"Well I've not nothing better in mind. Stealing women's clothing is is!? Also I'm at least twenty, don't call me child."
Fuck it! Let's go see this Monument! Time for a PANTY RAID. Except. Robes.
"It is not
women's clothing, child, but a priest's... hrm, be swift, and I shall do the same," says the priest, letting go of you and taking off at a decent clip straight out the entrance. You take a shortcut and climb through a hole in the wall, finding yourself right next to the monument.
It really does look pretty heretical, and would probably be a ruin if it were complete in the first place. The stones stolen from the chapel are placed haphazardly and supplemented with random bits of wood, all of it cobbled together into a whole that manages to seem dodgier than the sum of its parts. You could describe it as a small dome if you were generous and forgiving of geometric irregularities, with a hole on one side that you think is the entrance. The inside would be pretty dark, but fortunately someone's lit a fire.
Stepping in with care and ducking a little to avoid the low pseudo-arch, you find that the inside of the so-called monument is rather small. Perhaps two full armspans at best. At the center of the room you see a familiar-looking beige stone slab on which a small bowl filled with burning straw illuminates the room in dim firelight and also appears to half-fill it with smoke - thankfully there is at least some ventilation, though you can't readily identify where. Probably made by accident during construction.
On the slab you also spot a robe much like the one the priest was wearing, but unadorned with the sequins of gold - its orange-ish color is not what you'd describe as pleasant. It rests beneath a small pile of gold coins and tiny, delicate rodent bones mixed in roughly equal proportion, serving as a sort of altar cloth.
Behind the altar stands a small, portly, middle-aged woman who might look quite affable in other circumstances. As it is, though, she is covered with the bones and hides of many small animals (although some of the bones do look concerningly larger as well), and the look on her face is unsettlingly purposeful. Fortunately, she's not looking at you. Unfortunately, who she
is looking at is a fairly spidery-looking woman wearing a full suit of plate, kneeling before the altar with sword in hand, a shield bearing the image of a coiled worm tied to her back.
"... and so from the bones and blood of His kin the True King shall return in time as history will flow once more. And then we too shall flow even as we now ebb and hide from the foul stoat. The lamentations of their people will carry to the four corners of the world, and the blood of three of their generations shall make the lands they burned and salted fill with vibrant life once more. And so on the fields of Benzerwald the Great House will rise again," the priestess dictates to the knight, who looks up toward her as she concludes what seems to have been a fairly long speech.
"So it will be," the knight replies with an air of ritual in her voice. "The House will continue. Now and forever."
"I would give a world for a cordless drill... Hey, dude. Don't you think the door would be easier to break though? And faster?"
Persuade the grazy guy to change his target. Search the cell for anything that can be used as a tool to drill wood.
The crazy guy continues to pick away at the crack in the exceedingly thick wall for a few moments longer, though your words do bring out a visible frustration in his dark eyes. A few moments pass and he stops, giving a raspy sigh as he walks past you toward the door, still holding the odd tool in his hands. You still have no idea what it's supposed to be - looks like an awl, maybe, but the shape is a little unusual, and you think you make out a few additional prongs, and it appears to be entirely made of metal. It doesn't help that the guy continuously twirls it in his hands, as if afraid to let it come to rest.
As it is, though, he jams it into the door lock, twists slightly, tightens his grip, pushes a little - there's a click and a low whirr. He twists once more, you hear another click. He then puts his other hand on the door and handily pulls it open, revealing a hallway only slightly less dank than the cell you're in. His fingers deftly move along the lockpick/wallpick, removing it from the door. In a single, fluid movement he folds it into a much smaller shape, and almost without missing a beat slips it into his mouth and swallows it. You think he's had a lot of practice at this, honestly.
"
This part is easy," he explains as he discreetly pulls the door shut once more and starts to walk back to his corner. You don't think it locks again. "It is the
rest that I have trouble with."
Help the guy escape from the ratsack and help him up.
"Ugh, thought I'd never get out of that damn hole. Thanks and enjoy your rats. Now do you have any idea where I am, what happened, or where I can get some proper clothes?"
You pry the vicious ratsack off the poor man, who seems very appreciative and out of breath. The ratsack thrashes wildly, so you pacify it with a well-placed kick and set it down in a place where it can't fall down the hole.
"You're welcome," the shrouded fellow replies, pausing to breathe heavily. "Some feisty rats, eh," he adds when he catches his breath. "Thanks for helping with that there. Was looking bad for a second, it was."
He collects his thoughts as you repeat your questions.
"You're in Anglefork Castle. Stoatmen are gonna kill us all. Minders summoned you demons to help. Clothes are..." he thinks for a moment, "... pretty valuable presently. Nobody'd
give you any, if that's what you're asking. Could, er, improvise," he looks down at himself. "And don't leave clothes lying around, either. Someone'll steal 'em. Happened to me once. Now I just wear mine all at once."
He looks at the bag again.
"Blimey, that's a lot of rats. I really oughta put 'em someplace. And get some feed, too. Hope you can do something about them stoats. See ya!" he says, grabbing the bag and starting to quickly make tracks, heading straight for one of the larger courtyard buildings.
If something is worth putting on a ceiling, it's worth reading. Maybe someone around here could help me figure out what it is. I search the castle for a person to question about the brain ceiling.
A bored servant girl happens to be passing by with seemingly nothing to do, so you engage her, asking about why there happens to be a brain drawn on the ceiling. She looks up at the ceiling, then at you.
"That
is a brain drawn on the ceiling, isn't it?" she says, sounding a little surprised. You agree. "I've never really thought about it that way. I can see it easily now, I mean. I just thought they wrote it funny 'cause they're minders."
Wrote
what funny, is your next question.
"Dunno. It's all just squiggles to me," she explains. You guess literacy isn't something you'd rightly expect from the average servant. "And you shouldn't be trying to read minder squiggles. It ain't healthy. And the minders don't like it."
You ask if they've ever elaborated on why this is discouraged, but she just shrugs. "Minders don't like to explain things to us common folk. Takes a more sofastricated background to understand, they say. Don't stop the buggers from prancing about the hall with guests, bragging all about how they write squiggles on ceilings and how they're so much better than us non-minders."
You give her a quizzical look. "I mean, that's what I think they're saying. They don't talk to guests in the hall out loud. Just in their minds, you know. I've heard they do that. The cook, she sometimes has to have them describe tastes. She says it's a damn nuisance, to be sure - can't get the flavor out of her mind for a day afterwards sometimes. And they're awful specific about 'em. Oh, and the bitch fits they can throw about their food, that's another story entirely."
Her eyes dart around. "Or, er, so I've heard from the kitchen staff. Not that I think so, personally."
Name: Jack Daniels (his parents had a bad sense of humor)
Occupation: Works at a karate studio.
Description: Tall, a little thin, but muscled from the workouts. Dark brown hair and eyes. Kinda unshaven, hair's a bit long.
You open your eyes, and see the sun shine brightly. It's not raining, everything is in its place. Wouldn't you know it, it's a beautiful new day.
And here you are, lying naked on the gravelly ground. The smells are decidedly unpleasant, and the sounds are similarly not very hopeful. In fact, it's really quiet here apart from some distant voices, and maybe some slightly metallic-sounding footsteps here and there.
On one side of you is a tall stone wall - at least twenty five feet tall, in fact, its parapets giving off the feel of a medieval fortification. And on the other side you see the back of a small wooden house, which has a similarly old feel. The backyard you seem to be in looks ransacked, the fence on both accessible sides of it having gone 95% missing, to the point where you can barely tell one's supposed to be there at all.
The house you're next to does appear to be producing a healthy amount of smoke through its chimney, though. Somebody's probably in there, you'd say.
Eric Codeburn, COMPUTISTICS SPECIALIST
- Wounds: 1
- 6514 gp (non-sequential)
- Gold-Backed Burlap Torso Garment
- Inscribed Brick ('Water')
- Anglefork Castle: Demon Prince
- The Impromptu Prophecy: A Hasty Plan
Benny Calverly, Barber
- Naked
- Finally Out Of The Damn Hole
- Finely Crafted Knotted Sack-Club
- Rat Pantheon: Enemy of the Gestalt
Leif Erikson, Miner
- Traces of Gore: Bits On One's Bits
- Reappropriated Skirt
- 1 gp
- License to Bathe
- Anglefork Castle: Lunatic
- The Prison Stone
- Elongated Affairs: A Noble Task
- Elongated Affairs: The Numbers of the Stoat
- Wounds: 1
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- Queenly Garments: the Humble Dress
- Sticks: 0.95 (total)
- Rat Pantheon: Disliked
- Traces of Mischief: Mouthful of Blackness
- Anglefork Castle: the New Queen's Confidant
Jack Daniels, Karate Man
- Naked
- Gravel-Ridden
Author
Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 262765 times)