Aurum's bug hunt: He catches a small cricket.
People who have been inactive for too long just vanish from the game world so there's no one back there. Not like it would have done you any good to have them; they'd just be catatonic statues you'd have to drag around.
The way to Kaolin is hard; it lies atop the northern peak of the prophet's molar, the largest mountain in the Philosopher's Teeth range that cuts a stoney half moon across the map. There are no set paths to it, no roads. There are a few ways up but from your current location the fastest and most direct is simply to climb. The mountain rises massive in the east from Ipecacuanha, ringed by foothills and smaller mountains. Between two of these small mountains is a long, relatively shallow slope up to the base of the mountain.
The group heads east, up that slope, climbing first the foothills and then up onto the dark stone of the mountain. It takes a day's travel to reach the foot of the mountain proper and then several more, climbing up the increasingly harsh slope, weaving through natural crags and crevices, scrambling up great piles of boulders and even braving a few vertical climbs. The nights and increasingly the days become freezing as you reach greater heights. The air is thin, frigid winds cut through your light clothing and snow falls silently every evening.
They make it to Kaolin more than a weak after leaving the city on the plains. They are starved, exhausted, frostbitten and barely alive when they pass through the great gates of the red wall surrounding the monastery and find themselves within Kaolin, the temple city at the top of the world. The entirety of Kaolin is square, built like an enormous step pyramid, with the outer wall on the first step, the village on the second, the market on the third, the schools and governmental buildings on the fourth and finally, on the fifth, a smattering of temples and shrines ringing the enormous main temple. The steps are not centered however, they meander towards the rear, such that the temple sits in the back corner of the wall enclosed space, with the rest of the city radiating out and down from it.
As you drag yourselves up the stairs and into the village step, you are overwhelmed with the smell of incense, which is burning in massive, man sized bundles near the gates. A giant golden sphere, etched with designs and writting, spins on its axis directly ahead of you, like a giant globe held between two red Torii. It seems to turn in the wind and makes slow, gentle chiming noises as it does. There are many monks around it, mostly very dark skinned men in robes of saffron and purple. As you stumble in, clearly half dead, they rush to your aid and ask you what you are doing here and if you are alright.
Zambia: Everyone rushes back to your position; some are not keen on believing you until you show them the tiny pinprick stab under your jaw. The lead hunter calls for fires to be built and orders everyone to move in groups of 3 or more, never alone. The other hunters build a circle of fires around the camp and begin clearing the brush and tree limbs while the Lead hunter speaks with you. You tell him about what you saw and where, and together trace your way back to where you first saw the thing. After several minutes and with help of others and torch light you finally find out what happened: The head is real. Its the head of some animal, skinned and placed in just such a way with surrounding leaves that it is only just visible from a certain angle; anyone a few degrees off that angle sees only leaves. The creature, whatever it is, seems to have placed the head there as a distraction and positioned it such that only you could see it.
Zruril: That depends on if you're trying to remember if you've ever seen magical stuff like this before (Or heard of it or whatever) or if you're trying to sense the magic in it. Considering the fact that you aren't born here and probably have no real connection to local shamanistic magic, We're gonna do the latter. [4v3] Lucky ducky. You ponder the table for a long time, picking up various dolls and wax ladden skulls, stone effagies, idols and sigils, magic candles, bundles of hair, teeth on leather cords, and bottles of strange multi-luminous fluids. You hold them each up to your face and glare and squint and occasionally bite or lick or rub. Almost everything here is crap, just hokum and gibberish, but you do find something. Its a coin, a single gold coin, one of the sovereign coins of Alkahest. On it is a fingerprint, literally melted into the metal as though held by a being made of pure fire. You sense echos of heat in it, of contained force.
The owner of the shop is a local; an older woman, graying hair, deep set eyes, pursed lips and wrinkles that make her look far older than she probably is. She seems quite annoyed that you've molested all her wares and so far bought nothing.
Zrell: You walk a loop north, circling through the plains, looking for something interesting. Most of what you find is more grasslands but near the end of your trip, somewhere by the west curve of the river kermes you find some ruins. Almost everywhere in the kingdom used to be inhabited by someone; sometimes any civilizations over time. The ruins you find seem to be from the Zoltek, a kingdom that ruled this area thousands of years ago, one of the many that controlled Ipecacuanha at one point. Their ruins are always easy to pick out; they have a distinct style to them, all harsh and angular, no curves. They were snake worshippers, so far as anyone can tell, and you find a great slab of jade at least 12 feet tall buried in a grove of trees. On the slab is a vast collection of words and a single large symbol at the bottom. As you stare at the slab you notice that one of the words is visibly squirming and crawling around. You memorize it quickly, before it has time to squirm away.
You have learned "Snake d12"
Eclair: You both flex for a while, getting closer together until
grabbing hands and laughing joyfully and gentlemanly.
Darwin:You talk to your companions. One is an older man, white beard closely trimmed, metal helmet, tough brown coveralls and steel toed boots. He tells you he's a career caver, mostly as a guide or working expeditions for rich men. He's part of the guild now because he's retired from that work. The other is a young woman; green coveralls, blond hair in a bun, dark eyes and pale complexion. Shes just an amatuer caver doing this for fun.
You belay down, carefully lowering yourself down the stone wall, sinking spikes in as you go. The process is slow and the harness becomes rather unconfortable after the first hour or two, but you eventually reach the bottom without any more issues than an occasional slip and dangle. The rest of the team follows behind. There's still light here, natural light, spilling in from the open cave mouth above. The massive waterfall on the south side of the cave mouth thunders down and into a lake down here. The sound of it, echoing dozens of times off the cave walls, is deafening; a roar of applause booming in your ear, never ending. The lake is wide and its edges only known on this side, within the light. The cave and the lake extend beyond the mouth and are quickly lost in darkness. You can see the flicker of moving water from the ambient light but there's no visible wall in the distance, no edge to any of this. Just this crescent of stone on churing water and thin ridges of rock stretching out into the dark along the edges of the cave.
The artisan quarter is packed into the west side of the city, mostly surrounding the elevators up from the town and its connecting trade routes below. There are all manners of workers here: Blacksmiths, carpenters, potters, glass blowers, tailers, leather workers, armor smiths, weapon smiths, alchemist cadres, stables, mageware crafters, spice vendors, cloth makers, the warehouses of slave traders, cartographers, book sellers, scribes, and brothels. Any service imaginable can be had in the Artisan Quarter. The place is a tightly packed maze of wooden buildings; it has no main roads or straight corridors, just tight alleys and chaotic streets lined on all sides by workshops. The goods themsleves are mostly sold in the markets, but custom work is done here and various show pieces sit behind brownish glass windows facing the roads. Watch makers sit, toiling visibly through these windows, black smiths fill the air with the smell of fire and the sound of ringing metal, and carts ladden with goods snake through barely large enough alleys and out towards the market.
You look through these myraid works until you find a taxidermist, his sign hanging on hooks made from the horns of some creature. You entire the shop and the smell of chemical preservants, decay and stale metal is overwhelming. This is no clean and presentable storefront; its a working shop. Armatures for skins are lined up along the wall, rods of metal and bushels of stuffing squat in the corners and a great vat of some cloudy yellow chemical contains the bodies of dozens of animals, all stewing together. As you walk in, a man in a long black apron comes out from behind a stack of pelts to greet you. You show him the rat king and he observes it carefully. After a moment, he smiles, wryly and asks what you used to glue them together.
Bombu: You wake up in kaolin, the walled temple city at the top of the world. You are sitting in a small room somewhere up within one of the temples to the minor gods. You know that this temple sits on the highest step of the multistepped city, on the outskirts of the great main temple. The room you're in is maybe 10 feet on either side, with a row of chairs on your side, and a small shrine directly across from you. You are wearing the robes of a minor priest, A dull yellow with a red sash. Whether you are a priest or not, thats up to you. You know, at the very least, that the diety squatting in the shrine across from you is Sho-Pei, the man-horse who drums thunder from the curved belly of the storm clouds. On his shrine are several coins and small wooden sticks; both are his standard offerings, given by those who desire fair weather.
Nina: You keep your hand in your pocket, your fingers gripped tight around your coins, and go looking for a place to stay. You find an inn only a few hundred feet from where you landed. It seems to have no name but the sign is of a red frog sitting on the edge of a sword. You wonder, idly, if it has any meaning. The inn has no tavern, no kitchen, nothing but a small desk with a shrunken, ancient woman. You exchange a silver with her and she gives you a key. The rooms are upstairs, but there are no stairs. Instead you mount a shadowed, barely lit ladder and climb straight up to the rooms above. There are three rooms up there, one on each side and one in the back. ITs nothing more than a renovated attic and the rooms themselves are tight, small and mildly claustrophobic thanks to the sloping ceiling. But they have a bed and walls, and a locking door. Thats about all one can hope for. You spend the night there.
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Topic: Cabal: Wizard Open World Game (Read 359709 times)