In the guest wing of Castle Fenton...
Niklas decides to try and take precautions this time around, and quickly hides inside one of the rooms, leaving the door open just a crack to watch how Lifeboy prepares a meal of his own flesh to serve to him.
[Lifeboy's magic roll: 5]
The bump on Lifeboy's hand grows and grows more rapidly with each second, attaining the size of his head, at which point he lowers his arm, and then increasing to about the size of his torso, at which point the growth stops - the giant tumor then begins to undulate and change color, becoming darker, starting to secrete some kind of golden liquid that coalesces over its surface, and emitting a smell that makes Niklas' mouth water intensely. And then it separates from the child's hand with a slightly unappetizing schlurp, rolling a short distance on the ground.
"There! One giant tumorsteak, right here! You need a fork or knife? I can grow those as well if you want! Wanna see?"
In Harlan's House of Hilarity and Harlotry...
Timothy may be courageous or at least willfully ignorant of peril when faced with exploring mystical places that defy physics and destroy all that has ever held sense in life, but social situations, particularly those of a magical and unfamiliar nature, leave him quite uncomfortable.
"Uh, I fink... maybe you does it?" he tells Lenny, who shrugs and walks toward the diviner. In need of some liquid courage, he turns to the barkeep. "Uh, has you got anny-thin' for ghosts?"
Immediately a solid stream of transparent liquid comes out of the nearby wall, no reaction at all on the part of the barkeep, making several 90 degree turns before settling on a course straight for Timothy, flowing into his body and diffusing through his ectoplasm. Timothy is quite confused and almost instantly drunk beyond anything he has experienced before in his life. Finding his question answered extremely demonstratively, he looks around at the other patrons. The ghosts, to be exact, since the other patrons are mages and mage-guards to a man or a woman, and behaving very much like regular patrons at an establishment like this, which is to say vaguely bawdily and generally merrily, although there is an undercurrent of the mystical to them, a very ineffable and secretive undercurrent that only mages rightly possess much of the time. As for ghostly patrons, there's the average dead person, who look like dead people floating around looking out of place, then there's dead mages, who look like they're enjoying themselves a lot more, and then there's beautiful dead women, of which there's a majority among the ghosts. In fact, one of the beautiful dead women, who also seems to be a dead mage, seems to be looking right at Timothy, pretending to sip a drink in a coquettish manner. Oddly, the drink is ethereal as well.
In a reservoir of water...
Kevin, despite being nearly overwhelmed by pain, maintains enough judgement to conduct a simple observation - is there flow? Signs point to no, but he could be wrong! Nevertheless, he swims for his life.
[Strength roll: 6]
And an imperiled jester needs no legs to secure his freedom, as Kevin so aptly demonstrates, propelling himself back to a breathable area through arm power alone, eventually finding his way to a rocky outcropping of some kind and flopping out upon it, quite exhausted and in terrible pain. Perhaps he should rest.
In the Temple of Automaton Worship...
Darren, now altogether less confused than before, decides to dial up the charm a little.
"Ah. I see. Thank you for the information, and for the hospitality. I would stay, but for now, I must bid you a very fond adieu, as I must continue my mission. Farewell, good lady," he says, and then with a bow and a twirl begins to move away - he is disappointed to note that the statue-like woman remains statue-like, with absolutely no change in expression of any sort. Oh well. He moves on, only to realize he's quite conspicuously alone now. Where'd his friend go?
The room he's currently in looks... clean. Very clean. In fact, there's nothing in it aside from a single spectral white-robed man without a head or neck, floating idly around the place, an empty hood flopping around on the front of his torso. Darren gets the urge to look behind him suddenly, and the chill that vaguely haunted him in the previous room now feels frightfully urgent.
In the refugee camp outside Eckledun...
Morton, Scott, Justine and nominally Craig continue to work out a plan here. Scott seems to be a proponent of the "we're quite screwed" position, while Morton keeps up the optimism he is well known for. After a short bit of time of reaching no real compromise, Scott asks Justine if she does not perhaps know of ways to counter divination.
"Well, I know of them, but they're abjuration, not divination. Not really my thing. Most diviners don't bother with them, and instead settle for being too unobtrusive to scan or too fast to get a bead on. Seems like we were neither, and now they know everything about us."
"I'm not against playing along with them. It is better than simply waiting for them to do something."
"Alternatively, we can just find another town to explore instead, one where the local authorities don't know our innermost secrets."
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Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 561976 times)