In the Sea of Pleasant Winds...Niklas, quite happy at the way everything seems to be coming up his way, blorbles a little before he realizes his vocal apparatus doesn't work underwater, then tries to find a northward direction. Fortunately, like all the rest of his kind, Niklas has an impeccable sense of direction. Not to mention that the ship he was just thrown off of was going approximately that way as well. So he drags himself along the bottom of the sea for a while until he comes across something interesting - a ship! A wrecked ship, but still a ship. It doesn't look too old or too decrepit. In fact, it's rather fresh as far as shipwrecks go. Not a bad find, really.
In a secret laboratory in Blynn...Timothy, supposing that he can do nothing too important in this secret lab, figures he should memorize where this place is - simple, considering that it is obviously a tavern and thus built to be somewhat distinct from its surroundings - and do something about the hungry fellow's food situation. So he does exactly that, heading invisibly and cautiously into the town and searching for a wheelbarrow of some kind he could filch and fill with food. Unfortunately, he can't seem to locate any such thing - at least, no such thing that isn't in use. There are some metallic plates covered in supplies that occasionally float past him in the streets, probably moved by somebody else's mind, but he's pretty sure someone would know if he jacked one of those.
He does notice one thing about the food in this town, though - it looks pretty samey. All of it appears to be made up of different-colored cubes that people occasionally sit down and eat. No fresh food in sight, seems like. And there, once again, don't appear to be any places to get food aside from these buildings where people walk in at lunchtime and come out with small packs of those food cubes - Timothy notices a tendency of careful rationing of food on the part of the townspeople. And they
never seem to let go of their food packs.
Traveling on the Second Shank across the Sea of Pleasant Winds, day four...Kevin, having realized that he has veritable oodles of potential bubbling up within his soul, utilized the first half of his day finding out the secrets of his own body. And while he could not discover exactly how it worked or how to control it, he did realize one thing - he could plunge his own hand within his own body, then also withdraw it harmlessly. Interestingly, the same principle was in effect for his legs as well, and he discovered he could very nicely compact himself into a sphere, then return to his regular shape. Highly intriguing. Further experimentation, however, failed to provide significant results. So he decided to practice his vocal abilities instead, stepping on deck and simply starting what eventually amounted to an impromptu opera. The shades seemed to like it, and the Artiste gave him a thumbs up when he passed by. Eventually the deck was even visited by the other mages, who seemed to have arrived for the express purpose of listening to him. Kevin had never felt so appreciated in his career. And when he was finally done, they applauded. They liked him! They really liked him for once!
Scott tried to find the Captain today, and did so quite frantically at that. So frantically, in fact, that he decided to look outside the ship as well, which just so happened to be the exact place the Captain was, wonderfully enough. He then asked the Captain for help with this whole ghost thing. The Captain, though quite busy, was apparently feeling very informative. And concise, as he managed to convey exactly what Scott needed to know in no more than three or so sentences, in which he explained that Scott, as a ghost, should have four distinct powers - moving things with his mind, teleporting around, shrieking in an ungodly manner and throwing his voice with all the talent of a master ventriloquist. He then tells Scott that, if he has failed to manifest these powers so far, that's probably just him being unused to them, and the best strategy would be to keep trying - he definitely should have them, at any rate. Regrettably, though, Scott is not helped by this bit of instruction - he knows he should have telekinesis and those other things, but they still seem to be stubbornly locked away somehow, as he discovered during the arduous subsequent experimentation he did. When asked, the Captain could provide little help, stating that he was more of a
"learn by EXPERIENCE!" type than a good teacher for this kind of thing, as he had hardly thought about having powers at all, and had merely mysteriously, suddenly and inexplicably had them at some undefinable point he could not remember due to reasons of insanity and lacking any reasonable frames of reference for that time period. All in all, Scott had essentially wasted another day.
Morton, unlike his compatriots, had a very busy day filled with literal enchantment. First order of business was asking Evelyn how enchantment actually works - the difficulties and such, nuances of the process, limitations of enchantments. Evelyn proved to be informative as usual, and seemed to be in an even better mood today than the previous day for some reason. She explained to him that the issue with enchantment difficulties was that, the more complex and nuanced an enchantment, the harder it is to effectively will it to be and the less feasible it is to incorporate the idea into the Single Thought Chant. There are, of course, more advanced chants for these concepts, but those were sadly not covered in the courses she took. However, they were reputed to take even longer and require more focus and linguistic ability than most were able to muster. Another plague of enchanters was apparently vagueness - the more vague a specified and willed request, the more likely it was for it to go catastrophically wrong. She especially advised against willing something to be generically magical, as that could result in pretty much anything. Instead, if one wanted to make something generically magical, one should will it to glow instead. Finally, one could enchant an object as much as they wanted, but it was increasingly likely that reality would become more than a bit unstable if one added more than, say, two or three, and such work required quite a bit of expertise and more than a little luck, apparently. So, if Morton happened to be enchanted somehow after his trip to the Realm of Dreams, he would indeed be harder to endow with magical capabilities, though that did not have to be the case, necessarily. Morton took this advice to whatever he had for a heart these days, and headed off to... no, wait... he was bothered by something, actually. Something was missing. He went and asked Art if he had noticed something different about the ship. Art replied that he hadn't, really. Everything
seemed normal to him, anyway. Morton, though still not sure if Art's assessment was correct, figured there was little else to do but carry on. Maybe it was one of those unfounded strange feelings. Oh well. He then retired to the kitchen and began to chant away, experiencing first a fading of the self from the Listening Chant, then a fading of external stimuli and an emergence of a single thought (which just so happened to be the concept of room temperature), then a fading of everything but that single thought, and then focused his magnified and focused will into a flask, singlemindedly willing it to attain and maintain a comfortable lukewarm temperature, which seemed to work out just fine and without any significant problems for all of the flasks he had (five, by last count) - they were all now constantly at a temperature of a reasonably heated room, as a short trip up to the deck proved. Carried onward by his success, Morton made tea in a rather jubilant manner, then returning to chanting. Though it seems to have worked, the effect of the enchantment was a bit harder to gauge - something happened to the tea, obviously, but it wasn't as obvious as the constant temperature of the flasks. Also, the tea had gone cold by the time he managed to enchant it, and he wasn't sure if heating it was safe. Regardless, though, he seemed to have taken the first great step to becoming a decent enchanter and also apparently devised a manner of serving ghosts tea, which was really very good, considering how new he was at all this.
Mark used the first half of the day like he did the rest of his days - fishing. He managed to catch six fish, which was not altogether too bad, and also left him with only six more sacrifices required for freedom. All very fine and wonderful. Quite tired of this fishing business, he then sets up a practice range with some fish serving as targets. his crossbow serving as the weapon to practice with and Erin serving as a limitless supply of bolts. It was all fun and games, but Mark really doubted the usefulness of the range, considering that it wasn't a particularly long range (twenty meters, give or take a few), Mark was already familiar with how a crossbow is operated, having been a mercenary in a previous life, and the also significant fact fish weren't likely to be what he might fight during his time on the Sea of Death, being relatively regular-sized and lacking in extremely dangerous capabilities like movement or being in their element. Disappointed at the way the ship did not lend itself to combat training, Mark sought out the Artiste, hoping to introduce some naval discipline to this operation regardless. After finding the fellow on deck enjoying Kevin's vocal performance, he produced a note that said '
Can we officially make Erin quartermaster and make here responsible for our supplies she could use something to do aside from transmuting and someone knowing what we have and need could be useful.'. The Artiste's reply was
"She's already the quartermaster, pretty much, being the only one who can produce supplies. Anybody who needs anything, they visit her and get it if they don't know where to find it. Transmutation seems to make the title of a quartermaster superfluous, really. Especially if you consider that, of the people on deck, only I and Erin actually need any sort of regular sustenance while the others only have occasional requests for unusual items we don't seem to have anyway. All in all, people around here seem to be pretty good at keeping their own counsel and not needing anything." This reply was not terribly encouraging for Mark.
Sigmund, feeling a little more absentminded today than usual, practiced his wind magic all day. The result was a whole lot of wind on deck, which eventually proved so distracting that the Artiste politely asked Sigmund to stop. Or at least go somewhere else to practice. Sigmund nodded in halfhearted agreement and went to the cargo hold. The result was a whole lot of wind in the cargo hold, which, when combined with the lack of things to tie himself to in the cargo hold, resulted in him hitting the walls a lot. Regardless of this, however, he did feel like he had gotten a little better with wind magic by the end of the day. Well, better at dealing with it conspiring to murder him, anyway.
As the people on the ship went about their business, they almost entirely missed the fact that, on the horizon, a city in was looming. The Free City of Mothdale, gateway into the Sea of Death, located on the picturesque Anderson Strait, known popularly and dramatically as the Doom Strait (Strait of Doom is apparently a perfectly acceptable alternate form of the name). The city looked like it had indubitably seen better days, and one couldn't help but take note of the way the architecture appeared to have been rearranged at some period in the past. Several towers loomed over the city, most of them very conical and strange-looking, plus one in the center of them all, which looked more classical in its construction. As the ship drew closer and pulled into the strait, more and more things became clear about the town - for one, it seemed to have sustained quite a bit of fire damage lately. Also, the system of channels the city had also seemed to have been a recent development, what with the way the channels appeared to not play well aesthetically with the rest of the town, being clearly modern and utilitarian in style similarly to the newer towers. Finally, the city was rather quiet for its size despite the fact that it was midday. Finally, the channels seemed to be absolutely
teeming with sea life, the most visible of which appeared to be dolphins. As the ship stopped at the sizable harbor of the city, the shades letting it sink back a little into the water, everybody stepped out on deck to appreciate the look of the place (even Sigmund, as much as he disliked the sun, was more than a little curious). As they looked at the town, they felt something in the air, a stirring of some sort. This was followed by a voice that, while most of the people were not experts on that sort of thing, nobody present could call human, exactly.
~welcome to the free city of gub! the gub is pleased to receive such interesting humans! will thank your lyman, yes!~The first impulse on the part of most of the crew was confusion.
~we greet you as well, nice humans! welcome!~The feeling of confusion then intensified thousandfold suddenly, creating a feeling not unlike that of somebody's life suddenly turning out to be a lie, then that turning out to be an even bigger lie that masked some sort of even more shocking, underlying truth, which turned out to all be a dream, but not really. And after this feeling, there is only sleep.
End of Chapter 5!
In an unprecedented twist, nobody important died this chapter! Well, except for Bernie, I guess. Not for lack of trying, either. So, new abilities for everyone! Pick one, people.
Darren:
Voice of Reason,
Enough Fooling Around,
No Longer Out Of Practice.
Timothy:
Plane Shift,
Oddly Compelling Screech,
Honestly Helpful.
Mark:
Branching Out,
Scourge of the Sea,
Body Carrier.
Scott:
Firestarter,
Vengeance!,
Like A Shadow Of A Ghost.
Kevin:
Portal Flesh,
Practiced Invalid,
Hidden Depths.
Niklas:
Must Confirm!,
Forbidden Techniques of the Far North,
Quitting Is For Dirty, Weak Southerners.
Morton:
Apostle of the Tea Leaf,
Just Part Of The Furniture,
Supremely Helpable.
Sigmund:
Yeah... No,
Tedium Mastery,
Magical Theorist.
Man, that took a long time to write. Hopefully you'll like the ability choices!
Author
Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 557076 times)