On a slick precipice next to unknown darkness...Kevin, feeling that there really are few ways the situation could get much worse, jumps right out of the pipe, and finds himself in freefall. The fact that he remains in freefall for over five seconds is not heartening, to say the least.
[Kevin's landing roll: 2]
[Kevin's endurance roll: 2]
And the fact that he falls for over fifteen seconds is even worse, in fact, as he plunges right into a body of water of some kind, both of his legs snapping at the powerful reaction of his impact, his screaming form sinking underwater as he flails to keep afloat, the pain from his broken legs flooding his senses and eroding his judgment to a significant degree.
In the guest wing of Castle Fenton...Niklas, having found a friend in this creature, attempts to make it go and be his friend (with all the collateral damage this implies) someplace else, with a greater proportion of innocents, which are in all likelihood tastier than he is.
[Niklas' charisma roll: 5]
Fortunately, Niklas knows how to indicate 'helpless food that-a-way' in a great many languages, waspgoat included, and the creature obliges. Niklas holds the door open for it while it leaves, becoming both out of sight and out of mind within a short bit.
"Hm... so! The original problem was food, right?" Lifeboy remembers after the waspgoat leaves.
"Okay! I think I know what to do now!"[Lifeboy's magic roll: 3]
He holds out his hand, and suddenly a fleshy bump begins to grow out of his palm, slowly increasing in size.
"This will take a moment!" he says as the bump grows.
"You can wait, right?"In a gnomish operating room...Sigmund figures that there's nothing to it, then - have to use the miracle of magic to find his way out if nothing else is going to work. And he is certain that nothing else would properly work - after all, he is dealing with a civilization here that believes making snakes out of guts could ever be a good idea. That's
Mark-like levels of civilization right there, a nadir of sentient beings' inhumanity to other sentient beings.
So, with his own survival in mind, he goes for some pebbles! Only to be interrupted by two other figures, which seem to have not moved at all in the moments previous, hence why Sigmund seems to have been unaware of their presence. They immediately place all of his parts into a single box along with his leg, evidently to keep them from escaping further.
Well, if they're going to be that way, Sigmund decides to examine the box around him - fortunately, it seems to be made, rather impractically, of stone as well, with stone hinges to boot, which he finds suits his needs perfectly. Time to devise the next step! So, the knots of the chest's lower part, typical as they are, seem to have the crux of their usefulness in the no-fun-allowed part. So he decides to toy with that - if fun seems to be forbidden, what could be an exception to that? Or, rather, what could work within its boundaries to make the box do what Sigmund wants? Sigmund believes he knows the answer.
Firstly, contact between objects is fun, right? Things smashing or rubbing together is one of the most primeval forms of fun that Sigmund can think of. So that can't happen, of course - a subclause that Sigmund can add without disturbing the structure of the knots too much. It fits in nicely with the no object overlap rule that's one of the core "no fun" precepts. And the balance of the knot would probably work better if he added some kind of additional clause where the objects in question were other minerals - after all, smashing someone's head in with a rock is not fun, despite the protests of some in the creative rock usage community. It's horrifying and terrible, and thus entirely permissible. Consistency!
Secondly, there's the matter of defining what's contact, exactly. Judging from the "no object overlap" rule, there's actually a sort of "sphere of existence" around the box, corresponding exactly to its physical shape. Here the terminology gets a little difficult, but Sigmund seems to have it well in hand - marvelous. So, he thinks he should mess with that whole sphere of existence thing now. Maybe customize it a little, and key it to his own mental faculties, so he can project it however he wants. In combination with the no-contact rule, this should allow him to project the presence of the stone, and use that to push other bits of stone around. Simple!
So, with all that in mind, Sigmund begins his journey on to new magical horizons and, hopefully, freedom!
[Sigmund's focus creation roll: 1+
1]
Unfortunately, however, the no-fun rule is more resilient than Sigmund thought, or the fineness of his control is insufficient - he spends a few minutes pondering this, and decides that perhaps his touch is a tad too delicate - a forceful, quick alteration should provide results. Damn the potential side effects, he's got his own life to save!
[Sigmund's focus creation roll: 3+
2]
And so, in a tremendous act of will, he alters the fabric of reality to create himself a focus! A mighty focus, in all likelihood - he inspects the knots and, curiously enough, finds them all uncharacteristically in the order set up by him - the structure does not even look too lopsided. Not bad for an improvised job like this. In addition, his mind tingles slightly at the focus - the presence of the stone feels a little like an extra limb, a controllable blanket of force
Now, though, it's time to test it!
[Sigmund's magic roll: 5-
1]
Carefully arranging his mind to use his newfound magical limb, Sigmund places it in a location right beneath him, feeling an odd crack as the stone beneath is pressurized, then lifts upward as he expands the sphere of influence - the box and the parts of Sigmund within are lifted along with it, giving it the appearance of a pillar rising from the floor, the stone wobbling and cracking as the force his presence exerts on it expands. At the same time, to the slight detriment of his effectiveness, he inserts a sharp blade of presence into the ceiling above, then parts it, causing the ceiling to open up as well, collapsing all around the room as he rises through it up to a point where he reaches a brand new passage of some kind - he's got no idea where he is, since it's dark and he couldn't see even if he wasn't trapped inside a box, but he's certainly out of the room he was in. Though he's pretty sure that clicking all around him is not a good sign.
Outside a tent in Eckledun...After spending a moment being generally dumbfounded,
Morton ushers his friends over to a slightly more discreet location, though probably in vain.
"That was... Most odd. I'm curious how they learned we were coming, perhaps the good traveler did indeed inform them of our intentions? He did mention ties, after all, to the Black Circle if I recall rightly," he begins to reason.
"But that guy hasn't left the woods yet, and he had no magic," Justine replies.
"But the warning is all of the same, I fear, that they know of us, our intentions, and what we've done. A bold--and effective, I'm afraid--power play. Perhaps it is for the best they know, they did invite us into the tower to perhaps work something out. I was indeed most hoping for a more peaceful resolution to this situation, and I still do and believe it may be reached," Morton continues, keeping the optimism up.
"Indeed. If they did want to eliminate us, they could have done so fairly simply without even speaking to us. Especially if their divination abilities are as powerful as demonstrated. They were merely showing their advantage in the situation, so to speak.""Or they were merely toying us, and will kill us all somehow at a later date. You never know with their type."