"It's not so much handing out, more that with things so dangerous here, I wouldn't want to be carrying around money."
"Thanks for the advice, though, I think I might well continue moving along, if that's okay with you. What sort of town is Crocus like, and what would be the fare?"
Saeko Hirahara
Japanese girl with a long black braid and a white and red dress with long gloves and stockings.
Invoking Empath
Str d4
Speed d8
Endurance d10
Knowledge d4
Will d10
Senses d8
Items:
Extra Material
//
7 Mana
113 coins (gold)
//
Backpack
100ft Rope
Waterskin
Compass
Hat
Sun Goggles
Light Armor: The outfit, naturally.
Words: Sound d10, Ape d12
Location: Ens Veneris
"Woodcutters formerly; there used to be forest around them. They still cut down the dead trees but they've turned their efforts towards building a quarry and exporting cut stone. But their biggest export is chitin and meat; they raise megabeetles." He scratches his head "People in the Sands use them instead of horses or cattle. Strange critters, barely eat or drink but they're strong and durable. I can't abide em though, ain't like a horse. They're alien in thought and action. A horse you can pat and praise and scold. Beetle don't understand any of it. Just sits there and stares.
If you wanna ride along, we'll take you for a few silver pieces. Our route is getting easier at this point; deeper into the kingdom you got more amenities, more food and such. Easier to take a passenger. "
Create the sculpture.
Name: Moghorn the Journeyman
Appearance: Fiftyish and very weathered. Moghorn spent his youth, adolescense, and adulthood travelling according to the voices in his head and the strange compulsions he felt. Then he stumbled across a magical spirit and gained magical powers.
Magic path: Servant Sculptor
Mana: 5
Strength: d6
Speed: d12
Endurance: d6
Knowledge: d6
Will: d6
Senses: d8
Ongoing effects: Has a spirit in him
Inventory: Soil from a mountaintop, three vertebrae probably from third sons, red candle, live snake, living bronze
Lodestone
25 gold coins, 5 silver
Mundane: Backpack, 100 feet of rope, Lantern
Great: Marsh Hog Leather Armour (d6 protection), Marsh Hog Bone crossbow (d6 ranged damage)
Grand: Spirit (Wants stone guide from the towers around Kaolin)
Materials: "Grand Lode Stone" or rare earth magnet in our terms
You assemble the sculpture in a daze, almost as though you aren't even doing it, as though something is simply working through you. You can only tell how much time has passed because of the steady progress of the night turning into day. You finish some 6 or 7 hours later, just as the sun is starting to truely take its place in the sky. The statue is a rod of a kind, about 3 feet long and made of the living bronze that has been worked into a fine diamond patteren mesh or latice in the overall shape of a rounded rod. Within the thin cage of the rod is the snake; its color has changed to pure and perfect red and its tongue, which it holds out through the mesh, cares a tiny flame between the forks. The flame is only about as big as that of a match but it is constant and, oddly, always points away from the staff, regardless of the direction you hold it, seemingly uneffected by gravity. The vertebrae, well, one of them, forms a sort of handguard about 8 inches up the length of the rod and it is carefully held in place by more woven bronze. As you stare at the scuplture the snake suddenly begins to wriggle, and the cage moves with it, and the flame grows huge and multi-luminous with color. It settles back down a moment later. You feel suddenly as though you understand several things.
You have gained the following words:
Wax
Copper
Dirt
Fire
Snake
Rufus and Darwin discuss the nature of the cave and where to go. The path here is forked; one way is to climb down to the river below, but there could very easily be no place to stand down there; just a stony tube filled with rushing water. The other way is to climb sideways across the walls of this cavern, above the chasm, and get to the other side. There might be a more safe way down. Rufus says he prefers the second option.
Suggest we first take a little break, I think it's been quite a few hours by now. Grab a bite and maybe take turns taking a nap? Ask Rufus what language the cave salamanders speak and what they're like while it's our turn to take watch (assuming Ecalir wants to have guard duty with his lady friend).
For going down: second option is fine by me. Usual procedure. Once on the other side, check if there's an easy/safe way down to the water. If yes then go down and have a look around. Then go back up and continue through the cave.
Be sure to add to the map from now on as we travel.
Name: Darwin Zeppeli
Appearance: An old medicine man.
Magic path: alchemist gut-reader
Strength: d4
Speed: d6
Endurance: d6
Knowledge: d10
Will: d8
Senses: d10
Mana:0
Ongoing effects: None
Inventory:
Small or rudimentary weapon (dissection knife): d4
Lantern
small amount of thaum
Alchemist’s Gear
Medium armor: d6
Sealer Suit: d4 (vs magic)
several hundred feet of rope
climbing crampons
a grappling hook
iron stakes
Magical materials: Vacuum!
Rufus accepts a break but goes around personally and puts out all but one latern first. He states, with some gravity, that every ounce of oil is worth 10 times its weight in blood down here. He aludes, obliquely, to having some very personal experience with escaping a cave without light and the truly terrible experience that is. Everyone relaxes and you ask Rufus about the Cave Salamanders, the Olmen.
He says that they speak several languages, depending on the one you meet. "They're old, you see. Not as a people, I mean, but as individuals. There's not much food down here you see so they take turns being awake. Like taking turns on watch but for years or decades at a time before they switch out. I don't know how big their actual population is but most of them speak dead languages, along with current ones, and I've heard tell they seem to have first hand knowledge of things hundreds of years in the past, maybe more.
They're a shrewd bunch; amiable and reasonably kind but survivalists at heart. You can trade with them; they like food and certain services that require sight, but they have no use for gold or treasure unless its practical. Biggest use I've ever found for them is that they'll freely trade in things like oil or abyssal whale oil. They have no use for it."
Once everyone is rested, Eclair is sent out to crawl sideways across the rocks until he reaches the other side. He ties a rope around his waist and shoulders in a sort of harness and ties it off to a large stone. Good thing too because he slips halfway there the first time and is only saved by that lifeline. The second attempt is more successful and he rigs up a rope across the chasm. The rest of the team climbs across via the rope and finds themselves on a large, very smooth plain that is sloping downward gently. Its clearly water worn and my have been the river's path before that chasm was made. As the team advances and the map is added to, they find something maybe 50 feet from the edge of the chasm.
They see it first as a glint of silver, like a fish in a river, but as they get closer it becomes obvious that the glint was just a reflection off pale flesh. Laying, dead, near the middle of the plain is an Olman. He is, in a way, beautiful. His head is his largest part, with the rest of his body getting progressively thinner until it ends in a long pointed tail; like an elongated raindrop or tadpole. He has four thin limbs with rounded finger and toe tips, and a frill of dull pink gill flesh around his neck. His head is almost spherical, with sign of eyes, tiny slit nostrils and pale lips parted to reveal a double row of tiny, very sharp, teeth. He has ear holes and a second divot above them, but his head is otherwise smooth and featureless. He'd stand about 5 feet tall, if he were alive.
The creature's thin and graceful looking limbs have been badly broken and its chest is crushed in. Rufus looks at the creature with somber eyes and then begins looking around and lowering himself down into a ready crouch.
"This isn't right." he whispers. "Something killed this but didn't eat it. You don't waste food in a cave."
Hrrrm. No organized religion or central place of worship, then?
...Screw it. I'll just go to the center of the town and start preaching to the masses like a crazy person. Zerthel Zentol's creed, to be specific; see below for the blurb I wrote up to recruit players. I don't want to quote it verbatim, instead just babbling about a bunch of similar stuff, slanted towards the local animism.
We, Zerthel Zentol, seek ascension. For us, there is no aspiration too high, no goal too great, no magic too grand; we will use any and all means at our disposal to improve ourselves past the limits that others accept as unbreakable. We all struggle as one, each member a link in our chain, pulling each other ever onward towards greater power. To become a member of Zerthel Zentol is to change completely, becoming defined by Zerthel Zentol itself; something greater and without limitations. To symbolize this rebirth, every member adopts a new name, one which begins with the letter others consider final.
Name:Zruril Zaszurs
Appearance: Zruril is a tall, middle-age man, with thinning gray hair and a calm, warm, smile that never seems to leave his face. He wears heavy robes that look much like what a priest might wear, and a perceptive individual might notice the glint of a small handgun carefully hidden in their folds. He has the appearance of one from Litharge, which to most rural people makes him difficult to distinguish from a native of Alkahest.
Magic path: Empath Invoker
Mana: 0
Strength: 1d4
Speed: 1d8
Endurance: 1d4
Knowledge: 1d12
Will: 1d12
Senses: 1d4
Ongoing effects: None!
Inventory:
Heavy robes (d4 light armor)
Pocket springpistol (d6 ranged)
Magical gold coin (Powerful bound fire spell; unknown effect)
Jade bead necklace, inscribed with mystical mumbo-jumbo
321 gold coins
9 silver coins
Words:
Shrink (d6)
Light (d8)
Gas (d8)
Chemical (d10)
There are larger shrines but no church or set time of Worship for everyone to show up and listen to a particular person.
You walk to the middle of town, or more accurately the largest and most frequented part of the dock area, and begin shouting out a rhetoric of ascention. Namely you state that the local adherence to animalism and shamanistic practices is merely the first level of the search for real power. You say that their belief is strong but primitive, that there are levels of understanding and force far beyond what they know and that with your help they can reach and unlock these plateus of power. You subtly imply that their animalism is lesser than the magic of Alkahest, but in a way that seems...faintly conspiratorial. As though you are going to give them something others do not want them to have.
The rambling goes astoundingly well actually and before long you have a crowd of about 20 or 30 people very interested in what you're saying.
Author
Topic: Cabal: Wizard Open World Game (Read 364306 times)