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[Liquefied Spleens]

Archers and Theater

The tower is easier to clean than yesterday, as most of the filth was accumulative. No need to dust something EVERY day, after all. Still, you spent quite some time just doing other general busywork. After a notice, you were also put on the job of organizing the different available ingredients or specimens. The animal care room was quite busy today, having around a dozen cages containing frogs of all types. Every color of the rainbow, and licking one would make you feel like a rainbow, according to the wizard working with it. The man had mushrooms growing on his ears, so you felt no reason to disagree or try his "sample". He was nice, otherwise. You also discovered that the water room has a purpose other than "be mysterious". It's used to house aquatic animals, for one, and to allow something to grow from fetus to regular creature. You don't know what the creature was, but there was a member of the Order of the Blighted Beak there to watch over it. He didn't even give you a glance as he (or she, the robes leave much to the imagination) silently scribbles down a bunch of things. You don't have to clean out the inside of the tank, so you don't care. Your mop got some heavy duties done, though.

All in all, a boring day, although you did have to kill something. A carnivorous plant that could chomp through bone and hits quick as a snake. Of course, it can't eat your sword, and its rooted in place, so killing it was barely noteworthy. Eveline was hard at work, and was even thoughtful enough to not leave a mess! She used every last drop and particle of whatever she used, and put what few left-overs there were in a different vials. She looked satisfied with her work, and was just closing up her case when you finished up your work. As you were putting away your cleaning supplies, you casually mentioned you are accepting the proposal to look after that dwarf. Kasimor doesn't take it as casually as you say it, looking at you in minor shock, until he shrugs.  Then, he writes it down on a piece of paper he kept in a drawer. It looks special, extra-thick and some extra drawings on it. Then, he shoves it your way, and places a quill next to it. After a quick signature, Kasimor explains that he would like reports on any advancements, and that he'll accept missing workdays if you can prove you were searching for the dwarf. Not too many, though, he would prefer you keep cleaning for the month. He then gives you a pouch of money! Fifty coins in total, as an advance payment for catching the culprit. This will come in handy...

You wander downstairs to take Eveline along with you, so you can go on a shopping trip, but she's not in the alchemy floor anymore. You look around the tower a bit, and eventually find her with Meandra at the bottom floor, happily chatting away while Meandra draws a ritualistic circle and lines the outsides with a strange, blood-red vine. She happily says hello when you enter, and before you even ask, she explains she's creating a familiar for herself. It's not the first time, but her familiars only last for a few days. She's still working out the kinks. She doesn't even give a warning before she just activates the ritual. A flash covers the room, and the sound of a fire-cracker seems to come from the middle of the circle. When you manage to get your vision back from the blinding flash, you see a small cat made up of vines crawling on Meandra, who looks vaguely pleased. It looks more like she just got done doing the dishes instead of making new life.

She got really excited when you casually mentioned your were about to go shopping. Eveline also got really excited when you said it was for her sake. So now you're walking to the market district as the sun sets with two people bouncing around you excitedly. You manage to strike up conversation about some things you wanted to ask, in-between Meandra's constant talking about what kind of outfit she think would fit the kobolt perfectly.
Hey, wanted to ask you something. Back when we first met, why'd you hop on my back? Most people don't have that reaction when they see a drider.
Oh! Eh... Sorry? It's just that things had to go fast, and I'm not that fast, and... uh... We domesticate giant spiders in my home-town. Not to say you're an animal o-or a mount, but I uh... I'm sorry....
I don't mind! No problem at all. It's just an odd reaction, considering most people are still a bit too creeped out to touch the spider parts.
People don't seem bothered...
You scoff, Yeah. At a distance! People can just focus on my top half, or people just pretend they don't care.But they do! I know they do. Nobody comes near me unless they NEED something from me. I had caravans throw stones at me for "scaring the children", and then I had to feed those some people when they came in the inn. They didn't even have the decency to look ashamed while they ate the food that "The Freak of the Inn" made. So, yes! People are bothered, it's just that here, in the city, the stones are harder to fucking find!

When you finish you tirade, you find yourself breathing heavily. Meandra has stopped prattling, and Eveline has flinched back in fear. You curse at your outburst.
Whoa... You have a lot of pent up issues, don't you? Well, I guess that's why sentients invented shopping!
So businesses get money?
No! To have fun! Try some new things! Have a good talk! And, really, people don't care as much as you think. I mean, you haven't been attacked yet.
I was assaulted by five men and almost got enslaved YESTERDAY.
...Oh. Well, all the more reason to go SHOPPING! Oh-oh-oh, that one! In there, I know I saw the CUTEST little dress!

Meandra didn't seem to skip a beat, and soon the both of you are trying out some cute dresses for the kobolt. She's really shy at first, refusing to come out of the fitting booth, but after some encouragements, she happily shows off how she looks. With her canine features and general shape, it's hard for her to have anything look bad. Dwarven fashion fits her alchemist look, while the Ilithian styles really show off her bright fur. even the local styles, with their muted colors, seem to fit quite well, and she prefers them the most. You eventually but a shirt, with a small vest over it, and a dress. She looks a lot better. You buy some other outfits too, but cheaper ones. She has three different outfits now, for the decent price of 34 coins! The smaller sizes cut into the price, the merchants were happy somebody could offload some of their dwarf-sized items. When you walk outside, with Eveline slipping out the door with her new clothing, clearly ecstatic at receiving a gift like this, you ask Meandra if a group may be going to the orc tower in the foreseeable future. She says she knows most. At the end of this month, in 14 days, the Order of the Blighted Beak will depart towards the tower. They won't actually stop at the tower, but they do visit the closest city to restock on their rarest supplies. After that, they head back to the Deadlands. Other than that, some botanists are leaving tomorrow, and in one week's time a miscellaneous group will be leaving. A random gaggle of wizards that travel together to avoid bandits, she supposes. Meandra herself will be leaving in three weeks, to visit the north. The orc tower is along the way.
All quite useful information, but none seem to fit your time-frame perfectly, and these schedules are subject to change.

The shopping spree continues in the tailor you got your outfit done. You felt like Eveline could use an all-purpose outfit, instead of just casualwear. For 8 coins, you managed to find what is essentially a sturdy overall with deep pockets. Apparently, it was originally meant for a dwarven smith, but they don't come around nearly as much as they used to. The dwarves only become more xenophobic over time, which Meandra seems to confirm. She looks a bit worried about that fact, but her happy demeanor still doesn't quite go away.
The rest of the evening was spent looking around the shops for a bit, until you finally decide to finish the evening with a visit to the theater district. The way there was uneventful, but when you enter the district itself...
My god, it's full of stars.

Everything here is made to astound or distract. massive cloths filled with all sorts of patterns, poems on the walls, performers in the many, many open places. There are no residential buildings, all of them serve as the background of a play or a place for props and artists to rest. To your surprise, you even find some people performing demonstrations on how to fight. At least you now know where your uncle gives his lessons. You decide against disturbing his lesson, as he's currently dealing with two dozen children, all practicing their swordplay or archery. You didn't peg your uncle to be so good at dealing with so many people at once, but he always was a surprising man. He gives you a nod when he notices you, and continues teaching. You and your possé wander around a good while longer, and watch people breathe fire and charm snakes without magic. You didn't want to spend any more money on this evening, so you don't go watch a play, but entertaining yourself is quite easy. You're having the time of your life until, suddenly, you hear a female voice cry out!
Archer on the roof!  ARCHER ON THE ROOF!
You turn around in the direction of the noise, which proves to be a good thing. Because you turned around, the crossbow bolt "merely" hits your arm! You groan in pain as the bolt hits bone, but you keep enough sense of mind to look at the attacker!

It's the dwarf! He's on the rooftops of the buildings, and he's making a rapid escape! Two guardsman are calling in an alarm, and one is trying to keep up on the ground while his partner sprints inside to reach the roof. The dwarf is likely to get away, however!

Get medical attention.
Who knows what this bolt might do. You'd better take care of this wound first. Eveline can help!

Chase after him!
He is about to learn why the high ground matters very little against a drider

Get volunteers involved
There's people with all sorts of talents here, including quite a few acrobats. Some proper motivation could get them to help.

Flee the scene immediately!
The dwarf may have allies, so you need to get inside a building before an arrow hits something really vital!

Other

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 5
HP: 12/20
Mana: 15/25
Stress: 40/100

Equipment:
Drider shirt
Expensive Drider Coat (in a bag on your back.)
Steel sword
Grassy iron shield

Items:
Handkerchief
96 coins
Rough leather armor (in the bag)
Crossbow bolt( IN ARM)

Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(1) (invests 1 of your max mana)
Reshape minion: Allows you to slightly change the appearance of your resurrected minions. (//////...)
Minion Vision(weak): Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (invests one mana) (1)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (2 per second)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You can't do anything with it, quite yet. (10 mana)

Skills:
Poison Stinger (Potentially lethal)
Major experience in blocking and swords.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: excellent
Corpse Cutting: Awful.
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge

[crazyabe]

Chase after him!

[RAM]

This bolt could be enchanted or poisoned or who-knows-what... Also it will get in the way of fighting, being prone to being grabbed and such. Rip the thing out, glance at it for anything obviously suspicious, then hand it to Eveline. If you think that you will still be good to fight after a half-hour chase across rooftops then go for it, and try to throw some pets at them if you get close enough. If you'll be useless after a few minutes of blood loss, than bother about that instead.

[Puppyguard]

Chase the dwarf!
Pull out the bolt if you can, but don't bother handing it to eveline if she is too far away. just drop it on the floor.
Every second wasted means a second more the dwarf can escape.

[RAM]

She should be right next to use, and the bolt could be valuable evidence. No competent assassin would use a distinctive bolt, but what sort of competent assassin uses a summoning ritual at point-blank range?

[hachnslay]

DO! NOT! CHASE!

it is likely what the dwarf would want - leading us into an ambush. Instead remove the bolt immediately, report to the nearest Watch Headquarter and calmly state: "You might not realize, but i have just been shot." Followed by a description of the Dwarf, the direction he is traveling in, what colours he wore, a guess at his height, state and length of beard and amount of metal on his body or clothing - the common dwarf identifiers.

[RAM]

I am inclined to agree except for a couple of points.
1: If we learned anything, then we would stop being a crazy berserker.
2: A bolt to the back seems lethal enough. I don't think that they need a backup plan and I doubt that we can afford to let them just keep doing this. If they are actually luring us into a trap, wouldn't it have been better to hit one of our friends instead? And setting up someone to warn us so that we would see them is a lot of effort to go to and a lot of exposure to risk, unless it is a ventriloquism magic? They almost certainly DO have a trap to lead us into, but only because they are Batman, and thus there will always be a trap...

[Liquefied Spleens]

Chase!

You grab the bolt with your other arm, and rip it out in one smooth motion. You created quite the ugly wound with that, and blood is gushing out, but you're already charging to the wall as people begin screaming. You threw the unremarkable bolt in the direction of Eveline, before telling your companions to stay here. You hissed it, to be more precise, and your climb up the wall had quite the bestial aspect to it, your human arms clawing at any kind of extra grip. You reach the rooftop in no time, and see the dwarf running. You sprint after him, your legs crashing against the shingles, sometimes even knocking a weak one off. The tapping makes it quite clear how close you are to the dwarf, as he hurries up when you draw near without even turning around. Not that he wasn't running before, but now he found you to be scarier than gravity. Soon enough, however, the connected rooftops of the district end, and he is put before quite the drop. You hiss as you draw close as he looks around in a panic. Then, for the first time, he turns around and looks at you. His nervousness turns into outright terror, and he screams haltingly in a high voice. You go in to grab him, shield raised, until he suddenly throws his crossbow at you. While it hits your pedipalps, you're hardly affected by it. His next move, on the other hand was more surprising.

He jumped! You look over the edge, and see him reach a window on the other side. He must have leaped at least four meters to reach it, and he crashes through the window with enough force that the wooden frame cracks. You hear two voices scream before you hurry down the wall, cross the street and climb through the window yourself. When you enter, you see an elderly couple holding each-other in bed. They scream again when you enter, and you rush through the open door of the room. Sure enough, there's a second window, and you catch a glimpse of the human dwarf's dangling little feet as he reaches another rooftop. You didn't peg him for the free-running type... Still, you have quite the advantage when it comes you climbing, and you're back on his heels again before he even reached another building. Your arm is hurting like a motherfucker at this point, and if you weren't relying on your spider parts to help you climb, you wouldn't have had a chance to catch him. You hear a loud bell being rung around the city, too, and the guards are following as well. Some of them, wearing lighter armor, even joined up with the rooftop chase. In the lacking light, the dwarf appears un-descriptive. All you can tell is that his clothes are dark, and his body-shape is too thin to be a real dwarf. If you can't catch this bastard, you can't even give a damn description of him!

You force a burst of speed, outright destroying some of the shingles you stomp on and you finally manage to reach him. He screams in terror as he desperately tries to speed up. Until, suddenly, he slips! One of the shingles he stepped on slips away and he falls on his back and begins bouncing downwards, and you only barely manage to catch the idiot before he slips away. You need to use both hands to keep him up, and you get a look into his green eyes as you start pulling him up.
N-no! Please! I don't want to die!
Oh, you won't you piece of-
Please! I wouldn't tell anything, I won't! Please don't do this!
You pull him up as he struggles against your grip like a madman, as if he won't get pancaked by the ground. You barely hold on, until he pulls some dust out of his pocket with his free hand and throws it on your wound! An intense, burning pain shoots through your whole arm, and you drop him as you recoil in pain. The guard that was helping you chase the man down just barely misses, having been blocked by your legs. He falls below...

Into the arms of the platoon of guards below! Look at that, competent guardsman. That's bloody rare, isn't it?
Somehow, the guy looks more concerned about his survival, and he's screaming again. The pain in your arm is subsiding quickly, although the sting remains. You go downwards, using the wall as you clutch your wound. Now that you're not focused on catching the little bastard, you notice that you've been bleeding a LOT. Your arm is covered in blood, and so is a bit of your side. The wound only worsened with your running, and while the pain of the pocket sand is over, the pain of the wound isn't! The guards that aren't holding down the midget are calling for a medic when they see your wound, but you see Eveline and Meandra coming in the distance. Eveline is riding piggy-back on Meandra, who is WAY faster than she appears. She slides to a halt in front of you, and almost instantly puts a vine over your wound before speaking:
Don't DO something like that! You must have lost enough blood it's a miracle you can still stand! Now hold still and let me do my thing, alright!
I'm fine, really... Just a flesh wound.
You still NEED that flesh, lady!
Eveline rummages through her alchemist kit, which she kept on her back. She pulls out a small flash with a sandy-looking liquid inside. She tells you to drink up, and you do so. The taste is... salty, and the texture is thick and unpleasant. You hold back a gag, but the stuff does seem to work wonders. your pain is dulled almost immediately, and a haze you didn't even realize was there is lifted. You were actually getting a little dizzy, but you just didn't notice.

When you turn the the captured victim, you see him screaming in abject terror. He's foaming at the mouth, and struggling all he can. This continues for a while, until he suddenly starts grasping at his face and trying to claw out his eyes. The guards stop him while you look on for a bit. Suddenly, his eyes bulge and he begins to bleed all over his face as wounds start appearing at random. He screeches a final time until, his skull detonates in a red mist, showering the guards in gore!
Oh... That's disgusting.
Some people are vomiting at the sight, Meandra included. Now, of course, you can't interrogate the bastard!

Leave it to the guards.
It's probably best to leave it to the professionals. You might trample evidence or something...

Frisk the corpse
You could find something of note. It's your investigation after all.

Search around
Maybe whatever made that dwarf's head explode is still nearby...

Other

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 5
HP: 8 /20
Mana: 15/25
Stress: 40/100

Equipment:
Drider shirt
Expensive Drider Coat (in a bag on your back.)
Steel sword
Grassy iron shield

Items:
Handkerchief
96 coins
Rough leather armor (in the bag)


Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(1) (invests 1 of your max mana)
Reshape minion: Allows you to slightly change the appearance of your resurrected minions. (//////...)
Minion Vision(weak): Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (invests one mana) (1)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (2 per second)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You can't do anything with it, quite yet. (10 mana)

Skills:
Poison Stinger (Potentially lethal)
Major experience in blocking and swords.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: excellent
Corpse Cutting: Awful.
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge

another quick reminder that his wasn't a dwarf as in the mining drunkard sense, it was a human that was born as a midget. It's just that midget doesn't come off as that serious in scenes like this.

[TheBiggerFish]

.... Catch his soul.  Inform the guards that you are investigating this man for a previous attempt on your life and suspect magic to be involved, with how he suddenly exploded.  Get the corpse to the tower so they can examine it.  Try Kasimor first, he seems like he'd know what to do, and who can do it.  Chain up the corpse just in case, because it's entirely possible it'll be zombified by whatever was controlling it.  Or that it already is.

[RAM]

I think that we forgot how to catch souls, and needed to do it as they died, at least with the version we were using, and that we don't know how to hold on to a soul after catching it. On the other hand...
We got that with mystical knowledge, maybe we can still dig it up mystically even though we forgot that moment of our lives. The soul is probably still nearby and can presumably be caught somehow. We could probably stick a soul in our mouse for now. I mean, what better place to hold a soul than in a body, right?

.... Catch his soul.  Inform the guards that you are investigating this man for a previous attempt on your life and suspect magic to be involved, with how he suddenly exploded.  Get the corpse to the tower so they can examine it.  Try Kasimor first, he seems like he'd know what to do, and who can do it.  Chain up the corpse just in case, because it's entirely possible it'll be zombified by whatever was controlling it.  Or that it already is.

+1 but leave most of it to the guards, hopefully the tower has all the paperwork sorted out and if they don't then arguing with the guards over it is unlikely to make any friends. On that note, try to be gracious. It is refreshing to have assistance when violently accosted and we should mention that it is appreciated.

Try to use your mouse to investigate the area, maybe it can see or smell something suspicious in one of the vantage points of this location. Can you enhance its sight and smell? Maybe even partition its sight onto two of your less-used eyes? You may have been slacking off on seeing with eight eyes but you should have enough practice with one set of eight that you can manage two sets of two with little more than a miserable headache. Honestly, we should be proud of our eyes, covering them is such a waste...

Play with lizard! Lizard is cute, cute is simple, and we have lost a lot of blood again. Let's just enjoy our lizard and hope it doesn't get jealous that someone else was riding on us.

[Puppyguard]

.... Catch his soul.  Inform the guards that you are investigating this man for a previous attempt on your life and suspect magic to be involved, with how he suddenly exploded.  Get the corpse to the tower so they can examine it.  Try Kasimor first, he seems like he'd know what to do, and who can do it.  Chain up the corpse just in case, because it's entirely possible it'll be zombified by whatever was controlling it.  Or that it already is.

+1

[Liquefied Spleens]

Looking at the questionable quality of the last update, and the fact that I'm pretty tired right now, I'll do the update tomorrow at an earlier hour. I don't want to write an update while i'm tired, as the quality suffers noticeably.

[RAM]

Looking at the questionable quality of the last update, and the fact that I'm pretty tired right now, I'll do the update tomorrow at an earlier hour. I don't want to write an update while i'm tired, as the quality suffers noticeably.

That is a responsible and mature attitude that you should be proud of. I have not notices any shortage of quality, but there is no helping one's audience if they turn out to be uncultured filth. Thankyou again for providing this game/story.

[Liquefied Spleens]

Playing with corpses

You need to focus, right now. The body may be gone, but maybe you can figure something out with his soul. You flood the dead body with your necromantic energies, and strange purple wisps emenate from the neck-stump. The guards jump back, wary of the new phenomenon, but they don't do anything rash. You pull your undead mouse while the soul is still visible, and then try an experiment. Visualising your magic as tendrils, you envelop the soul and push it into the mouse. The body absorbs the wisp like a sponge, and glows a bright, radiant purple. You just caught a soul! You're not sure what you'll be able to do with it, and the mouse seems rather excited about it! It's scurrying around on your hand, almost vibrating, and you hear a vague buzzing noise. Then, suddenly, a leg falls off, still twitching. Just as you're about to swear at the event, the mouse suddenly explodes! All that's left of your mouse is a little bit of blood on your hands, and whatever parts are spread over a large area. The guards are staring at you in minor disbelief and confusion.

Ah... So that's NOT how to catch a soul... Darn.
Why.
It seemed like a good idea at the time!
I have a liver in my fur... How old was that zombie?
What? uh, a couple days, I guess?
Lovely... Not even edible. Bah!
Miss? Would you care to explain what, exactly, happened. We know you are the victim of the attack, but would you know why?
I can make a guess... Hold on a moment please.
You remove the lizard from your bag, and let it scurry around to see if it can find something. You may not be able to see much, if anything, but a general feel of something might help.
Anyway, I'm guessing he attacked me because he was serving an eldritch god. I got a little mark that essentially marks me as food, so I'm guessing he was serving them. He summoned one of those eldritch types.
The eldritch pigman attack, right? says a familiar voice.

It's the guard from the bog unicorn incident! He looks quite a bit more decorated than the average guard, now that you look at him in comparison. He really is quite important, if you'd have to guess. He speaks fast and clear, a born leader's voice, in a way.
I read the report on it from Kasimor. On that note, you're partially in charge, where do we put the body? Should be in the morgue, but if you need it someplace else, say it now. We'd bring it to the healer if it was poison, but...
He nudges the headless body with his foot, causing it to spurt out a little more blood.
Something tells me this wasn't poison.
Right, we should bring it to the tower. It figure it was a spell of some sorts. I'm having one of my pets look around, but I'm not getting anything right now.
Right then.
He turns to the other guards and begins yelling his orders. This man can shout! In no time at all, two guards are carrying the corpse, and the rest have begun cleaning up the chunks. One of the guards is casting a spell to clean up the blood, by levitating it together into a ball. It's very impressive, but it's a little sad that the main use of this impressive telekinetic power is to clean a street.

The journey to the tower was uneventful. Eveline and Meandra follow you, mostly because they don't know what else to do. They quietly talk about a couple topics. You didn't pay attention, but they do discuss your mark and you, at one point. They started that topic just as you needed to go talk to Kasimor about why you're dropping off a headless corpse in his tower. The guards are already chaining it up in the floor for all the necromancy and healing stuff, or meat room for short.
You can justify this to Kasimor, but you need a plan after that.

Frisk the corpse
You need to see if he had anything of worth on him. Maybe it will lead you to whatever made him make this decision.

Get some people involved.
You know a few magic users, and your father and uncle Liam are experienced bounty hunters. They could see things you do not. It will take a while for them to get here, of course.

Force a talk with Death.
You never tried it before, but you suspect he didn't take too kindly about the soul-thing. You can't even remember where you learned that, so maybe you could try to talk? Who knows how, though...

Other

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 5
HP: 9 /20
Mana: 5/25
Stress: 40/100

Equipment:
Drider shirt
Expensive Drider Coat (in a bag on your back.)
Steel sword
Grassy iron shield

Items:
Handkerchief
96 coins
Rough leather armor (in the bag)


Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(1) (invests 1 of your max mana)
Reshape minion: Allows you to slightly change the appearance of your resurrected minions. (//////...)
Minion Vision(weak): Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (invests one mana) (1)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (2 per second)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You can't do anything with it, quite yet. (10 mana)

Skills:
Poison Stinger (Potentially lethal)
Major experience in blocking and swords.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: excellent
Corpse Cutting: Awful.
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge

If you're wondering about where the quality lacked in the last update, it was mostly in the last few lines, where I described his head exploding. The description felt like it belonged in Half-Life: Full life consequences. (a bunch of "and then this thing and that and this and some other things too")
Like this moment
Also, I really was unusually tired at the time.

[RAM]

Well if it is going to take a while to get other people involved, then maybe we can connect with death while we wait. Stop, relax, and try to catch up with the day's events. Let's just find somewhere quiet with something nice to drink and something that never talked to eat and chat with our new friends. Did Eveline say that kobolts trained spiders as mounts? How would that work? Wouldn't they just fall off as soon as the spider climbed something...
Is Meandra going to the Orc Tower in a few weeks? Maybe you can travel with her. How does she feel about travelling with cursed people?