"Ah, thank you. Handy thing that minder thing. So that lady of the castle who's been locked into solitary confinement teached me some preliminary minder aptitude test, which I found really easy, so I figured maybe I should become a minder myself? You see, minder is just one d away from miner, so upgrade should be easy, right? But I guess I could try the door first."
Leif turns to Daniels "So there's devil behind the door and you made deal with it? Did it occur to you to check what you are exactly trading?"
Also step through the door.
The girl is unimpressed by your insights. Pah, what does she know. What does anyone know, really? Even Mr. Daniels, stepping through an enchanted door with only the vaguest notion of what lies on the other side simply because some random stranger asked him to.
That being said, you step through the black door at the minder girl's request. It opens not as a normal door - it sinks away at your touch, shying away until its matter disappears into what appears like a void. Perhaps something even emptier - a yawning hole in the fabric of reality, supported by nothing, having eaten the foundations it may have once had in a time before time. It peers into you deeply, your thoughts and words trickling into it before you've even begun to form them. You stop after your first step, unsure whether to proceed - looking back, however, the exit grows increasingly distant regardless, the dark well enfolding it, shrinking it until it disappears from sight.
Welcome. It has been some time. Provide a question and a desire. Speak plainly and receive the same.
Head into the tower, if there's no opening have the stone knock out a window so I can see what I'm doing, and rake searing hell across the stoats.
"Red hot SUN, won't you come, and wash away the stain..."
[Architectural Benevolence: 5]
You duck down into the nearby stairwell, your stone following along through the ceiling-hole it made previously. Luckily, there is a perfectly good window right at the top of the tower, in the middle of what you assume to be a meditation hall based on the abundance of cushions on the floor and arcane-looking motivational texts (or perhaps what pass for magical spells among minders, you're not entirely sure) carved over every inch of the walls and ceiling. It's a long window, running in a semi-circle along the hall, and doesn't even have any glass in it. Must get a bit drafty here in the winter. But no matter - a view of stoats you have sought, and a view of stoats you most assuredly get. Now for some further punishment.
SUN
[Word: 1]
The false sun pauses in the sky, intrigued by your thought. You wish for it to come closer, then? It shall.
[Red Glare: 3]
You see it flit about as it moves closer in sweeping arcs, growing larger and more oppressive in the sky. The heat draws out the water from your body. The walls begin to run, the words on them growing increasingly illegible. The cushions start to catch on fire violently. The stoats start to fire at the approaching sun-beast for lack of any better ideas - no bolts reach, some being vaporized before even coming close. It is a great and ponderous thing, your false sun, but it comes for you with an unsettling inevitability.
"Sir guard, thank you very much; you've been most helpful. Send my regards and thanks to your supervisor." Thomas turned his attention fully to the high face. "Ah, yes. I have been sent here by the... queen, yes, as I have been told the minders know more than anyone else here. My name is Thomas Minstep, and I arrived here sometime tonight. Most unexpectedly, really, since the last thing I remember is that I was asleep in my bed, but then I'm waking up naked stuffed into a sack. Rats were referenced, I believed. Now, the queen led me to believe that the minders may know something of this. Are you a minder? If not, may I please speak with them? If so, what do you know?"
Get to the bottom of this
[Competence of the Number Two: 2]
Uh, well, it's been a weird day for everyone. And there's been, like, a change in management? The head girl's now the, er, mistress of the tower, was it? He doesn't really know what's going on, so, uh, sorry about that. Maybe you can come back later when the head girl gets back? She went off to, like, do something.
... is it getting hot in here? You think it's getting hot in here. It is, er, getting hot in here, now that he thinks about it. It's probably the, uh, weirdo with the glowing rock? He's kind of, er,
dangerous that way, the minder has noticed.
"It wants connections, whatever those are. Good luck!"
He then addresses the girl.
"So, are you a minder? How'd you obtain your power, if so?"
Go crush the unconscious guy's skull before he wakes up, don't need his shitty sales pitches again.
Practice, the girl says. Lots and lots of grueling practice and an ungodly amount of time invested, and even that's only provided results because she's got a knack for it. She's been at this for... well, as long as she can actually remember. 6 years? 7, tops. She's mastered the beginning feats of reality earlier than most, she notes as she floats up a foot in the air to demonstrate.
Interesting, you say as you nonchalantly step over to the disabled shady fellow and thoughtfully crumple his skull into homogeneity, then wipe the resultant gore off on his ugly shawl. Was that really necessary, she asks. You reply that it's poor form to walk around with filthy hands where you come from.
HUNGER
You pause a second. That sounds familiar. The ground stirs for a second. Looking around, you spot the conspicuous absence of any evidence against you in a potential murder trial. The other three guys are gone too.
Okay, I've got one thing to take care of first. I walk over to the well, and as I do I imagine the bodies of the minders there sinking into the ground. When I arrive I lean over the edge and speak, "Earth, the dead belong to you. You know this and you HUNGER for them. Take what is yours."
The smell wafting out of the well convinces you of the rightness of this course of action.
HUNGER
[Word: 4]
The earth wakens for an instant. Its instinct is sharper this time. Clearer, more practiced. You do not hear it from the distance, or see it in the darkness below. But it moves without error, emboldened by your permission.
You look at the ground. It waits patiently.
[Red Glare: 1]
The air starts to burn. You look at the sky and see a descending midnight sun. Your dress catches fire in the heat and drought as the glare blinds you momentarily.
[Touch of Flame: 1]
You have exactly three movements at your disposal. In your confusion and surprise you neglect to consider them well. Flames envelop you. You flail and scream. All things you touch burst into flame. The glare bites into your flesh, digs down to your bones and stabs into every nerve it can find, the boiling agony tripping every priority alert your nervous system can think of presently.
Eric Codeburn, COMPUTISTICS SPECIALIST
- Wounds: 1
- Body Count: 41
- Floral Nightgown (worn, burnt)
- A Word: SUN
- A Word: MOON
- Anglefork Castle: Minister of Moronic Affairs
- The Impromptu Prophecy: Child of the Sun and Moon
- Adherents of the Great House: Enemy of Memory
- Well and Truly Narked Upon: 1
- Friends in Low Places: a Successful Transaction
- Subordinate Shining Stone (2 tons, emotional)
- Army of the New State: 528 Stoatmen
- Army of the New State: Dread Dawn
- The Good Doctor: the Solitary Candidate
- A Splendid View: the Tower of the Mind
Leif Erikson, Miner
- Wounds: 2
- Reappropriated, Clean Skirt
- 1 gp
- Anglefork Castle: A Free Man
- The Box: an Amicable Parting
- Tower of the Mind: Number Two
- Induced Lucidity: An Example Realm
- The Prison Stone
- Elongated Affairs: A Noble Task
- Elongated Affairs: The Numbers of the Stoat
- The Voracious Dark: A Modest Proposal
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- Wounds: 2
- A Word: HUNGER
- A Weapon: Explosive Cysts
- Rat Pantheon: Disliked
- Traces of Mischief: Mouthful of Blackness
- The New Queen: ?
- Origins: Witness to Dissolution
- Tower of the Mind: There's Something To Remember
- Gross Incandescence: Charred to the Bone
- Inscribed Brick ('Water')
- The Voracious Dark: Two Connections Given
- Body Count: 1
- Never In: the Obvious Candidates
Jack Daniels, Karate Man
- Wounds: 1
- Voluntarily Naked
- Uncoupled: Strength
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: the Sword of Destiny
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Something Priceless?
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Something Purple?
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: A Profane Megalith
- Tower of the Mind: Many Questions, Many Questions Indeed!
- Doomstones: ?
- A Place In History: Emergent Abomination
- Anglefork Castle: the Great Serpent
- 2 rats, crushed
- 1 rat, strangled
- 1 rat, live
- Gross Incandescence: Unilluminated
- Travels In The Fourth Dimension: Sunday ± 2 Days
- The Impromptu Prophecy: ?
- The Voracious Dark: Two Connections Given
- Body Count: 2
Thomas Minstep, Insurance Agent
- Anglefork Castle: Deluded Resident
- Traces of Mischief: Sandy Groin
- Gross Incandescence: Partly Illuminated
- Tight Leather Pants
- Travels In The Fourth Dimension: Friday, July 23rd, 409 S.D.
- The Majordomo: Happy to Help
- The Queen's Guard: Okayed by the Queen
- The New Queen: Spearheading the Inquiry
- Tower of the Mind: a Referral