So, we have our first death. And Felice is awesome.
- Turn 31: Light and Dark -
You’ve found your way into a cellar containing a way too creepy pair…Implore them to introduce themselves.
Ask in a friendly and neighborly way.
Baldur grunts and asks a question.
Baldur, Ekoka and Lyu crowd forwards, all clamouring to question the old lady and her grandson. “Greetings, Mr. and Mrs…” Ekoka begins, giving them a questioning look.
The young man smiles. His teeth are really very white. Hypnotically so. “Miodóg,” he answers the unspoken question. “I’m Lonracha Miodóg, and this is my grandmother, Géar. Welcome to our humble abode.”
Lyu elbows Ekoka aside and grins, hoping to appear friendly and neighbourly. "Good tidings to you both! Say, did you two happen to kill all those people outside? And if not, do you know who did?"
The old woman cackles. It’s a dreadful sort of cackle, like she’s gargling a pile of dead bugs. “No, no! We employ a professional butcher to kill our livestock for us.” She’s completely blasé about it. “I’m far too old to do it, and my strapping young grandson here,” she adds in a crackly sarcastic tone, “wouldn’t know which end of the knife to hold.”
Ekoka and Lyu share a glance. Baldur steps forwards. "Hello there. Mind explaining what happened here? Those piles of bodies are
not butcher work."
The young man, Lonracha, shrugs. “We had a party, you see. Lots of guests. They always get a bit carried away.” He sighs mournfully. “It always takes so
long to clean up after they leave.”
The old woman cackles again. That sound is
really disturbing. “Never fear, my lad. Our friends are on their way back, since dessert has just arrived. Would you be a dear and go fetch the butcher?”
Stand in a corner of the basement. Use kidzuku: comprehension to inspect both people. If I think one of them might not be human, whisper this to Cyrus/anyone of my of my teammates I can tell without the two people hearing. If both of them seem human, use kidzuku to scour the rest of the basement, might as well do that while we're using it.
You stand unobtrusively in a corner of the basement as Ekoka, Lyu and Baldur question the two strangely alive people in the middle of a village of bodies. You shut your eyes momentarily and focus on the bracelet, feeling the crackling energy within.
Your mind falls into the infinite void within Kidzuku and slowly grows, falling into the cracks in the world and filling itself to bursting. In a rush your mind overflows into the real world.(6+1) Your mind explodes into reality around you. Lights flare from your irises; to the others in the room, they see your eyes as orbs glowing in a shifting hue of colours from violet, through a cerulean blue and on into green as though the Northern Lights were trapped in your head.
The world takes on a strange violet hue as illusion upon illusion are peeled away. The cackling grandmother turns her face to stare at you; she looks human, but her eyes are… gone. Just gone. Smoking black pits that threaten to suck you into oblivion gaze at you and you hurriedly avert your eyes. The man is huge and grotesque in your sight. His eyes too are gone, replaced with the nothingness of the void. He is turning away from you, thankfully keeping that terrible gaze away. You see a tail, a forked tail, just for an instant. You’re not sure whether it’s real, symbolic or magical, but it’s there. Creepy.
They're both human, you can see that. You can see everything that's ever happened to them in their short, miserable lives. How in the middle of the Ten Day Night, a creature came to them. Something born of that terrible darkness, a piece of the malevolence that shattered the Sun and the Moon. A force that was no mere demon, but something so far above demons that you shudder as your mind gropes around the edges of understanding. You see how it captured them, twisted their minds with magic and words until they became the freak show before you. How it twists others into abominations of demon and human blood, stripping their minds of their sanity and gifting them with strength, speed and cunning beyond that of most mortals.
(SAN: 3) You feel as though a wire brush has been run through your thoughts from their appearance, but you manage to mostly hold your thoughts in line. (-1 SAN)
You turn your eyes to the world around you. Glittering, gleaming lines trace eye-catching patterns on the walls of the basement, whirling and spiralling through the air and even scratching out webs of mental traps on the floor. Your mind, infinitely expanded, sees through the traps and you understand. It’s a spell, a complex magic unlike anything ever seen on the face of the earth before. It’s attacking your mind, but it can’t come close to denting it since your mind is currently filling the entire village.
And… you understand. (5) You draw an arrow, fit it to your bow and fire it, all in one smooth motion. The grandmother has barely had enough time to blink before the arrow is embedded in her skull, the root of the spell. Around you the line explode into black fragments not unlike the crystal Lyu so proudly found earlier. The fragments shatter in turn into smaller slivers before dissolving into nothing.
The young man falls to his knees, screaming and crying. The blackness in his eyes begins to smoke harder, the pits on his face expanding to rapidly consume his entire head.
The vanishing lines peel away one final illusion as your mind begins to shrink once more, revealing the source of the third heartbeat in the basement. You don’t know how he hid from your infinite mind, but you’re pretty glad he did.
You slump to the ground, exhausted but strangely fulfilled. You can feel something tingling on the edge of your awareness, something that should maybe be investigated in greater detail - but perhaps when you are in less mortal peril.
(In case it’s not clear, the insanity spell has been destroyed. As have the crystals in Lyu’s pocket. Sorry Harry!)
A… man is standing there in the basement, behind the dead old lady and her weeping grandson. He appears to be about seven feet tall and built more akin to a gorilla than a human; his arms are muscled enough to be bigger around than most people’s thighs and end in hands that could pass as shovels if they were a tad smaller. His hair, ragged and unkempt, is long and black. His skin is a distressingly familiar shade of khaki.
His eyes glow with a golden light as he examines the five of you. His presence is somewhat overwhelming.
And then he speaks.
A dreadful sound, plucked from somewhere between the whisper of a knife sinking into flesh and the scream of a dying man. Garnished with the wails of a terrified child and completed with delicate undertones of tearing meat, the creature speaks.
“I wondered who would come first. How did so few kill so many of my children? I guess I must work harder on the next batch.” The monster’s face drops, eyes fixing on the wailing young man. “These two served… adequately. But I do so hate overly emotional people.”
There’s a flicker. A flash, so fast nobody is quite sure that it even happened. The monster is standing as he always was, not even appearing to have moved. A black line glimmers across the man’s throat and with a slow and definite finality Lonracha’s head topples to the floor. The illusion fades from his eyes, showing the blackened pits to all five of you.
Finally the monster looks back at the group. “But to send only four against me… Fools will always underestimate my kind.”
Cyrus glances around. “Um, I do believe there are five of us, Mr…”
The monster’s eyes fix on Cyrus. “Bah. Mages. Always think they’re smarter than the rest of us. My name is Vanda Maraṇālu. And like I said,” he retorts, his hand blurring, “There are only four.”
Cyrus sags to the floor. Something dull and grey is sticking out of his chest; a knife hewn from some peculiar, dark grey metal. His face is wan. “Oh Gods…” he whispers. Brilliantly white light flares from his wound and his robes begin to char. As they smoke and evaporate away in an ever-expanding circle around the wound, his chest is slowly revealed. Blood is pouring from the wound, but it can barely be seen as his skin is glowing. First a buttery yellow before brightening into an eye-searing white, the glow spreads all through his skin. “Run!” he yells hoarsely, his final breath escaping his body.
The light spouting from his wound is solidifying into a blazing column. You four decide it’s prudent to heed the mage’s words as the basement floor begins to rumble and shake from the colossal energies being unleashed. The four of you tumble and roll towards the staircase, fighting your ways up the shaking stairs and into the sunlight. A shockwave knocks you all flying, to land in a heap several metres away from the house.
Behind you, the modest cottage is filled to the brim with light. Blazing white spears of light are pouring from the windows as Cyrus’ unleashed magic eats the house from the inside out. With a final roaring detonation that blasts you back even further, a brilliant white explosion of light ignites the sky around you for miles.
With a groan, the remaining shell of the cottage collapses into the basement, sending up a huge cloud of dust. The dust slowly settles to reveal the monster, Vanda, standing on the opposite side of the ex-basement, none the worse for wear.
Boss Fight: Vanda MaraṇāluVanda Maranālu is similar to the monsters faced outside of the village, khaki-skinned and golden eyed. But he shows no signs of the madness which inflicted them.
Traits:
+1 to Strength
+1 to Endurance
+1 to Agility
+1 to Defence against Magic
Thuun activates plan "Get the fuck out of this carriage" which begins with a (hopefully) leaping stab at the shadowed figure followed by repeated stabbings till it stops moving, then a lot of crawling under the carriage and out the other side and into any place that looks easy to hide with less monsters.
You sit and wait in the carriage, trying to judge the perfect moment to leap out and strike. All of a sudden you sense a huge upheaval in magical energies; above the fog, you witness the pillars of black flame belch once and vanish. Huh. One of your comrades must have found out how to destroy the trap spell.
Nonetheless, it’s high time for you to vacate the carriage. It’s about a thousand years before canned food is invented, after all.
You gather yourself to spring for the shadow in front of you.
(5-1) You less leap gracefully through the air and more flop forwards, but you flop far enough to tackle over the shadowy figure and stab him in the general chest region with your shortsword. “RAARGH!” you scream in rage, stabbing him over and over again, hoping like hell that it IS a monster and not some hapless human puttering around the village entrance to investigate.
Wait. Wasn’t there… something… on the carriage roof? (2) Some
thing collides with your back like a goddamn cannonball and the two of you go tumbling off of the freshly-corpsified shadowy figure thing. Your mind reassembles itself to find yourself lying flat on the ground with your attacker straddling you, clawing viciously at your back with what feels like simple fingers and nails. Huh.
There’s a sudden flare of bright, white light. Your senses go ballistic as the sheer magical energy overwhelms you for a second. The light rushes over you and your attacker in a wave, burning away the fog. The thing on your back screeches and leaps off you; you hurriedly sit up and spin on your stumpy legs, putting the light out of your mind for now.
The dead body is revealed to be one of the monsters from the forest; you heave a sigh of relief. Your relief fades into horror a moment later as the khaki colour drains away from the body, revealing a perfectly ordinary Cylenian body. The one still standing, however, is indeed still a khaki colour. His eyes are shiny yellow, frosted around the edges with madness. It… he… hisses at you a few times before crouching!
Lyu Brak (Harry Baldman)Profession: Priest
Status: Smiling and running.
Inventory:Staff (Bronze-Capped)
Religious Necklace
Warm Priestly Robes and Pants
Warm Priestly Shoes
185 gold
10 Jimsonweed Fruit
Many bits of Thuun’s legs
Jagged shard of bone
Curious dagger
Wounds/Status: You’re all good!
Abilities: [Boundlessly Cheerful] [The Good Priest] [Not that faithful] Righteous Litany]Baldur Bergfalk (USEC_OFFICER)Profession: Mercenary
Status: Running.
Inventory:Broken greatsword
Worn leather jerkin (and normal clothes)
Worn leather boots
Bear fur cloak300 gold
Wounds/Status:You’re all good!
Abilities: [Skilled Bargainer] [Guileless] [I'm Not Right Handed] Lao Thuun (BFEL)Profession: Warrior Mage
Status: Stabbin’ people
Inventory: Blunted bronze sword
Leather armour and boots
Acolyte's SuncloakReligious Necklace
210 gold
Wounds/Status: [Healed stumpy legs]Abilities:[Enduring] [Dragon Aspect: 1] [Slow Cast] [Atoner] [Spellsword ][Regenerative Magic]Spells:[Life Spell: Wisp] Magical Experience:[Ea: 0] [Wi: 0] [Fi: 1] [Wa: 0] [Li: 2] [Fo: -1] [Lt: 0] [Sh: 0] Felice Nasib (Pancaek)Profession: Seaman
Status: Piercing illusions like a badass.
Inventory: Repaired Shortbow
Seventeen Arrows
Razor-sharp DirkNautical Longcoat and Boots
313 gold
KidzukuWounds/Status: You're perfectly healthy!
Abilities: [Fearless] [Kidzuku: Arrowtime] [Not a Landlubber] [Trick Shot] [Kidzuku: Comprehension]Ekoka (GreatWyrmGold)Profession: Wanderer
Status: Questioning. Then running.
Inventory: Cracked shillelagh
Wanderer's Cloak
Sturdy Clothes and Boots
Length of Rope
Flint and Tinder
380 gold
Wounds/Status: You’re all good!
Abilities: [Survivalist] [Dual Focus] [Slow Cast] [Maladjusted to heat] [Guiding Spirit] Spells:[Wind Spell: Alacrity]Magical Experience:[Ea: 0] [Wi: 1] [Fi: 0] [Wa: 0] [Li: 0] [Fo: 0] [Lt: 0] [Sh: 0] 
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Topic: Roll to Go Mad: Turn 44 - The Markets (Read 142760 times)