Outside one of Crawlinghome's largest buildings...Viri follows the dwarf's lead, entering the building softly and confirming her impression that it appears to be a temple of some sort - a large hall stretches out before her, the edges of it entirely shrouded in darkness. The dwarf silently beckons her to follow as she shuts the door, and Viri does so, making entirely innocuous conversation on the way.
"I assume you would not mind if I rooted around in his insides? He does not sound particularly beneficial for the town," she says, and the dwarf looks at her a bit oddly, her impassive facade cracking at the suggestion.
"Erm, I would say we would. These things require a... delicate touch, yes? Just follow me, and... maybe ask the master, yes?"
Viri shrugs, supposing dwarves aren't big on small talk, and instead spends the time considering the forcefield enveloping her. It seems pretty forcelike, and is definitely a field. And there's something about spell effects in there, too. She'd leverage this into a healing touch, but then she can already do that anyway, so there's really no point. Magic's a bit of a limited beast in its current form, she is sad to say. She's often dreamed of dispelling, conjuring, sequencing, contingencies, all that good stuff, but it all doesn't seem like a very simple thing to grasp. At least not intuitively.
As she muses on these matters, she is brought through the hall, right past an odd-looking statue - one of the few metal structures in the village, it seems, all made of plates of pig iron nailed crudely together in the shape of a giant featureless dwarf. As she heads on through, Viri is vaguely aware of a few dim-eyed acolytes peeking out from the darkness as she passes and of subtle movements slightly beyond her range of vision.
"Right this way," the dwarf leading her says, pushing open a large, ornamented iron door, revealing a sloping chamber where the building itself starts to end. It's a curious room, its sides entirely covered in tapestries, a rather young-looking, clean-shaven dwarf sitting on a cushion surrounded by piles upon piles of scrolls, reading a particular one written in a highly peculiar script. Upon Viri and the other dwarf's arrival he raises his eyes, smiling gently.
"Hello. Not very often that we see a human in Crawlinghome. What do you seek in the temple of the Forgotten God?" he asks in a manner that sounds very thoroughly rehearsed.
"She is a sorceress, Great One," the accompanying dwarf replies. "She had an altercation with the militia, and seeks our help," she says, and the so-called Great One raises an eyebrow.
"This is sufficient to catch my attention. You have done well to bring her to me, Farrah," he says ceremonially. "You are dismissed."
Farrah the presumable acolyte bows deeply, then moves out the door. The dwarf nods at Viri, puts down his scroll, then picks up another one with speed, his eyes skimming over its contents after unfurling it. He doesn't seem about to speak. Maybe he's listening?
Not far from a dwarven logging camp...Faer, not about to be roasted even further by wanton application of sorcerous fire, runs as quickly as he can. Weaving quietly through the underbrush so as to not call another hail of flame upon himself, he takes the next half an hour or so getting as far out of sight as he possibly can, which he believes to have succeeded at quite admirably, being soon within sight of the main village in all its blissful lack of goblin sorcerers.
Well, that was a complete bust, though maybe knowing that perhaps lunatics perceive fear differently may be useful for future endeavors.
In the hallway of Mayor John the Eldest's house...After a brief argument, both
Whiskers and
Martingold elect to stay behind, which seems to please Tim rather greatly. Whiskers refuses to remain still, though, and in the following few minutes narrows down the list of secret switch suspects to a vase sitting in one of the corners. He tries to push it and accidentally topples it, which fails to open any secret doors, but does prompt Tim to come over and prop it back up after examining it for cracks. He tsks at Whiskers for a moment, but is interrupted when the entourage in the dining room - the mayor, the doctor and the militiadwarf - all stride out and stand before them.
"Right, some bad news, so I'll get straight to business," says the mayor with a serious look. "Your friend Viri seems to have gravely injured our fine militia captain Jim through some form of sorcery when he tried to detain her."
"And me, but she healed me afterwards," says the militiadwarf, and the doctor glances at her thoughtfully.
"As such, we'd like to ask for the help of you two in swiftly removing her from our fair town with no further trouble caused or dwarves injured in the process," the mayor says. "As a gesture of good faith, you see, so that I may have no compunctions about aiding you on your... quest, was it? I could very easily provide you with directions and a set of very much crucial documents to that end, but I would need this favor from you beforehand, if only to make sure things do not escalate between us and you foxes. Can't see that ending too well to say the least. How does that sound to you two?"
In Crawlinghome's jail...Rev does his very best sniveling thus far as he agrees with the plan, preparing to run.
"Right, right, ready. You lead, I'll follow.""Okay," says June, looking very much nervous, "three... two... one..." The last second she lingers on for quite a bit, clenching her teeth and closing her eyes, "go!"
Opening the door quickly, she bolts through and starts running down the hall, Rev standing back with no intention of following her as he snaps into cat form with shocking rapidity.
"Would you look at that..." Rev hears his old buddy Tom mutter as he makes his own escape, trotting past June, who seems to have run right into a set of very much concerned militiamen. Within moments he is out onto the street, perhaps ready to try other avenues of extracting information from the not particularly sharp inhabitants of this village.
And lo, on the incredibly inauspicious 19th of 20th day of inactivity a turn appears. Hope somebody's still around to see it.
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Topic: Outfoxed - Chapter 1: A Sense of Direction (Read 14512 times)