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[Xanmyral]

Morton must admit his surprise as the oddity that was the pink mage turned bush and the strange event with the man, but he recovered quickly. He's become quite adept at bouncing back from oddity, after all.

"Ah, greetings again good mage Lawrence! I'm glad you're joyous at your changed form, but I must admit it is a shame at the timing from the sounds of it. Life works in strange ways in these things. Is it truly too late for your prior opportunity? You may hopefully yet find another."

Morton queried the bush, after politely greeting the pink mage.

[Harry Baldman]

In a house out in the back country...

Kevin is anxious to get back into the actual world of the properly living already, and does not extend the goodbye more than it needs to be.

"No, not really. Thanks for the food, by the way. It was delicious. Good luck with your little ones!" he says to Ms. Klemm as he heads for the exit.

"You too!" Ms. Klemm replies, there one moment, completely gone the next. Kevin thus opens the door of the disintegrating house and goes out, hit by a blast of fresh air as he beholds a village.

The house he was in is indeed rather tiny, and appears to have been placed on a hill somewhat away from the other buildings in the village, which are all arranged in a set of very rough concentric circle down below, including a larger building that reminds Kevin of an inn and what is very probably a smithy. Further away he can see a few farmhouses and empty fields, probably on account of it being either winter or early spring right now. Kevin hasn't exactly been paying attention to that.

He briefly recalls herself once being assigned to such a village by her superiors (back in the days when she had any) to oversee the construction of a new tower to host a new branch office of the Circle. It offered her much room for improvisation, many opportunities for entrenching herself, quite a few souls to harvest from the surrounding area without the interference of anyone with even a modicum of magical skill, since eliminating the local witch after she refused to join the new branch, as per Circle protocol, was the very first thing she took care of. A bloodless, possibly even painless removal of the soul in one's sleep, then release - a very good test of her third focus, in fact...

Kevin shakes his head before he gets too lost in memories. Probably best not to stand too long in front of the creepy house of the hill lest someone get the wrong idea.


In the wilderness near Eckledun...

Sigmund is nothing if not patient, and decides to wait for something to pass by so he can steal its body with impunity. Before long, his designs bear fruit, as soon enough he becomes aware of an animal wandering close by. It seems reasonably large, so he activates the focus, designating the creature as a target. After a few automatic pulls, the soul of the thing comes free, and Sigmund's soul is effortlessly inserted into it with supreme efficiency. Now that's a well-designed magical focus he's got here, Sigmund realizes as he evaluates his new body, which appears to be a roaming badger. Not quite the optimal creature to get slotted into, but very nice nevertheless.

[Sigmund's will roll: 4]

He does feel a little sick, though. He wonders why, and then notices that he seems to still be able to move the pile of gore that he used to be. In addition, he's getting sensory input from it even now. Odd.


In the halls of Castle Fenton...

Niklas, not even a little bit embarrassed, goes ahead and tries to cheekily elaborate on his conduct.

"Well, sire, I was bored, you see. That grants me moral freedom. Anyway, I'm not sure I remember what I originally looked like anymore, so I'm just going to stay like this for the time being, unless you discriminate against floating chimeric abomination chefs."

"As it happens, I do. The Mystery Forge tends to have many unfortunate side effects, and your appearance is making castle staff uncomfortable," King Fintel explains. "We wouldn't want to make castle staff uncomfortable, would we?"

Niklas wonders if the castle staff would be particularly discomfited if one of them were boiled and marinaded as an example to all the rest about what happens to tattletales. But he has a better idea.

"Anyhow, I just want to try this one thing this form lets me do. It's very curious, something to do with nutrients."

King Fintel tilts his head and raises an eyebrow as Niklas tries to do the extendo-thing, and it works most admirably, as tendrils practically invisible to the naked eye shoot forward out of his body, collectively looking like a cloud of blackish fluff. It touches the king immediately, running into his flesh, going through his body, digging holes in his flesh to make room for itself to dwell in. Fundamentally connected now, Niklas' mycelium begins to fully explore the surprised king, bending his body to his will.

"See, that is exactly what I'm talking about," says King Fintel. "You seem to have some god fungus in you. Looks like Pac's work. Was that on you before you went into the Mystery Forge? Seems vaguely self aware, partly keyed to your mental processes. Might have connectivity between bodies. Hang on."

Suddenly, a large part of the tendrils within Niklas snap off and withdraw into the king's body, which seems to have become a shade darker now, then lightens to become a bit whiter than before, then returns to its proper, tanned shade.

"This might come in handy, actually. Unobtrusive if properly applied, effective for subjugation, has a unified soul across bodies... why, yes. Most interesting."

Niklas starts to feel a bit odd as his flesh becomes lighter as well.

"Well now! That's a very nice gift you've given me," says King Fintel. "But you'll have to get a regular body nevertheless. Hang on."

Niklas' body snaps in three different places down his central axis, then his wings fold inward, and finally he rolls up, becoming a large darkish blob with two eyes, all of which he remains conspicuously aware of for some reason. And then, just as suddenly, his body sprouts arms and legs and a head, and attains definition as it forms into the body of a rather stumpy, bearded, dark-skinned humanoid with a pointy black hat that may be a protrusion of the skull rather than an article of clothing, and little else on him beyond that.

"Was that what you were supposed to look like? I forget. You may want to get some clothes, anyway. Call a maid or something. And, of course, stay away from the Mystery Forge from now on. That thing's not for the untrained, and I don't feel like training another lunatic to use it. Finally, be discreet about this whole business if you don't mind. There may be a bit of trouble for you if you say a little too much."


At the bar of the Purging Crab...

Suspecting that gravity is out of whack, Mark casts a suspicious eye around the tavern. It's a little strange that ale should behave this way. It's clearly some form of magic by virtue of the fact that it can't be regular physics, since, once again, physics doesn't behave this way.

That one of the patrons off in the corner seems to have his teeth a few inches to the left of his actual mouth, suspended in air, confirms that it's probably some kind of magic. That a patron next to the toothless man tries to have a drink and instead is upward abruptly while his ale remains perfectly still, leaving a very unfortunate smear on the ceiling, provides Mark with the idea that this might not be the fun kind of magic, either. Insofar as grievous bodily harm can be unfun, of course.


In the house of an unidentified voice...

Scott plainly does not like the cut of this fellow's jib.

"My good man, I can veritably exclaim that I do not in fact...suck eggs...so please spare the lecture of said action. But you however seem to tire of my company so I will now make my farewell."

He then immediately pops into a nearby wall, which is fortunately thick enough to accommodate his blobby form.

"In which I mean that you must, please, rest in pieces," he attempts to say, though due to the wall it doesn't really come out very audibly. So he pops out again and tries to make his point anyway.

[Firestarting roll: 3]

He manages to set off a spark near a very flammable-looking nearby free-hanging curtain, and is critically disappointed when it fails to catch on any sort of fire.

"Go home, you're drunk and not even a wizard, so I don't even have to be nice to you," says the voice, and Scott attempts to retreat into a wall, but when he crosses it, suddenly finds himself falling. It feels a bit weird, being a ghost and falling. Looking down, he notices he seems to be above the town of Eckledun, which he recognizes by its tower and sturdy buildings.

Also, he can't quite move, which is a little odd.


In the chamber of the Crown of Flowers...

Darren is displeased by this rather aggressive attitude on the part of both sides of the conflict.

"Before I get ripped to shreds by an angry god, or my soul gets ripped to shreds, or whatever the hell my fate is, can you tell me what's gone on down here? Why I've been sent down here as some mook to come and get the crown?"

"Oh, you're not a mook. You're an adventurer. And you're about to make a return on Velusius' magical investment that I petitioned him to make rather foolishly. Souls are what make the gods run just as much as the demons, they simply have the privilege of getting them by default. And once you manage to take the Crown, then everything in here except you will die, you'll have the favor of Velusius, and you'll then be the next investment he gets to reap. Simple, no?"


In the streets of Eckledun...

Morton tries his best not to be bothered by the sudden strange behavior of the nearby man, and keeps the conversation flowing.

"Ah, greetings again good mage Lawrence! I'm glad you're joyous at your changed form, but I must admit it is a shame at the timing from the sounds of it. Life works in strange ways in these things. Is it truly too late for your prior opportunity? You may hopefully yet find another."

"No bloody point in being inconspicuous anymore, old sod. Look around you."

Craig suddenly disappears into the ground.

"Look around you," Lawrence restates, before spinning off into distance himself, though he continues speaking as if entirely uninterrupted. "Look around you. Do you see it yet?"

"Correct," he says after a moment, after fragments of a dog tear past where he formerly was. "It's the Pink."

Morton's sight is drawn to something in the distance, a thing that appears for but a moment, speeding past an intersection, thankfully orthogonally to the direction Morton's in. A flash of something large and pink as it disappears, the ground erupting in sharp, monolithic magenta towers several stories in height as it passes. A soft wind blows toward Morton from the towers as he wonders what this might be all about.

[miauw62]

((Unified soul between bodies... Hmm... Is the Gub just a fungal infection?))

Head towards the town

[Tomcost]

((I am finally able to move!))

Bury my pile of flesh, so that it doens't get any kind of stimuli from the outside world.

Then test how far away can I be from it without suffering.

[killerhellhound]

((I am finally able to move!))

Bury my pile of flesh, so that it doens't get any kind of stimuli from the outside world.

Then test how far away can I be from it without suffering.

(If you can't get to far you always can eat it and take it with you that way. Hmm can a soul be captured via eating of the vessel? Needs testing.)

Go outside and meet up with my companions get my axe ready as I do so

[Tomcost]

((I am finally able to move!))

Bury my pile of flesh, so that it doens't get any kind of stimuli from the outside world.

Then test how far away can I be from it without suffering.

(If you can't get to far you always can eat it and take it with you that way. Hmm can a soul be captured via eating of the vessel? Needs testing.)

Go outside and meet up with my companions get my axe ready as I do so

Or commit suicide via autocannibalism.

[Innsmothe]

''hello? Hellooooo? Have I been invited to join the pantheon? I am sure I would do pretty well as the god of misfortune...''

Attempt to move down in a controllable fashion with staggering willpower.


EDIT

[Xantalos]

Niklas nods obsequiously and backs away, looking about for a maid or something. Internally he's a bit chuffed, but he isn't going to express that to the godking or whatever that was.

Why is it that whenever I run into someone in charge of something they inevitable end up having vast magical and/or physical superiority over me? It's almost like southron society rewards hard work and ingenuity with positions of power or something.

"Is there a maid anywhere near?"

[Xanmyral]

"Oh dear."

"Good tailor Craig?" The desk took in the insanity around him, slightly distressed that good tailor Craig had vanished. "This is the pink..." The tea apostle certainly can't say he expected this, nor if he was really talking to anyone anymore. Moving away from the strange occurrence, the desk went off to hurriedly find his allies. Being alone in this mess will only spell disaster. Morton hoped good tailor Craig was alright, but if there's one thing the demonologist has shown him, he's a resourceful survivor. The others though...

The desk says his piece and hurries off to find his allies (in a direction away from the pink/crazy, and this includes finding Craig should he manage to find a way to follow/find him), trying to float or move as high as he can for a greater vision, even if that has to involve using his strange and many arms to essentially grip and hoist himself on buildings.

[Harry Baldman]

Outside the creepiest house of a quaint out-of-the-way village...

Kevin, in no mood for careful deliberation when his reputation as a decent human being may be at stake, legs it over to the center of the village, as it would indeed be very charitable to call it a town. It's two and a half rows of wooden buildings arranged around a circular dirt clearing, after all.

In addition, it has a bit of a half-abandoned vibe going for it, as it has only the vaguest sounds of life emanating from its buildings and perhaps one or two people Kevin can see in the distance, and even those don't really look like prosperous, proud lowland folk with a rich cultural tradition by any means, having more of an aimless drifter or simply drifting and aimless look to them. The smithy appears to be working, though, and the inn is clearly open. There's also what looks like a meeting hall, but it seems to have partially collapsed.


In the wilderness outside Eckledun...

Sigmund, unwilling to lose this badger body in favor of the rather useless pile of flesh that he appears to remain in spite of his best efforts, lumbers over to where he knows it to be and does his best to bury it, which is rather easy to do, all things considered, which is the first warning sign Sigmund gets that this may not have ultimately been a great idea. For one, the result changes rather little in the amount of feedback from said pile of flesh that he's getting, only the variety of it.

He does feel a little better being close to it, though, he notes. So, as his first quest, he decides to try and wander away from the shallow grave of the last remnants of the stolen body the gub happened to give him. This time he makes it for quite a distance without feeling anything at all. Odd, he thinks, as this appears to expose a rather dire inconsistency in how the universe is currently screwing him over. That it seems to be in his favor for now just makes it all the more suspicious.


Within the Purging Crab...

Mark, after casting a quick suspicious glance about, decides that this place definitely ain't safe, and decides to get off the stool and head outside, taking Wilma and his one beast band along. Wilma seems confused.

"What's even happening right now?" she wonders aloud as she looks at the way the tavern starts to descend into pandemonium as people notice the splattered guy. "Looks like some kind of magic," she then observes, then gasps when she sees Mark readying a great and terrible axe he seems to have fashioned out of reconstituted hobo bone. Of questionable practicality, but fearsome looks, the thing menaces with eyes of hobo, and the less said about the rest of it and how exactly Mark has been keeping it hidden thus far, the better. He and his two friends walk out of the tavern cautiously, and join the confused Morton, who appears to be quite distraught and missing his traveling companion. In the distance, a spiky row of pink towers can be seen, and Mark briefly wonders if that's normal before guessing he should just follow Morton anyway, who seems to be most wisely heading away from that direction.

Or at least they seemed to be about to do that, but then the sudden appearance of a rather strange and decrepit, not to mention distinctly bluish fellow, holding a perfect T-shaped pose, arms outstretched as wide as possible, seems to interrupt them, floating up next to their group and vibrating intensely and emitting a low hum, possibly with intent to communicate, but more likely with intent to explode suddenly. That's not to say Morton would immediately assume the worst of such a person, vibration, floating and ominous noise notwithstanding - why, if he were the sort to judge by that criteria, he'd probably not consider good sir Scott anything more than the public menace he clearly is, and that just doesn't seem like a very Morton thing to do. Then again, good sir Scott, for all his faults, also does not attempt to resemble a human being in any way, so perhaps the jury's still out on this one.


High up in the sky above Eckledun...

Scott, as usual, appears to be several steps behind the current events, having more than enough cause to think long and hard on whether the universe is throwing him all these curveballs on purpose, and what he can do to make the bloody bastard universe dearly regret doing so in the near future if this is indeed the case.

''Hello? Hellooooo? Have I been invited to join the pantheon? I am sure I would do pretty well as the god of misfortune...'' he asks of the air, perhaps even vaguely aware that there is no reasonable way the answer to that question could be yes - though, to be fair, the laws of anti-nature do not turn on anything that could be described as reason as far as he could possibly know.

Unfortunately, though, it doesn't seem like he's guessed correctly, as Eckledun draws closer, and Scott becomes keenly aware that the forces of drag and other such aerodynamic wizardry don't seem to apply to a purely intangible object for some reason, and that he seems to be picking up a clearly unreasonable amount of speed. Maybe he could conjure some fire around himself to complete the look?


In the halls of Castle Fenton...

Niklas, naked and gnomish and with few ideas at the moment, beseeches the king for some sage advice.

"Is there a maid anywhere near?" he asks, and the king rubs his chin for a second, considering what must be a multitude of good ideas no doubt involving some form of bodily harm being visited on the poor, entirely innocent chef (at least he thinks he's innocent, attempted regicide doesn't really count if the assailant is clearly this far outclassed, right?).

"You get to find out," King Fintel says, making a very compelling gesture with his hand that makes Niklas desperately want to go looking for maids to speak with, and since this is likely to be his immediate goal anyway, he just goes and does it without particularly questioning the urge.

"Aha! It works!" says the king, his voice growing distant as Niklas rushes off in a frantic search, immediately barreling into a stout, powerful maid while turning a corner. He smacks right into her and falls backward, while the maid merely stumbles back a little.

"Ah! You startled me," she states, looking over Niklas' strange form. "Wait, who are you, even? You do not look like you belong in a castle," she continues. But Niklas isn't particularly listening, since there is a rather insistent voice he keeps hearing right now in his head.

~touch her touch her touch her~ it seems to be chanting at great speed, which Niklas finds a little annoying, to be honest.

[Tomcost]

Hmm, this is indeed odd. Maybe Sigmund totally overcame his inseparability problems all by sheer willforce? Further testing may be necessary. Anyway, his soul appears to be still bound to the pile of flesh, thanks to that inseparability, and maybe distance can't break said inseparability. This can only mean that, if his soul ever wanted to leave from his current body, it will still remain attached to the pile of flesh. A pile of flesh near a soul-changing focus! Could this be? Could Sigmund had found a means to immortality? As long as his now precious pile of flesh survived, he would be able to steal another body eventually, and then continue his living existence!

Happily climb a tree and look for any signs of civilization. Begin moving towards that direction

[Innsmothe]

As much as he would like to imitate a flaming space rock of doom, Scott is fairly certain that surrounding himself with fire will hurt...a lot...maybe more than the impact.

He will instead scream:''Mortals! I have been summoned to give you wisdom and guidance from the heavens, prostrate yourselves before this heavenly spirit!''

[Xantalos]

Voice, if you know anything about me it's that I'm all too willing to do radical things in the name of myself, so you needn't pester me.

"I'll have you know I'm the representative of the Black Circle, and I require clothes! Also, I will now touch you."

Touch the lady while "politely" (read: imperiously) asking for clothes.

[killerhellhound]

Move behind a building and wait till either the guy blows up or Morton makes him behave in a non violent way

((I think the Gub got bored of waiting for us to do our job

[miauw62]

Walk up to one of the drifters and ask them where this is