I think I am Leif Erikson, miner, not minder, descendant of great vikings. And clearly you haven't seen real darkness yet, like one in the well. Now that was dark, so don't get so pissy.
Move in direction of the answer, perhaps it is not mushroom induced hallucination. Let's make friends!
[The Darkness Is Your Friend: 3]
You aim forward and dive into the dark, reaching for something to wrap your hands around and anchor yourself to. You tumble forth, the ground getting further and further away until you've completely lost sight of it. And from here any direction begins to feel increasingly similar, and the darkness increasingly abstract. You pass by a nearby cube made of what feels like plush, except when you pat it you get a faceful of moldy spore-dust. Reflexively you kick it away, and as it travels through the dark you notice it pick up speed and rotational velocity until it becomes a blur, then progressively fades out of sight.
You wonder if you're actually going in the same direction as you were previously. You step onto a convenient nearby patch of ground, free-floating in the void and the dark. It lets you stop and think a moment despite spinning very quickly, but you don't have a frame of reference to compare that to so you're surprisingly okay with this. You ponder the darkness, which still appears to be obstinate and responds with only more questions. What do you want? Why are you swimming this way? Which way are you swimming? What's your angle? You scratch your head. You're not really sure you speak its language. Well, you kind of do, you think. There's words there. But you get the feeling they mean something different. Better start simple.
You open up your arms and shout into the dark, hello! Friends! Friends, come here! Come hither! You suddenly feel a little dizzy, but you shake it off! Hello, you say again! Friends! There is a papery flapping noise somewhere behind you. The darkness ahead shivers at your words. To your left, something creaks. And you discern a gentle dripping to your right. Are you still spinning? You don't think you're still spinning. You try to discern what they may be, but only get a vaguely stony sensation in the back of your throat as you reach out.
No, having survived all that I am not going to drown.
Swim for it! And do not. let. go.
[In The Arms Of An Angel Of Death: 6]
You kick at the bogwater trying to keep you still, and your heel paradoxically finds a face, your foot breaking a nose and dislocating a few teeth. The hold of the water lightens, and you mash the other foot as well, crushing a windpipe and eliciting a gurgling sound. You run your hand over your shoulder and with an animalistic fury tear several snaking, emaciated fingers off yourself, then tear them off the hand they belonged to. You force the mummy's hands around your neck and start using all four limbs. Your eye opens wide and the bog starts to scream as you make the faces of the hungry dead into your staircase, crushing them and collapsing them with your step as you start to shake off their grip, insects flying from each sweep of your arm as you resist with all of your might.
[Breaker of Bones: 2]
You mash at the thick, viscous bogwater and whatever it is that's possessed it, and are accompanied by the most horrific shrieking as you dive out to the surface, gasping for air. You start running for the road, but your feet begin to sink again immediately, the water pulling at them, forcing you to pause to stomp into it to keep away the murderous powers beneath. They recede and flee as you stare and kick them down, and the water grows thinner close to the road. You trip into it quite by accident, and the rest of the way is made by crawling out, coughing up dark fluid from your lungs and shaking insects from your body. You flop out onto the gravely chitin of the road and very nearly roll onto your companion as you spend a few moments to regain your composure. Seems it's not quite quicksand that you need to beware around here.
"Huh, you're a lot more scared of me than I remember people being. Then again, I suppose I wasn't exactly associating with normal individuals myself. So, how long do sprained ankles normally take to heal?"
Oh he's not scared good sir he is just very respectful of powers that may or may not have trapped his immortal soul in oblivion to be called upon whenever they feel like it or maybe eat it instead please don't eat his soul he had enough of that with the stoatman occupation have you seen the way their Speakers look at people it's pretty horrifying actually oh and he's probably fine he just needs er something to help him walk around like a cane or some crutches or something if it's not too much of a problem good sir he wouldn't want to be a bother or anything.
I grab a few maps: a map focusing on Bemzerwald, the map of the far South, and a couple depicting other foreign areas.
Then I head to the last room in the house.
The doctor wanders over while shaking her head. That history section is really quite horrif- oh
hello, she stops by the romance section. Now this certainly hasn't been expunged, she notes as her eyes run across the titles. She goes up to one printed volume in particular, oh! They didn't have this one in the capital! Burning Desire In The House of Meats! She checks the publishing date - this is a month old! Don't mind if she does, she says as she slips the volume in her dress. Oh, and there's one from the month before that, she says and grabs another, very similar-looking book. Wait, do they have the whole series? They
do!
You hold up two roughly similar maps of Benzerwald as you shop around the cartography section. The doctor looks at them - take the left one, she advises. Less recent, but the other one's from 10 years ago and there was a lot of questionable surveying going on there. As in, parts of that might have literally been dreamed up. Possibly minding, perhaps infiltration from El, but probably just a lot of hearsay and mass hysteria involved. She then turns back to her perusal as you pocket the older map, and take a few printed maps of El, an artisanal and fairly incomplete rendering of the Kingdom of the Dead (lot of skulls on that, you notice), a map of the northern borderlands in particular, including lands up to as far as Elizabeth. And then for fun you pick up a vague map of the Grand Republic of Alfalfa, the improbably named state apparently found south beyond the Corner Sea that unlike the rest of these clownshoes maps is actually attested twice, and in shapes close enough to each other that you might believe something is there after all.
You look up to see the doctor wrapping a fair dozen books up in a gown she seems to have quickly run off to steal from the bedroom. It makes for a rather lacy parcel, which she supposes is in keeping with the contents. You both then head out to see the final room.
[The Country House Expedition: 5]
It's a considerably smaller room than the others, and doesn't really look like much to begin with and frankly smells a little odd. Would have been a bit of trouble to get into, since the door that appears to have been snapped in half by the earthquake was clearly locked at some previous time. As it is, the two pieces of door are fairly easily pulled apart. Within there are three tables, one against each wall, with tall cabinets standing in the corners. All of it, even the small stools next to the tables, is covered in at least one tarp. You and the doctor pull one tarp off and reveal a sturdy-looking work table beneath it, and very narrowly avoid upsetting a row of bottles standing freely at one end of the table as the doctor nimbly steps over to catch one that's about to fall.
Oh, she says, something else must have fallen down here as well. Broken flask full of, she lifts it up to check the label, ah. Unidentified neurotoxin K-1. She blanches, then exchanges a look with you. Well, she says after a few moments, it's definitely dried out completely. So it's
probably safe. Must be months old by now. She picks up one of the still-intact bottles. Unidentified neurotoxin K-2. And unidentified neurotoxin L! That's... not very encouraging.
You very carefully check under the other tarps - pins and ether, an elegant set of taxidermy tools, a miniature and fairly primitive, but no doubt somewhat effective set of alchemical odds and ends, and an unfinished collection of what look to be jellyfish, perfectly fixed and preserved in a shape almost exactly like you'd imagine they would appear in nature - an amazing feat, given they're all pinned inside delicate glass flasks. The cabinets loom over the rest of the lab, chock full of fixatives kept in varyingly sealed containers, from a single carafe of distilled alcohol to a wealth of "unidentified toxins" to creatively named discoveries to even a triple-sealed, generously wrapped flask of "dragon's doom". Do the Treefrogs even sell that, the doctor wonders aloud.
A dusty, exotic paper notebook sits on one of the tables, untouched in quite a long time, the room fixed much like many of the things in it. A cursory look reveals it to be full of cryptic notes, the name in the front identifying the owner as one Augusta the White. Ah, must be the mayor's wife. She did like to style herself as something of a sorceress. Though really this is more of a... well, to be frank it's nothing like any alchemy lab she's seen. A bit too neat and well-organized. And the arthropods here are very much deliberate, she says as she pulls out one of the drawers of a cabinet to reveal a stupendously large collection of preserved scorpions petrified for posterity.
((Back))
What? "Ah, yes, of course! The worms! They are coming? Where?"
Look down for worms. Be unsure of what to do about it.
[Yeah The Worms Are Coming: 2]
You look down. No worms that you can see, unfortunately. Oh wait, there is one you suppose. You bend down to pick it up as Claire manages to run up as well, stopping to get fully dressed on the way. What, she says, what's going on?
The worms are coming, the ranger says with a great deal of excitement! The worms are coming, you shrug and lift up your earthworm. The worms are coming, she repeats doubtfully. The worms are coming, the worms are coming! The ranger seems quite resolute in this, though completely ignores your worm in the process. As does Claire herself.
The ground rumbles gently. You notice a patch of earth rising a little ways off, much like a molehill if molehills tended to be ten feet tall. Another pops up a little ways closer. The worms are coming, the ranger repeats, pulling out a sizable knife from his pocket, his head lolling a little and displaying a very much open hole in his neck you recall from last night. Still not bleeding, which you suppose is a good sign? Bit dark though.
Oh dear, says Claire as the large wormhills continue to approach, the worms really are coming, aren't they? Yes, the ranger shouts! This is what he's saying! The worms are coming! Well, maybe just one worm. The others might turn up later! Or they're deeper down! To know for sure you'd need the wormsong. Quick, he motions to you, you all need to go after it! Before it gets away!
Leif Erikson, Miner
- Itchy Woolen Britches (worn)
- Traces of Mischief: No Arms
- Apples to Apples: Crossroads?
- A Word: INEVITABLE
- A Word: APOCALYPSE
- Body Count: 228
- Mead of Poetry (5 shining revelations remaining)
- Enders' Friend: The Grave of Red Clouds Parting
- Inscribed Wooden Stylus
- Iron spear
- 1.03 gp
- The Box: ?
- Induced Lucidity: the Aftermath, or the New Beginning
- Compatibility: Minding
- Tricks of the Mind: Perception, Memory
- Tricks of the Mind: Engagement, Negation, Abstraction, Prestige
- Tricks of the Mind: the Self, the Other
- Gods of the Underground: Did You Just What
- A Visit From The Stork: Is What You Yes
- The Voracious Dark: Two Deals Made
- The Voracious Dark: The Promised Sixth
- Moth's Flight: the Way to Rise
- The Miracle of Life: Wayward Rabbit
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- Linen stoat shirt (worn)
- Stoat trousers (worn)
- Comfy slippers (worn)
- Never-made scimitar (blackened, slightly dull)
- Tooth-handled hunting knife
- Black leather boots
- An assemblage of amber and amethysts
- Silver thread-necklace
- Onyx spiral earrings
- 2 oaken rings
- Rusty, bloodstained knife
- A Word: HUNGER
- A Word: SYNTHESIS
- A Weapon: Explosive Cysts
- Grenade Jumping: A Solid Technique
- The Good Doctor: Secret Histories
- Sword of the Sand People: Cleaning Supplies
- Sword of the Sand People: The Services of a Minder
- Higher Tonight: There And Back Again
Jack Daniels, Karate Man
- Red and gold vest and breeches combo (worn)
- Leather boots (worn)
- Rubber mattress (filled with water)
- 14033 gp (in sack)
- Poor Unfortunate Soul: Forever Captive
- The Queen's Guard: Actual Asset
- Powers of the Beyond: Gardener of Thoughts
- Garden of Thoughts: the Stoat-Magistrate
- Dusty Wooden Speaking-Trumpet
- Crossbow Bolt (in throat)
- A Word: REND
- A Word: SILENCE
- A Weapon: Murder-Thought
- Uncoupled: Strength
- Wooden Door
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Run Like Hell
- Induced Lucidity: A Garden Well-Tended
- Elongated Affairs: Enemy of the New State
- A Place In History: Vastly Unreliable
- Anglefork Castle: the Great Worm
- 2 rats, crushed
- 1 rat, strangled
- 1 rat, live
- Travels In The Fourth Dimension: Sunday ± 2 Days
- Doomstones: So High Up But Such A Bitter View
- The Majordomo: A Great Divide Between Us Now
- The Voracious Dark: Decreasing Demand
- The Voracious Dark: More Specific Requests
- Body Count: 3
Thomas Minstep, Insurance Agent
- Ranging fork
- 2 feet of sinew-thread
- Lonely earthworm
- Make A Man Out Of You: Battle-Tested
- Troubles In Anglefork Town: Bearer of the Sword
- A Word: ABSENCE
- A Word: GOODBYE
- Tooth-needle
- A Weapon: The Sword They Fear
- Traces of Mischief: Whole-Body Radioactive Burn
- A Bowl, Black and Knobby
- Tight Leather Pants (worn)
- Incredibly Tight Blue Dress (worn, mutilated, mildly provocative)
- Travels In The Fourth Dimension: Sunday, July 25th, 409 S.D.
- The Queen's Guard: A Reward Well Earned
- The New Queen: Lasting Gratitude
- Lonely Roads: The Man, The Legend
- The One They Fear: A Satisfactory Contract
- The Box: Absolutely Delightful
- A Boy's Life: A Hunting Companion
- Body Count: 2
Oscar Wilde, Chemistry Teacher
- A Word: REVELATION
- Wounds: 1
- Traces of Mischief: Glowing Facial Rift
- The Serpent's Egg: Dissemination
- Body Count: 4
- Bog mummy (wearing metal helmet)
- Time-ender's measure (wrapped, processing? stopping?)
- 10 m of rope
- Half a candle
- 1 rat, skinless and smoked
- 6 gp
- Poor Misshapen Dice
- Lock of Hair (unidentified)
- Iron nail, unused
- An Inauspicious Key
- Burlap Foot Wrappings (worn)
- Burlap Hand Wrappings (worn)
- Moth-Eaten Hat (worn)
- Respectable Brown Skirt (worn)
- Old Brown Waistcoat (worn)
- Bright Yellow Tunic (worn)
- A Wealth of Burlap Ribbons
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: The Less Dangerous Friend
- Fuligin Gates: A Delivery for the Town