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[Innsmothe]

By all means, Follow the seer.

[Xanmyral]

[Urgh, sorry for the wait for such a small post. Also, I admit to having no really clear plan on how to best approach this situation beyond play by ear and hope for the best.]

"I'd be most appreciative, good mage Justine." Morton assented to her offer, trying to compose some idea of how to properly deal with the situation.

Follow the diviner!

[miauw62]

This seems awfully similar to the place he came from, and this creature seems like the type to make clicking noises.
Kevin decides that it's best to head back and go down, to see what's in the other direction

[Harry Baldman]

"Do they, well, do anything?"

"They look good, and they do have some effects. The fake crown can be used to sort of bring life to a small creature, while the fake mask makes people forget your name. And a few other fake artifacts do other, less impressive things."

[Harry Baldman]

In the hallway of the guest wing of Castle Fenton...

Niklas faced with quite a thing he cannot fully describe, can think of only one reasonable course of action. Moving forward, he begins to buzz wildly while doing what he believes to be an adequate waspgoat dance!

[Niklas' charisma roll: 4]

The beast, fortunately, is, if not placated, then at least sufficiently confused to be open to future discussion of whether Niklas and Lifeboy's position in its 'things to kill' list might not be a negotiable matter. Lifeboy, sensing that Niklas is on the right track and also that the waspgoat dance looks like amazing fun, joins in on the fun!

[Lifeboy's charisma roll: 5]

The sheer power of expression that a buzzing, dancing child can emit seems to work on the beast, its confusion becoming slight identification as the mammalian, goatish side of its fractured, unnatural psyche begins to feel a sense of familiarity with these strange figures in front of it, and it joins in the waspgoat dance, its wasp side appreciating the structure and patterns of the figures' movements while its goat side's social instincts guide it into conformity.


In a gnomish operating room...

Sigmund does his best not to feed his monstrous surgeon with anything resembling cooperation or terror, and merely tries to be as boring as inhumanly possible - it becomes slightly difficult to do so when the creature disembowels him, then, by stitching the rest of his torso muscles onto his gut and using the ribs to make teeth, makes it into some sort of strange gut snake.

And then, when Sigmund refuses to acknowledge this as the best of ideas by moving around in any way, the creature performs a strange, incredibly painful yet seemingly harmless swipe, but Sigmund successfully resists the temptation to react, at which point the surgeon appears to give up and just leaves.

To review, Sigmund is currently a gut snake, a mutilated, slightly nonfunctional leg, a head attached on top of a forearm supported by strange rib-legs, a very much gutted and fragmented torso, an arm with an eye set inside it and a severed leg inside a box, plus some bits on the ground that he can move. And now he's been left inside this room, fragmented, alone, and probably not very functional. Hm. What could he do?


Outside Eckledun...

Eager to find out as many answers as they can, Morton, Tailor Craig and Scott follow Justine down into Eckledun, and soon they reach a tent emblazoned with, of all things, a white triangle enclosed within a red circle.

Outside of it appear to be standing two mages, a man and a woman, both nondescriptly attractive, wearing matching dull red robes and looking oddly cheery. As soon as the group are in sight, the two of them wave and approach, though one can see a subtle exhaustion in their eyes.

"Hey!" the man begins. "You're finally here!"

"You sure kept us waiting!" the woman says and laughs.

"But you're here, and that's what counts. Scott, Craig, Carter, Justine, allow us to be the first to welcome you four into Eckledun. You've sure come a long way from the not-so-Free City of Gub, huh?" the man begins, and almost instinctively the group look to Justine, whose face appears to have sunken more than usual.

"It was definitely quite a trek, from what we've discovered!"

"And you've even had a chance to talk to good Lady Melville. We're sure she told you many interesting things."

"Quite positive about that, yes!"

"But despite your plans, we wouldn't advise that you try to kidnap or lure away any local mages. Especially our retainers!"

"Yes, that would indeed be an exceedingly poor idea, just like harming any of them or our property! So, you know, if you need anything, come see us or our superiors at the tower. I'm sure we could work something out."

"Indeed. Bye, newcomers!"

"Bye!"

And with that, the two mages disappear suddenly, leaving just an empty tent, where two fresh-looking and energetic colleagues of theirs, much more different in their individual appearances, suddenly appear and get to work creating what looks like food and water.

"Huh. That could have gone worse, but it certainly went different than expected," Justine immediately says.


In the lair of a dead crustacean...

Figuring that corpses probably mean that there can only be more danger ahead, Kevin decides to go all the way back and explore the way downstream.

He finds out that it all converges to one large pipe, as expected, and that this pipe goes on for a while, sloping a little sharply at times, all the way until it suddenly ends, terminating at a waterfall of some kind - the pipe's walls just stop, and beyond them is a great nothing, complete darkness as far as Kevin can tell.

[miauw62]

Make the plunge, I guess. Maybe it's a sewer and the mage dude wasn't lying after all?

[Xantalos]

Attempt to communicate the location of the parts of the castle that aren't my rooms and suggest it go there.
Through dance.

[Tomcost]

((And just when the psychopathic PC goes away, the GM gets a replacement NPC in. Mark used to fit quite an interesting and oddly specific niche in the game. And it almost feels like mandatory now. I hope that Sigmund stops being the victim, though))

It would be a traumatic experience for him indeed, hadn't it happened from time to time to him. Well, at least the thing is bored. Well, now he has enough time to ideate a plan to escape. Lets see, he will Have to use magic, due to the current circumstances. And the only kind of magic that is likely to work here should be related to rocks. Well, time to make a focus!

Multi-step plan because I will not be here for about a week:

1) Find a peeble, or loose stone. Put it in my mouth via creative use of the parts I have left.
2) Examine its knots, device a way to make it into a foci that allows me to control stone.
3) Make it into a foci.
4) Begin making a pillar to go upwards, tunneling through the stone. The pillar must push me and all my parts up.

[Innsmothe]

"...these are the people that made the Gub?...and they seem to have their own diviners."

[Harry Baldman]

"...these are the people that made the Gub?...and they seem to have their own diviners."

"Indeed," Justine seems to agree, taken aback by the welcoming committee.

[Innsmothe]

"I advise caution, this could be a dark deception. No one that created the Gub can be considered sane or 'good'. They are either pathetically ambitious, atrociously capricious or just dastardly vindictive ."

[Harry Baldman]

"I advise caution, this could be a dark deception. No one that created the Gub can be considered sane or 'good'. They are either pathetically ambitious, atrociously capricious or just dastardly vindictive ."

"Almost goes without saying, honestly. Let's just be as careful as possible from now on, okay?"

[Xanmyral]

[Welp.]

"They used my first name." Was all Morton could dumbly say in response to the divining duo, unsure of how to respond or take the situation. He didn't want to hurt, harm, nor do any of the sort to the mages, although the desk admits it would be lying to himself to say he didn't regard it as a regrettable and hopefully avoidable option.

Without further adieu, the desk went to ushering the group to a close by and slightly more secluded spot to think things out, not wishing their conversation to be overheard by the two new mages on duty. He can't help but feel the gesture more of a sort of comforting placebo than actually effective, considering the prior encounter.

Feeling slightly better thanks to the touch of seclusion, although aware of its rather more habitual/ceremonial nature instead of actual effectiveness, the desk spoke to the group. "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." The desk started, trying to reason something out.

"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." Like those true scheming villains, the tea apostle added on mentally but otherwise kept to himself. "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 was sure a satisfactory and peaceful solution could be reached between Gub, the refugees, and the mages, there's always such an option after all. Has to be. Perhaps with some tea.

[Harry Baldman]

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."

[Xantalos]

Niklas is already outside the door of the room, prepared to slam it shut if needed.

Of course, of course!
What are you making?