THE DUNKER believes he ought to be congratulated for an achievement like this. It's not quite every day that one makes a ninefold moat filled with the best guardians a wizard could possibly ask for. Bet the devil himself wouldn't mind being stuck from the waist down at the top circle for all eternity.
"Other fat guy said I had to make the place defensible, I did so. I'm clearly the ultimate person," he narrates as he walks back inside, only to immediately be met by a committee of all the other wizards... well, except Pete and the potato guy. So three fifths of the other wizards, and the good-looking lawyer lady.
"This place is now significantly more defended. I wouldn't recommend going outside... ever though, I'm not sure if the hookers would let you pass," he declares.
"Dude! Stellar work! Saw it from way up top," the other fat guy congratulates him. The approval makes THE DUNKER swell further than ever before. He is the beginning, and he shall be the end as well.
"Yeah, it's a pretty good start," says Jo, nodding approvingly.
"There's still the windows, and each floor up to the fourth needs to have some sort of obstacle on it, is that right?""That's the short of it, yep. But if all goes as well as this did, heck, we'll be golden in no time. I'll try to landwarp the windows away on the upper floors, maybe you guys can figure something else out in the meantime? Anybody got better ideas?""I'll take the third one and do research there. Gotta figure out how to move the staircase," Paul mentions.
"It'll be more efficient if I do it on the second floor," says Jo.
"That way you have to go through each level to get up.""Uh, okay, makes sense.""And when I'm done with the windows, I can take either the first floor or all floors above fourth. Which do ya want, riverman? Either way a fat guy's gotta go up many flights of stairs." asks the fat guy as the other two come to an agreement.
* * * * *
In the non-land of the potato,
Halesey seeks compromise.
"Profligate? Screw you, man. I show you the path to the greatest power, and you call me a profligate? That was only low level gentleman’s literature, dude," he tells Hungry Pete, who seems to not have quite snapped out of whatever he's doing, or at least doing the very same thing as he was before.
"Look, we are servants of the potato now. We should be friends," he says, but realizes that Pete probably can't hear him. Oh well. It's time for more potato, as it were. Looking into the binder, Halesey accesses the potato within!
[Halesey's mind roll: 6-->1+1]
It is beautiful. It is grand. It is infinite and somewhere between gold and brown in color. Inhaling its aroma, Halesey twitches. It smells like a great many things. Light. Earth. Fire. Starch. Linda. Death. The future, still vast, dark, unknown to him. The power of the potato enters him, creating ever-novel combination of conventional spells and itself, bringing the man closer to true mastery of the noblest of all elements.
1. Stupefying Pillar of Potatoes
2. Caramelized Potato Portal
Still not much luck on the potato front, it seems. Take any you like, but think carefully on what you're replacing if you do.
Snapping out of his momentary bit of research, Halesey addresses God once more.
"God, what is your will?""My will? I wish you, my prophet, to create a temple upon a leyline, dedicated to me, so that you and my other disciples may have a place outside of my realm to operate from. Even now they are separate from one another. I think Initiate Nigel floated off someplace, and Initiate Cadwallader has not appeared ever since he last left my sight."Hungry Pete, for his part, appears to still be in a coma, probably one of his own making.
* * * * *
John, suddenly recalling the language of all civilized gnomes, addresses the vast amounts of nothing important before him.
"Greetings, gnomes and other assorted magical creatures. My name is John, and I bear you no malice. I am merely lost and looking for someone named Charlie to deliver this suitcase to. It isn't much, but I present you this gift of sausage in good will," he says, producing sausage from his pocket and biting a chunk off, then swallowing it to prove there probably isn't any cyanide in it. He places the rest, plus a few other sausages, in a pile on the ground, then takes a reverent step back. A few minutes pass, and John starts to get a little impatient, but then the sausages, all as one, disappear. Moments later, a creature appears.
It is slightly less than a meter tall, and reminds John of a velociraptor, except distinctly featherless, and with a shorter tail. As it looks upon John, it emits two primary things - first, there is a soft radiance coming off its flesh, bathing the surroundings in a pleasant light. It nearly brings a smile to John's face to look upon it, but then the second thing, a horrendous stench resembling that of a rotting corpse, hits his nose and nearly provokes a violent retch.
"I'm Charlie," says the saurian gnome in a vaguely pleased tone. It's clearly had its fill of your offering.
"Are you delivering something to me? Why? I didn't order anything."* * * * *
Eta tries to not sound judgmental.
"I don't mean to sound judgmental," she begins to talk at the shade,
"but that sounds like a really bad idea. I mean, really, really, really bad idea. You don't invest money you can't afford to lose. And you can't pay a debt by going further into debt. And you can't pay a debt by not working and hoping something will magically come along and solve all your problems. And you can't endanger your friends to do that. Ugh. Couldn't you get the money from a bank that gave 100 easy payments or something? Or just run away?"She takes a deep breath. The shade seems distraught, though she's not sure how she can tell.
"I'm sorry, it's not your fault. I just hate irresponsibility. I mean, to behave like that, it's just... Ugh. One final question," she says, setting down several golden shoes next to the nearby sarcophagus, as it's propped up against the wall and thus not really suited for setting things down upon,
"what are your jobs? Oh, and have there been any disagreements with the whole 'keep quiet and delay the inevitable' plan and if so, by whom?""Well, we, uh, work at a manufacturing plant on one of the great lines... it's somewhere in the beginning, as we can't tell what it is we're making from what we can see. Most of us operate machinery like the, er, spiraling spectral lathe and other things, and I'm... well, I'm the scapegoat, mostly. I'm there to take the heat for inefficiency. They've got a fancy title for it, too."The shade pauses, sighing.
"But... don't be too hard on Ziggy, okay? It was the only way out of this life. Purples have even worse interest rates at banks than at loan sharks. And the investment sounded really good. Jim Blessed was apparently interested in it before Ziggy, for what it's worth. And I don't even know if that's true anymore, but it sounded really true to him then, I think. And then when he'd get an orange designation, he said he'd help us after that, too. It was all for a good cause, you know?"* * * * *
Larry places his faith in this guy he doesn't know but who seems magical enough to know what's up.
"You seem to know what's up, bro. Following you this time," he says. The guy looks at Tracey, who's still trying to shut the both of them out.
"Well, uh, I guess we... wait, here's an idea," the guy says, and the world around Larry and Tracey melts away, revealing what appears to be a vast meadow in spring, with blue skies and white clouds above. They appear to have landed outside a small white house, complete with a whitewashed fence, a mailbox about as classic-looking as one could imagine, the meadow grass neatly trimmed within the boundaries of the yard. The air here feels invigorating, and the bright red front door of the house is almost beguiling in its implied invitation.
"Home. Nice place, huh? I'm thinking of coming here when I, uh, retire," the guy explains, indicating the house with a broad sweep of his arm. "Uh, what do you think? Unassuming enough?"
Tracey, seemingly, has not let this sudden change of scenery slip her by.
"Whoa! Where are we now? Looks idyllic. Is it a painting?" she asks, walking in a direction away from the house slowly.
"It's, uh, not a painting. Well... maybe it is if you, uh, liberalize the definition. Maybe it's one of those... uh, dreams? But, like, more solid. Less fleeting. But maybe not by much."
"A mindscape!""Is that a real word?"
Tracey shrugs.
"I dunno. It is inside your mindscape?"* * * * *
When one mentions the Marigold Moore Public Library, it would scarcely be in connection with such paltry things as adventure, or indeed much at all. It's not even particularly notable in its own neighborhood, the now-devastated Retiree Row, or at least this was so in the recent past before a plummeting stegosaurus happened to crush the other, much better-equipped but much less fancifully named Hopkins Public Library. Now, though, it's much more of an interesting destination, especially in the last eight or so hours after the invasion of dinosaurs that drove off most of the previous people working there was defeated by a prodigious invasion of dogs seemingly made of solid gold - the details are unclear, as Retiree Row is largely empty of life at this stage, and indeed nobody would take note of the place at all were it not for the rather sizable billboard repurposed and carried over, then set up on the library's roof at a relatively great height - it says, peculiarly enough,
APPRENTICES WELCOME
MAGIC IS TAUGHT
APPLY INSIDE
Now, this is what people in the business of wisdom would call a blatantly obvious trap of some kind. Who would brave the threatening streets of Retiree Row and approach a building guarded by currently benign, but clearly dangerous hairless golden dogs of possibly Mexican origin in order to seek the further endangerment to their lives that knowing anything of magic provides? Moreover, who would be so hasty as to do so within the first hours of the offer being made?
Surprisingly, quite a few. First to arrive was a small tanned fellow with a most uncommon knowledge of chakras and the purifying nature of hard work in service of greater minds. His name is
Samson, and he's been here a while already. The dogs have been eying him the entire time as he's sat at the reception desk, finding his almost immediate arrival entirely too suspicious.
This worked well for the next person to arrive,
Joel, as all the suspicion that would normally be directed at him as someone who's obviously a government spook of some sort, or at least an overly excited agent for a possibly currently hypothetical (at least until he reports his findings and gets mad amounts of recognition on a federal level for it) government agency is instead squarely pointed at the weird guy who got here first with little to no adequate explanation.
Even better, soon yet more supplicants appear. Third to appear, seeking some explanation for a freak storm of the worst cocaine he's had in his life, was the recently detentacled man named
Roger. He probably didn't have anywhere else to go for that kind of thing - with his luck, the authorities have cordoned off the entire alley and affected apartments in a misguided effort to figure out how the existence of magic impacts the war on drugs.
And finally, about ten minutes before now, a strangely happy-go-lucky individual, presumably the only one here without some form of vaguely sinister or mysterious happenstance to explain their arrival, only mere curiosity about the mysteries of high sorcery, is
Tiana. It's almost surprising to her how none of these three other people say one word to her as she arrives, and so she takes the initiative and starts to introduce herself, only to be cut off as one of the golden dogs barks at her, its body ringing in a metallic manner as it explodes into sudden rage, only to calm down moments later. Further attempts to say anything are met with the same response, and even whispers elicit a growl from their keepers, and for a moment Tiana suspects that this may not have been such a good idea after all.
But she is reassured that all is well when a dog ambles down one of the nearby staircases, holding a large cardboard sign in its mouth, on which is written as if by a dog's paw dipped in ink...
THE MISTRESS WILL SEE YOU NOW
Ushered urgently by the golden hounds, all four quietly make their way up the scratched and partly broken wooden stairs and into a particularly dismal reading area, where an adolescent girl wearing an ill-fitting golden dress with red dragons on it combined with slightly better-fitting platform heels and a tacky mink coat. Her lips, ears and nose all pierced in several places, with the presumable originals replaced with much more expensive-looking and out-of-place jewelry, including what is obviously a small diamond earring hanging from her right nostril. She is reclining sideways atop a pile of discarded books as if it were a hoard, anticipating your arrival with a faint smile.
"You may speak now," she says with affected calm, softly giggling as she runs her hand over the pile of books.
"Tell me of your desires."The dogs nudge the supplicants a little harshly at this prompt in case they have become speechless at the glorious sight of the mistress.
* * * * *
The negotiation has gone on for long enough.
"-the problem's not the denture, dude, it's the lack of exclusivity, you catch my drift? What kind of god would I be if I didn't stick up for my ele-"Charles snorts derisively at the unreasonable demand. Against the Denture God it is a surprisingly effective tactic, slave to public perception that it is.
"No! I'm not backing down on the principle. You can't have the denture and a burst of denture power if it doesn't limit you exclusively to denture magic. So either you take the denture without the exclusivity and get me another disciple for a burst of holy power, or you take the denture with the exclusivity and the holy burst of denture power and be satisfied. And that's that! You can't have the perks of both, and I am really sorry about that!"It sounds like it means it, too. Perhaps there is an opportunity to be exploited here. Or perhaps the offer is plenty generous already. Most of all, though, Charles is glad that he managed to get the Denture God to understand the noises he makes. Wonder if regular mortals would find him just as intelligible. Or at least be so kind as to ask questions with binary answers.
I decided to induct the surprisingly responsive waitlist all at once since we're nearing the endpoint of the game, though it'll probably take longer to get there than I would perhaps like, especially with double the amount of players.
Of course, this also means that the waitlist is now shut down, and no more applications will be accepted from here on in.
Expect greater peril.
Oh, and maybe all the missing players will suddenly make a reappearance and rocket the player count up to 16. Wouldn't that be something?
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Topic: The Forgotten Art: Approaching the Nexus (Read 272082 times)