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[StormLord]

Just as business as usually crept on in the Castle one of the portals within the Throne Hall stirred to life of its own accord, a portal known to some of the old guard as "The Portal to Evil".  A mote of blue light appeared in the middle as the runed rings began to shift and turn, slotting in unknown dimensional coordinates.  Finally the mote flattens into a disk, spread thin and drawn out by the portal until its large enough to step through.



Any of those who step in find themselves transported to a dimly lit cavern the feels oddly still and light, as if everything was floating through time instead of space.  There is a small landing of rock where arrivals find themselves over a deep pit that looks like it could go for miles and a similar space opening overhead.  The portal back illuminates the cavern with a blue tinge, revealing a narrow stone bridge to a sheltered cave built on the cavern wall and a series of crude statues depicting...frogs?  Toads?

Within the sheltered area through the opening you can see flickering firelight and carved stones.

[Devastator]

"Caw" says Newton, flying out of the portal, circling over the bridge as he scopes out the statues and cave below.

Eventually the crow settles on one of the frog statues and looks into the entrance.

[Sutoratosu Akira]

Aurora had stopped in her stroll as she felt a subtle disturbance ripple through the air. It was typically really, she took some time to try and be alone with her thoughts and something had to happen. She'd have just ignored had she not known full well the history of that portal, and that no good ever awaited beyond it's boundaries. She slowly made her way back to the throne hall and after a few minutes of examining the space beyond, finally decided to step through.

As soon as her chitin clad feet hit the cavern floor, she knew something was wrong, and it wasn't just the undead crow who had also entered the portal (a new arrival she hadn't met, perhaps? It certainly wasn't a mundane critter at the least). Before she took another step forward, she expanded her senses and began to examine the life signatures of everything in the cave, determined to get some grasp as to what awaited beyond.

[nuclearwhale]

The trials of the day so far had been... difficult, for Utzi. Despite it having been well over 30,000 years since the last time he got a good night's sleep, he found himself restlessly roaming the halls of the unfamiliar castle, until the blue light of the portal caught his eye. Curious, the caveman steps forward into it, and finds himself standing in a very, very large cave. Not entirely certain how such a place could possibly fit inside the castle, but nonetheless slightly impressed with the building capabilities of these strange people who had forsaken hunting, Utzi finds himself standing awestruck at the portal's landing. "If the castle is meant for war..." Utzi glances over the edge, a dark realization coming to his eyes, before he shakes it off and glances over at the smaller cave the bridge connects the landing to.

[StormLord]

Newton sees a crescent counter to the right of the entrance and a straight one on the far wall, each covered in small blue blubs.  There is a large stone tablet between them  and an alcove to the right of the counters, again in the back wall.  A rippling field of magic blocks the alcove and in front of it rests a huge block of crystal holding a humanoid figure in its murky depths.  There is more in the room to the right, but he can't see it.

Aurora senses only two lifesigns aside from her companions, one large and old for a certain value of the word given time was a bit off here.  The other in a deep state of stasis.  Beyond that the entire cavern was barren, but curiously just outside its walls was a tremendous force.  Calling it a convergence of leylines wouldn't do it justice, it was more like a localized star or perhaps the event horizon of a plane of existence.

[nuclearwhale]

Utzi spots the crystal-encased humanoid, and a look of deep concern covers his face. With measured and careful steps, he walks forward along the narrow, treacherous bridge, and into the cave, stopping only once he's close enough to the poor, frozen soul to get a good look at them.

[Devastator]

Newton is simply going to remain in place, trying to look like an ordinary stupid bird, grooming himself and sitting down.  In actuality, he's going to try and keep a close eye on Utzi's back, letting the sturdier person face the danger first.

[StormLord]

As Utzi crosses the threshold of the cave he watches a large pale-blue scaled reptilian creature drop down from a space in front of the alcove, beside the figure.  It resembles a newt or salamander if it were nearly ten foot tall with oddly long limbs.   It drifts its large head over to face Utzi, nodding once and raising up a hand encircled by glowing runes to beckon him closer.

The runes spun as the creature moved and with them the buds on each of the counters opened slightly to project images of a multitude of objects.  On the right side of the room Utzi can see four large bowls full of bubbling glowing liquids in red, green, grey, and yellow.

[nuclearwhale]

Utzi takes note of the other things in the room, and he briefly jumps to reach for his atl-atl when the strange, salamander-like creature drops out of nowhere, but his attention remains fixated on the frozen person as he draws nearer, following the salamander's beckon. Realizing that simply staring won't get him answers, Utzi decides to speak. "What is the deal with them? Do you need help getting them out? I have been frozen before,  and it is unpleasant, so if there is anything I can do to help them, please tell me."

[Sutoratosu Akira]

If I didn't know any better, I'd say this place feels like a personal realm

At the very least she knew there wasn't something like an entire hive of giant flesh eating insects or their equivalent analogue waiting to surge from the darkness below. A bit ironic coming from her but still, a valid concern in an unknown realm such as this. She watched yet another new arrival cross the bridge and slowly followed after him, stopping just short of the door where the crow was perched. One of the signatures she felt, the old one, seemed to drop down from the ceiling as the caveman strode forward, and Aurora took note of the strange glyphs at his hand. For now though, it was obvious to her that this was some sort of shop and he was more interested in commerce than fighting.

With that in mind, she let the new blood handle the interaction. She doubted they would get a straight answer to his question though, and had already turned her attention to the life signature in stasis, focusing her life sense more acutely on it to determine it's age, species, and what might be biologically wrong with it to warrant being put in stasis in the first place.

[StormLord]

Utzi sees through the fog of the crystal a figure wearing heavy robes of some kind and a faceless mask.

The creature sways its head at Utzi's question, contorting its mouth to speak in a human tongue it was never meant to.
"Newt make.  Newt Find.  Newt...sellllll...."
It raises up its rune-clad hand again and points to the large stone tablet by the counters.
"Make change.  Buy."

Aurora finds it to be a human female, her biological age is somewhere around 30 though she has been in stasis for a long time or in and out multiple times, her true age is somewhere around 800.  Nothing seems to be wrong with her.

[AzyWng]

Lyra had followed the others through the portal mostly out of curiosity. With no readily apparent threats, Lyra kept her wrench strapped to her back, merely observing from a distance as Utzi spoke with the... lizard person? Meanwhile, checking the area around the group to see if there were any threats approaching from the sides or back.

[nuclearwhale]

Utzi raises an eyebrow, not quite satisfied with the answer, but moves over to the tablet anyway, to get a better idea of what the strange lizard wants out of him. "You want me to make the tablet change? I don't have anything to paint with, at the moment. Do you have any hematite I could use?"

As Utzi fails to understand exactly what the newt-creature wants from him, he examines the tablet, seeing if there's anything specific he needs to change about it.

[StormLord]

As Utzi approaches the tablet it comes to life, rings inset with rune around the single hole at roughly eye-level make Utzi feel as if something is drawing him in faintly, weakly.

[Lunar Tablet: Draws on the user's essence to create Lunar Coins.  One Stat or Action point becomes unallocated and may not be reallocated until the user next levels up, grants one coin per SP or two per AP.]
[Lunar Buds: Each contains a powerful artifact with upsides and downsides, approach for item details.  Each costs two Lunar to open.]
[Frozen Survivor: An outer rim explorer trapped in stasis crystal, may be released as an NPC for ten Lunar.]

[nuclearwhale]

Utzi freezes as his mind is flooded with the information about what the lizard offers. Realizing that he cannot possibly afford to free the poor, trapped soul on his own without harming himself severely, he turns back to the opening of the cave, where the others are all watching him, and speaks in a plain, loud voice. "He appears to want to trade our life force for various wares. If we all chipped in a little, we could probably afford to free this poor person trapped in ice. I think it's safe to come in."