she's a fae.
Sure but at some point in the future she figures it out and starts eating people.
I think we have to help her.
You can't kill, can you take a brain, can we make a new body?
We can't kill her if she's innocent just cause she's in the wrong body.
I was in a rat's body and I dunno, just cause I was infesting somebody's house, I wouldn't want them to kill me just cause I was in the wrong body.
Brightshine, stop stabbing her, we need to look more closely at all this.
Why do you even bring me?!
Shae checked back in about this point to see what the screaming was about and didn't react well to seeing a Saudra-tai but explained that Rosamin's cousin was about at the LSYC HQ. She accepted that something was afoot here and cleared up an earlier deception about Ansom's location and that he was reliable and here with her outside and that he's been slowly developing his talents though he can barely work a cantrip.
Rosamin has been stitched into this Fae creature here. Her brain is inside here.
Is she dead, did they eat her? What are you saying?
Someone killed her to put her brain in here in this thing to have a plant inside your organization and she was unaware of this and when we broke the spell she passed out from the shock.
I think you know the real Rosamin that's still in there, but whoever introduced her to you is not a real human or elf or whatever.
Her cousin is the one that brought her in and said she would make a good contact.
Was he at the meeting here last night?
He's here with me, I just want to know what we've got to do. He's been with me a long time.
This isn't random. This isn't random.
No and this is getting more and more horrifying with every half an hour.
I guess I have to believe you because it's right in front of me, but are you gonna jump Ansom too?
I can always heal him after if we're wrong.
Ok, if you're wrong, try not to traumatize one of my people too bad.
We had Shae get Ansom into the flophouse while we hid the Saudra-tai and the corpse and as she walked in with him, I noticed that his face looked like an 11 year old version of Berris. Once the door was closed I nodded to Crisnos and he rushed at the kid and sliced deep into his arm, channeling a Smite Evil into the bastard, biting deep into his chest. As the flash of divine linght faded, Ansom's eyes rolled back into his head, his jaws got bigger and he proclaimed us as rude as he got larger and bluer and darker and started to tower over us. Ospher Catapulted the Iron Bands onto the creature, restricting its movements greatly and leaving a dark sore spot where the sphere first connected. Brightshine dealt two solid blows to the restrained monster, Tadlo deployed his tiny turtle Eldritch Cannon to protect everyone and pulled out his crossbow. Lorgen's shortbow and Crisnos' scimitar dealt wicked blows to it as well and the Immortality Malady took out a big gouge from his leg and Charity's Caustic Brew went wide of the creature in spite of the restraint and Shae's Magic Missile was similarly effective to my stab.
These things are resistant to elemental damage!
That's just great! You could have warned me about that!
There's a lot going on!
'Ansom' then exerted itself but couldn't break the Iron bands, the magic tightening them even more, preventing him from finding the reserves to attempt it again until tomorrow. He then attempted to cast some kind of spell at us, conjuring a Fireball, but Shae counterspelled the creature's work, sneering at the traitor. Ospher let loose a Magic Missle and Ansom surprised us letting loose a Shield spell stopping the eldritch force and toughening his hide significantly. Brightshine still connected with two savage thrusts of his pike, and Tadlo's shot skidded off the reinforced hide. Lorgan's shot stuck solidly in the shoulder and I dealt him another gouge in his abdomen. Charity's next Caustic Brew connected and started dissolving him.
Brightshine continued to strike true, and Ospher sliced his knee with the Dagger of Venom, Tadlo and Lorgen each landed a shot between the bands. Charity and Shae each launched a Firebolt landing and dealing a solid blow though his sliminess reduced the effectiveness of the attack. He was still able to maneuver his bite and both claws into hitting Shae as well as injecting her with its cruel parasites, at which point I stabbed it in the exposed throat and it yielded the fight for the time being. Brightshine kept the creature unconscious with his pike in Ansom's gut, while Rosamin transformed back into her human form as she came conscious.
Your elements refuse to touch me!
Yeah, we've heard it all before!
I feel sick.
I can fix that.
Fix what?
I can purge the disease from you.
What kind of disease?! Wherever you go, the absolute most insane things follow!
Do you want me to not?
No! I want you to purge it and then take care of these two frog giants that are in our flat and fix Rosamin!
While Rosamin was shrieking upon seeing the corpse and the Saudra-tai, she was backing into the kitchen and I attempted to explain we thought happened to her. She wondered if the large blue creature was the thing that killed Craenus and we explained that it likely ultimately was. Charity started working a Magic Circle to make sure she wasn't under influence of anyone while Ospher tried a Suggestion with the instructions to "Remain Rosamin and be true to herself." This had the unfortunately side effect of bolstering her confidence and demanding to leave immediately if Craenus was dead and there was no further threat to her. Finding it hard to argue with this point, and observing that she didn't appear to be be under any outside influence after casting the circle, we ultimately let her leave of her own accord, hoping that with her Ansom-Berris handler dead there's no easy way for the Berrii to get back into side Shae's inner circle and that Rosamin would be wary of new people coming into her life after this event.
Something happened to you some months ago.
What happened? What do you mean?
Somebody caught you somewhere, unawares.
What are you talking about?
How long ago did you meet Craenus?
A month ago? He was traveling on the road, the wheel on our wagon had come undone and the whole thing turned over, shook us up pretty bad, but I rememeber he was the one pulling me out.
Yeah that tracks.
Yeah, he's a good man. I know he has his pursuits, but he could have robbed my wagon and left me to die in there but he didn't.
It was a confidence job.
We're in love, that's not fraud.
The story you told with the wagon, he knew where you would be.
Ok, some minor bumps and bruises, but I was only out for a second and he didn't steal anything.
Well that thing could shapechange.
Certainly, I think that thing had its own will, this has the will of Rosamin.
Ok well you're the experts of this fucked up situation.
Well the upside is if Donatello breaks in here, he can't kill her without magic.
If Craenus is dead, I just want to go home. Shae, where's my cousin? Where's Ansom?
Shae was similarly frustrated here and wanted us to either fix Rosamin or kill her mercifully quickly, and while she didn't realize the former would be a tall order for us, the majority of us afterwards agreed that pursuing her wasn't going to be something we would do as a group, Crisnos' obsession driving him and Brightshine to be the only dissension. She departed with her group, letting them know Ansom isn't coming with and didn't want to expose them to all this since she worried that they would have too loose of lips among the rest of the Lily Street and left the flat to us.
Brightshine is hold a large pile of Saudra-tai intestines Can you cook it?
I'm sure I could, but I refuse.
Brightshine shrugs and gobbles it down raw
Oh my god!
If anything, this situation isn't that much different than what was happening to Ospher, right? And we didn't kill him.
I appreciate that by the way.
Yeah absolutely. Do the same for me. turning to Adjenna DO THE SAME FOR ME.
Don't do the same for me. You need to put me down.
Do we try do you want a day?
No.
Ok, well Ospher you're gonna have to do that.
I don't relish that duty.
As long as you understand that your cousin is dead, we did not kill him, he was likely murdered by this thing here.
This is NOT a small matter. I don't know how we can impress upon you how serious this all is. The whole city is in danger.
Whatever you say, sure.
This is gonna be a problem later, I'm telling you.
Crisnos, whatever you do on your time is none of my business.
I get it.
We gave the Ansom blue a moment to regenerate and he was still stuck within the bands and he came conscious enough to offer his surrender and demand to be given to the legal authorities of Frial. I began to rope a dope him, saying there's nothing a low level thug like him could really even offer in parley to spare his life, so there's no need for us to even talk and after a suggestion by Ospher to “Please, monologue” and some additional prompting by me, he revealed that there was still more at work in Frial and the Harvest Children would deliver the town to them on a plate. We slew him at this point with a Spirit Shroud active. Afterwards, Charity noticed that the Saudra-tai decomposed very rapidly, meaning that while it was alive, it is likely very vulnerable to attacks that wield necromantic energies, like the entire spellbook she recently threw away.
We didn't question the last one, we need to question this one.
I surrender?
That's what the other one said!
I surrender to you and the legal authorities of Frial.
Yes yes, just as the other one said. You are very tiresome things.
Do you think I'm not bored of you?!
I imagine you are, I don't know how long you have lived here in Tairos, but you are ancient, I understand that. And I hate you with every ounce of my being.
Ancient and powerful, our clan is.
I take it you don't know that we have already killed others of your kind?
You can't kill us, we stand for a greater cause. We are united, slice one down and another takes his place.
Yes, whomever is orchestrating you is very intelligent, much much more so than you.
I am incredibly intelligent, well-read, traveled, well versed in the ways of you tiny, awful creatures. How else could I impersonate you so flawlessly?
And definitely well fed.
This is not the feature of a very smart thing.
As humans say, work hard, play hard so I work hard and I eat hard.
Whatever horrible afterlife haunts your people, go to your hell, enjoy it.
I surrendered, remember?
Oh! I don't believe in laws.
Oh, well what is it you're asking for then? Some sort of parley to engage in to secure my exsistence?
Oh, I suppose eventually, but some low level thug like you impersonating a child won't have information we need.
LOW LEVEL?! I'm a BLUE. A blue Berris.
Yeah, but you're still a dumb Berris and that's worth just as much as this Berris pulling out the box with the red tadpole He did know anything either!
Well of course he didn't, he's Red!
Adjenna pulled out the blue head from the bloody sack Well he didn't either!
Not in that state, certainly. You have a functioning blue in front of you, the secrets of the cosmos lie at my beck and call.
You foolish fools have no idea of what unfolds around you do you? You couldn't possibly fathom the webs and the layers of the Saudra-tai and the Shadow Court. This city will be ours.
Oh so the shadow court is the one pulling the strings. Of course, never a Berris.
A Berris?? The lord of war himself, he is one of the Shadow Court and we serve our brother. And the Court will one day hold here in Frial as we eliminate the last of the balmorans and will reign supreme.
Fighting an old war. What a dumb thing to prosecute.
It's what the court wants, perhaps there are other reasons, you'd have to ask them. I cannot possibly claim to fathom the plans of our lord Berris and his court.
Stuck in this cursed land and you seek is to rule over the ashes instead of escape. How foolish.
You'll have to speak to one of the greens to know the truth of the matter, my orders are clear.
Orders. As I said, an underling, a thug.
Orders maybe by technicality, but it is a duty I've sworn myself to. Loyalty! You wouldn't understand, your kind can't live long enough to grasp a single concept, let something as beautiful as loyalty.
The offering comes tonight, we will have the Harvest Children make it for us and then we will be unopposed in taking the city. You see we're not the only ones who want to retake it for the heritage of the fae people. This city has drawn the ire of the false King, so we will give him an offering and he will agree to step aside.
From there we left to see Rowna, the Oracle of 8th Street, to learn exactly what she knew about this prior to our involvement. She was candid to a point and revealed that she contacted Tyrom because she knew him to be merciful and knew his friends (us) would be amenable to helping him here. After growing tired of her insinuations, I left and when the others eventually joined me outside, we started heading back to the Orphanarium to round up and figure out what we would do next before going to see The Harvest Children in Black Forest district.
What was it you told Tyrom?
I told him that he needed to help here.
You told him about Neville, there being a web?
A matter of great importance is unfolding or was unfolding in Trentpoole, I can't tell if it is unraveled or wound deeper, but I knew he needed to intervene.
How do the Harvest Children factor into this?
I only know what I know, I don't know everything. I just knew something important was happening in Trentpoole and it all centered around Lovers.
One of them is dead and the other has been corrupted by Fae.
I don't know if that's as it is supposed to be, I just know I told who I needed to. I can't tell if it unfolded the right way or not, can you? Are you happy with the way things turned out?
Yes and No. I have no attachement to Frial, but things are about to get very complicated after tonight.
Does that mean you're leaving?
I haven't decided.
It would be sad to leave all those children behind in a complicated situation, none of them strike me as the sort that can handle it without guidance.
I think I did the right thing by putting Tyrom and his people there. It seems like he has friends, powerful friends who care about him, and you did what needed to be done.
Setting aside the samewhat gamesman like maneuvering that had to go into this matter of kidnapped friends and possible animosity between two magic circles. This involves the whole city now. And by extension, the children under our care.
But of all the magic circles in the city, it unfolded the best way it could with the magic circles invovled. Tyrom was chosen because he had the most merciful mind and intentions and he also happened to be connected to a circle that cares about him. Certainly a circle that wouldn't have had any intentions to misuse what they found there?
So none of the other circles possess even a modicum of this mercy? or even allianceship or kinsmanship with another?
Each of them exist to further their own goals, you may look at say, The Prismatic Order and see them as more beneficent than the Lords of Trentpoole, but at the end of the day, they all wish to see themselves rise to prominence, and the others, well there's no room at the top for multiple circles.
The situation is dire then, if these Circles can't see beyond their own shortsighted and short term goals to see the danger that affects us all. We need to find a way to deal with this together.
Tyrom's isn't the only one, your circle is as well.
Yes, besides our reluctant status as a circle aside, we're just trying to take care of wayward children that came to us because of another mage's machinations.
Some people say Chaff like it's a bad word.
Just another curse that has no meaning to me personally.
Well, Chaff are at least free to make their own choices. There are certainly consequences that come with it, I don't think you're Chaff anymore, woe be to whatever freedom you think you might have, but you're certainly not Chaff.
Uhhh, thank you?
You can decide later how you feel about that later, but you're part of this now.
I don't really want to be bothered with these other Circles and how they play their games. I don't think that's gonna happen, now is it?
At the moment, at least up until tonight, you were fairly hands off as far as the other circles were concerned, but you're invovled now. I apologize about that for whatever part I have to play in it.
That's good. It's good to have friends. Friends here, friends above, friends in the heavens. Whoever your friends are it's good to have them.
Adjenna attempted to stare a hole through a blind woman's empty eyes
Can your sight provide anything on how to resolved this with no further bloodshed, or at least, minimal bloodshed?
It's tough to say, the pot is certainly boiling, we don't know where the fire is coming from or where what dish the chef intends to make now do we?
An interesting metaphor.
So here we are, just a matter of waiting, I suppose. Unless there's loose ends you want to follow up on. Perhaps this could be a cause you could take up? You mentioned the Harvest Children.
Where do they live?
A park for the most part.
Schwartzwald?
No that's a bit swanky for them, it's actually a cementary that quite full and long abandoned, nature has mostly reclaimed and and they've taken their share.
They're not a violent people, they won't attack you on sight.
Or demand a toll from visitors?
if anything, they'll offer you drink, food, drugs, and sex.
I take it the Shadow Court's manipulations render you unable to determine what they're up to, and you're not just being obtuse because you enjoy that sort of thing?
We all have our own hobbies and our own little secrets we entertain, I've given you everything you need and it sounds like you're the ones with a lead. The Harvest Children.
Adjenna turned on her heel and walked out the door
You are who?
Craenus, of course, this is my house.
I do and I live well. Who are you!?
And whom do I address that would dare breach my abode?
You are not Craenus, otherwise Mr. Brick would have already killed you.
Ah, yes a pointy a stick. It always comes to a pointy stick.
History has borne out the effectiveness of a pointy stick.
Who was I? I don't know, I am who I am now. You will be who you will be soon.
Where are the elf and human who visited here last night?
Why should I tell you? Slice me apart, throw me in the river, I'll be back. Turn me to ashes, I'll cobble together. Freeze me, I'll thaw.
He wasn't going to tell us, there wasn't anything we were getting from him.
I feel like we asked one question, we could have tried a little harder!
I guess.
I don't know what you're saying.
It's a Fae monster.
Can't say I've heard of it specifically, but I've killed a lot of Fae.
Hulking and Blue, has things it can inject into people from its claws. Toad like.
That sounds awful. I've only been after these things for a few months, you're probably better off speaking to the 'good' ones you keep at Grandmother's Tree.
I would have thought it was just maybe for an hour, uhhh.
If it was for an hour, they would be back, wouldn't they?
Well a figurative hour, for a while that isn't the rest of our lives.
It seems that everybody these days is into the permanency of magic.
I guess I appreciate that?
I'm not letting the two of you take it by yourselves, presumably. I'm not gonna let you get killed by spiders on your own and I'm not gonna let you stick me with the school either.
to OspherShe caught us!
They're in Frial?! They're members of the Shadow Court but that shouldn't exist anymore!
This one was blue?
Blue is bad, red's not as bad, but green's really bad and the dark one is the worst.
As far as danger, yes, but they're all really the same one. They're not a race, so much as they're all copies of each other. It's really just one sort of thing that can copy itself in other people.
So if they're hiding as people, they will look something like that?
If they've got a choice, yeah. But they could be you, they could be me just as easily.
Very specific!
I feel like I could probably handle it for a day and still find some whimsy on day two.
That's one way to escape your troubles.
This is just a thought, but if there is a way to reverse this and do it again, this would be an interesting way to save on food costs.
I'll be ok for now.
I can feel it clouding up my head, cold flowing through every one of my veins.
Where? Are we hiding? Are we taking the ones in the tunnels? Are we just going to blaze through? What's the plan?
Whiskers lead on. There's a lot of dead spider right here and we know they eat their own kind.
What is that? What is happening? Why are these spiders worse than every other spider we've ever seen?!
I mean, because we're as big as they are now?
That makes a lot of sense acctually. I don't think I could deal with this for more than 24 hours, I take it back.
Indeed. I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but it seems someone completed Mr Brick's request for us.
What a tragedy.
Oh no! The woman, she's under guard by Shae's circle. She must have been already replaced by one of these shapechangers.
Oh. Oh! I guess if we weren't goddamn mice, we could say something!
First things first. he produces two shrunken unconscious people from his pocket and removes the lid from the crate, planning to drop them into the spiderwebs and is greeted by a large plume of smoke I think we have a problem. The spiders are... dead!
with an extremely sad look on his face All dead? Every one of them? What happenend?!?
It's not even that, but thanks for putting that moral quandry into my head?
I won't tell if you won't.
If you could kindly help remove this from Orgastus' mouth.
Well, I don't know that we chose the best place to be tiny people. Don't let it discourage you from future possibilities.
Where is the best place for tiny people to have fun?
I don't know, a bakery?
Just being tiny on top of warm dough?
No, in the display case maybe.
Oh that too. I just thought the dough would be like a return to the womb.
For a little while at least.
HUSH!
How about "The Portal is safe"?
Yeah that sounds like something we would never say, sure.
Yeah, that's about as true as anything else.
I believe I can do that, intravenous or mixed drink?
I'll take a drink.
Can I help you?
What is this place?
Nowhere you need to know about.
It looks like a laboratory.
You're smarter than you look my young friend.
I look very smart! This a WARCRIME!
By what law??
You cannot experiment on a diplomat or a prisoner, by the laws of warfare and chivalry, enacted by the queen herself!
The queen of what?
The queen of Tairos.
There is no queen of Tairos.
We did our best to make the peace there and when we left to seek out Craenus by himself, that's when things fell apart. I wish I had more news for you.
She's got people other than kids that work with her. It's what she's know for, but you know. Can't get anything done with only kids as your allies.
Yeah, fair, ok.
You run an Orphanage, and you talk to a lot of people that ain't kids.
But I'm also not known as Auntie Adjenna.
That's probably a matter of preference? I'm sure they call you whatever you want.
Not especially.
Do you want us to stay by this crate?
I sort of think we may need your sinister-fae-killing expertise.
Yeah, I'm here for that.
Its still on the bodies on some of the parts they missed, if you're really curious.
I wasn't going to scrape it off of them, but thanks anyway.
Tadlo just stared at Ospher in response
What? I'm trying to look at this objectively and learn more about the nature of them.
The faces? They didn't eat the heads. and uh, and uhh I guess the bowels were still there. They didn't eat the junk. They ate limbs, bellies, ribcages were opened up.
Very pedestrian.
Ohhhhhh.
You can talk to me telepathically if you so choose.
I don't choose for any of this to be happening.
This is the magic.
I didn't know you could do that, it's somewhat invasive, ok. What do you want?
It's not like I can read your thoughts.
Do you know where I am?
No.
Two things: 1) We need to met back up with you to discuss our investigations of the night and 2) Neville is here at the Orphanarium in case you need to get Bastille and his team back to work.
I'm glad he's ok, I guess. Sure, we can meet up with you somewhere, somewhere safe.
Not too long, maybe two three months.
Is she a friend of one of your circle or?
Yeah, she is. Her cousin started to manifest some abilities that I recruited which is how we started to meet. And he's one of my people.
Well I'm going to tell you something that's a little crazy on its face so I'm not surprising you with it when we arrive. Where would you like to meet up?
Maybe you should tell me this crazy thing before I decide to tell you my location?
It's mostly about us. We found the body of Craenus, it was shrunken down, it's currently in miniature size. The person who killed him has access to very strange magic.
So he's dead, I guess this whole thing is moot now.
Not completely.
What do you mean? She's here, she's been with me the entire time.
Craenus and another person who is dressed in Kreastos garb, and looks a bit like Neville and Norynor we found as well in affecting their escape.
I'll tie her down and we can figure this out when we get here, but you better have some proof.
I don't think tying her down would be smart.
Ok, I'll pretend like nothing's wrong until you get here.
This is worse the the Were-spiders I think.
You lose not just yourself, but your other form, but it ain't a person like those other Weres, you're either a man-horse or a horse. The trigger ain't the moon, but hay. But anyway this ain't that bad, let's go pike 'em.
These are dangerous times.
These are dangerous creatures.
Well there's no way you made it all the way over here without getting Donatello's attention, so be quick about it.
We don't know is the point. We don't know for sure.
Well did you just want to gently nudge her back to consciousness and ask her? Make her a nice breakfast first? She's a monster!
My god.
a number of heads in a sack that
Of course you do, why wouldn't you?
from Craenus' residence that were also infected, can you look in and confirm that none of them are your people?
Who are you? Who are all of you?
We're friends of Neville and Norynor.
What?!
I have another question, we found somebody else there and I need to know if you recognize them.
Ok.
Just give me a moment here.
Who is that? What is that?
That's Rosamin.
I'm Rosamin! What is that, why are you carrying around a corpse?
That's Rosamin, we found her with Craenus.
I'm Rosamin! You found a corpse and you're naming it after me, that's all you're doing! I'm me!
Uhhhh, start at the leg?
We should preserve the brain though, somebody else already tried.
She doesn't know that she's a fae.
Sure but at some point in the future she figures it out and starts eating people.
You can't kill, can you take a brain, can we make a new body?
I was in a rat's body and I dunno, just cause I was infesting somebody's house, I wouldn't want them to kill me just cause I was in the wrong body.
Why do you even bring me?!
Is she dead, did they eat her? What are you saying?
Someone killed her to put her brain in here in this thing to have a plant inside your organization and she was unaware of this and when we broke the spell she passed out from the shock.
Her cousin is the one that brought her in and said she would make a good contact.
Was he at the meeting here last night?
He's here with me, I just want to know what we've got to do. He's been with me a long time.
No and this is getting more and more horrifying with every half an hour.
I can always heal him after if we're wrong.
Ok, if you're wrong, try not to traumatize one of my people too bad.
That's just great! You could have warned me about that!
There's a lot going on!
Yeah, we've heard it all before!
I can fix that.
Fix what?
I can purge the disease from you.
What kind of disease?! Wherever you go, the absolute most insane things follow!
Do you want me to not?
No! I want you to purge it and then take care of these two frog giants that are in our flat and fix Rosamin!
What happened? What do you mean?
Somebody caught you somewhere, unawares.
What are you talking about?
How long ago did you meet Craenus?
A month ago? He was traveling on the road, the wheel on our wagon had come undone and the whole thing turned over, shook us up pretty bad, but I rememeber he was the one pulling me out.
Yeah that tracks.
Yeah, he's a good man. I know he has his pursuits, but he could have robbed my wagon and left me to die in there but he didn't.
We're in love, that's not fraud.
The story you told with the wagon, he knew where you would be.
Ok, some minor bumps and bruises, but I was only out for a second and he didn't steal anything.
Certainly, I think that thing had its own will, this has the will of Rosamin.
Ok well you're the experts of this fucked up situation.
Well the upside is if Donatello breaks in here, he can't kill her without magic.
I'm sure I could, but I refuse.
Brightshine shrugs and gobbles it down raw
Oh my god!
I appreciate that by the way.
Yeah absolutely. Do the same for me. turning to Adjenna DO THE SAME FOR ME.
Do we try do you want a day?
No.
Ok, well Ospher you're gonna have to do that.
This is NOT a small matter. I don't know how we can impress upon you how serious this all is. The whole city is in danger.
Whatever you say, sure.
Crisnos, whatever you do on your time is none of my business.
I get it.
That's what the other one said!
I surrender to you and the legal authorities of Frial.
Yes yes, just as the other one said. You are very tiresome things.
Do you think I'm not bored of you?!
I imagine you are, I don't know how long you have lived here in Tairos, but you are ancient, I understand that. And I hate you with every ounce of my being.
Ancient and powerful, our clan is.
You can't kill us, we stand for a greater cause. We are united, slice one down and another takes his place.
Yes, whomever is orchestrating you is very intelligent, much much more so than you.
I am incredibly intelligent, well-read, traveled, well versed in the ways of you tiny, awful creatures. How else could I impersonate you so flawlessly?
And definitely well fed.
As humans say, work hard, play hard so I work hard and I eat hard.
Whatever horrible afterlife haunts your people, go to your hell, enjoy it.
I surrendered, remember?
Oh! I don't believe in laws.
Oh, well what is it you're asking for then? Some sort of parley to engage in to secure my exsistence?
Oh, I suppose eventually, but some low level thug like you impersonating a child won't have information we need.
LOW LEVEL?! I'm a BLUE. A blue Berris.
Well of course he didn't, he's Red!
Adjenna pulled out the blue head from the bloody sack Well he didn't either!
Not in that state, certainly. You have a functioning blue in front of you, the secrets of the cosmos lie at my beck and call.
Oh so the shadow court is the one pulling the strings. Of course, never a Berris.
A Berris?? The lord of war himself, he is one of the Shadow Court and we serve our brother. And the Court will one day hold here in Frial as we eliminate the last of the balmorans and will reign supreme.
Fighting an old war. What a dumb thing to prosecute.
It's what the court wants, perhaps there are other reasons, you'd have to ask them. I cannot possibly claim to fathom the plans of our lord Berris and his court.
You'll have to speak to one of the greens to know the truth of the matter, my orders are clear.
Orders. As I said, an underling, a thug.
Orders maybe by technicality, but it is a duty I've sworn myself to. Loyalty! You wouldn't understand, your kind can't live long enough to grasp a single concept, let something as beautiful as loyalty.
I told him that he needed to help here.
You told him about Neville, there being a web?
A matter of great importance is unfolding or was unfolding in Trentpoole, I can't tell if it is unraveled or wound deeper, but I knew he needed to intervene.
How do the Harvest Children factor into this?
I only know what I know, I don't know everything. I just knew something important was happening in Trentpoole and it all centered around Lovers.
I don't know if that's as it is supposed to be, I just know I told who I needed to. I can't tell if it unfolded the right way or not, can you? Are you happy with the way things turned out?
Yes and No. I have no attachement to Frial, but things are about to get very complicated after tonight.
Does that mean you're leaving?
I haven't decided.
It would be sad to leave all those children behind in a complicated situation, none of them strike me as the sort that can handle it without guidance.
Setting aside the samewhat gamesman like maneuvering that had to go into this matter of kidnapped friends and possible animosity between two magic circles. This involves the whole city now. And by extension, the children under our care.
But of all the magic circles in the city, it unfolded the best way it could with the magic circles invovled. Tyrom was chosen because he had the most merciful mind and intentions and he also happened to be connected to a circle that cares about him. Certainly a circle that wouldn't have had any intentions to misuse what they found there?
So none of the other circles possess even a modicum of this mercy? or even allianceship or kinsmanship with another?
Each of them exist to further their own goals, you may look at say, The Prismatic Order and see them as more beneficent than the Lords of Trentpoole, but at the end of the day, they all wish to see themselves rise to prominence, and the others, well there's no room at the top for multiple circles.
Tyrom's isn't the only one, your circle is as well.
Yes, besides our reluctant status as a circle aside, we're just trying to take care of wayward children that came to us because of another mage's machinations.
Just another curse that has no meaning to me personally.
Well, Chaff are at least free to make their own choices. There are certainly consequences that come with it, I don't think you're Chaff anymore, woe be to whatever freedom you think you might have, but you're certainly not Chaff.
You can decide later how you feel about that later, but you're part of this now.
I don't really want to be bothered with these other Circles and how they play their games. I don't think that's gonna happen, now is it?
At the moment, at least up until tonight, you were fairly hands off as far as the other circles were concerned, but you're invovled now. I apologize about that for whatever part I have to play in it.
Adjenna attempted to stare a hole through a blind woman's empty eyes
It's tough to say, the pot is certainly boiling, we don't know where the fire is coming from or where what dish the chef intends to make now do we?
An interesting metaphor.
So here we are, just a matter of waiting, I suppose. Unless there's loose ends you want to follow up on. Perhaps this could be a cause you could take up? You mentioned the Harvest Children.
A park for the most part.
Schwartzwald?
No that's a bit swanky for them, it's actually a cementary that quite full and long abandoned, nature has mostly reclaimed and and they've taken their share.
Or demand a toll from visitors?
if anything, they'll offer you drink, food, drugs, and sex.
We all have our own hobbies and our own little secrets we entertain, I've given you everything you need and it sounds like you're the ones with a lead. The Harvest Children.
Adjenna turned on her heel and walked out the door
Character(s) interacted with
Tyrom of the Order of the Basilisk - He is happy our friends are rescued, perhaps he can repay our assistance in similar favor.
Mr. Brick of the Lords of Trentpoole - We didn't meet back up with him after sorting this out, but we'll see him at a meeting we've attempted to convene soon.
Auntie Shae of Lily Street Youth Club - If all this doesn't put us on her good side, I cannot imagine what will.
Rosamin, Agent of the Kreastos - Maybe after some time passes, Rosamin will be more amenable to accepting the unvarnished truth of what happened here.
Craenus, Dock Master - Deceased. Maybe the real Craenus was as kind as Rosamin believed and wanted, but if that's the case his death is even more of a tragedy.
The Oracle of 8th street - Her veiled words and their associated games are tiresome. If she thinks we're to work for her as well, I won't accept this.
Donatello, Mercenary for the LoT - On the whole, I respect this guy, he's an artisan of death. Hard-assed jerk, sure, but a master.
Multitudes of Orgastus Lycenius Berris - Overconfident, boisterous, and gluttonous. These things are quite dangerous and difficult to fight and kill.
Neville - Alive and once again tailed by Bastille.
Norynor - Alive and a bit of damaged pride in the ambush.
Mr. Brick of the Lords of Trentpoole - We didn't meet back up with him after sorting this out, but we'll see him at a meeting we've attempted to convene soon.
Auntie Shae of Lily Street Youth Club - If all this doesn't put us on her good side, I cannot imagine what will.
Rosamin, Agent of the Kreastos - Maybe after some time passes, Rosamin will be more amenable to accepting the unvarnished truth of what happened here.
Craenus, Dock Master - Deceased. Maybe the real Craenus was as kind as Rosamin believed and wanted, but if that's the case his death is even more of a tragedy.
The Oracle of 8th street - Her veiled words and their associated games are tiresome. If she thinks we're to work for her as well, I won't accept this.
Donatello, Mercenary for the LoT - On the whole, I respect this guy, he's an artisan of death. Hard-assed jerk, sure, but a master.
Multitudes of Orgastus Lycenius Berris - Overconfident, boisterous, and gluttonous. These things are quite dangerous and difficult to fight and kill.
Neville - Alive and once again tailed by Bastille.
Norynor - Alive and a bit of damaged pride in the ambush.
