(3) Legend of the Elder Souls (Inactive)

Game Master mdt

The woman huffs. "Magic rope? That's still not very specific. Still, I'll see if I have any easily at hand. I'm not doing a detailed search."

She goes up into her wagon, and returns about 30 minutes later

She returns with a 25 ft long rope coiled over her arm. "That's all I could find without doing a detailed search. If you want something specific, I'll need specifics. Seven hundred fifty florin." She hangs the coiled rope on a hook on her wagon. "You say the magic word, it turns into an iron bar. You can cut it 3 times, and still keep the magic working for each piece."

Hmm. The bigger problem is that we literally have no rope, twine, or chains, and lack the craft skills to make any.

Spellcraft (to know about possible items that can create rope): 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (16) + 10 = 26 (I think that's high enough to know about Robes of Infinite Twine?)

Lina moves up to Johnny. "Is it alright if I speak to you? That's... neat, but probably not quite right—I'm looking for something that can be used to tie people up. Like... a spool of endless rope, or string, or... a robe, maybe, that can be unraveled for some free twine without fishing around in pockets?"

"And before you go back in there, I think Johnny and I had some thoughts about floaty magic stones, if you've got any—he can't seem to craft 'em any better than I can."

(Sorry to steal your ask, Johnny—Lina just figured if it takes 30 minutes of rummaging to find anything, we should probably let her take as few trips as possible so she doesn't get angry and stab you.)

The woman eyes Lina. "Ok, that's better, robe of twine. Then you went and screwed it up with that lame 'floaty magic stones' comment. I repeat, specifics! Only idiots waste my time with 'floaty magic stones'." She says with a grunt, and glances at her sign significantly.

Lina smiles. "You have to understand... there are very few intellectual conversations here, and it's been about six months since the last time I saw an entire written paragraph."

Spellcraft (to know about dusty rose prisms): 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (10) + 10 = 20
Spellcraft (to know about deep red spheres): 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (11) + 10 = 21
Spellcraft (to know about magenta prisms): 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (2) + 10 = 12

"But very well—it's nice to meet someone else who can take things seriously. ...no offense, Johnny, you're learning fast enough. But—everything I know about magic items I learned from watching squawking lizard men sing at piles of metal, and Johnny pulled his knowledge out of nowhere—I certainly don't know the proper names for things, and I don't know if he does either. So... magic stones, they float around, if you stick them in a wire lattice they resonate sometimes. We don't have a lot of cash to spare yet—no, we're working on it, so cracked and flawed and cheaper is better, or if you have the raw floating stones we can craft some from that's also ideal."

"As to what we're looking for... let's see. Specifics. Crafting materials are fine. Otherwise, there's a... faded pink, I think, prism-shaped. Makes you move faster, dodge things, react quicker. Or a... I think, a sort of blood-red sphere, also makes you more agile, but... in a more general sort of way. With the right resonance, that one should make someone better at punching, which would be nice."

The woman snorts and takes the rope with her into the wagon. She's gone for two hours this time, before she returns.

When she returns, she has a beaten old robe made of rope. She hangs the robe from the hook the rope was earlier hanging from. She also is carrying a wooden man's head with a rod sticking out of the neck. This is put onto a swinging metal arm near the robe. Then she tosses four stones into orbit around the head. "I had one flawed and one whole of each of the requested stones. I don't sell cracked stones, except as torches." She sniffs disdainfully at the thought of selling something that was broken. "1,000 florin for the robe, 8,000 florin for the red sphere, 6,000 florin for the flawed red sphere. 5,000 florin for the prism, 4,000 florin for the flawed prism."

Sense Motive: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (17) + 8 = 25
Sense Motive: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (2) + 8 = 10

Luna kept her distance as well as she made her way to the top floor once she spots the couple she stops.

"What do you know about our gems?" Luna wasn't sure if the couple would react the same way Johnny wagon had but she figured asking about gems wouldn't be enough to spark it especially since she knew her gem was the thief.

Oh... might as well leave a response here, for when you have the time and energy to follow up on things.

"Hmm... the robe would be wonderful," Lina replies, "But I'm not sure we can afford such high-quality stones at the moment. Johnny, you were okay with store credit, right? Maybe we should see how far that can go."

@Luna

The butler and the the maid look at each other, then Luna, then the old man cracks a grin, and the woman titters. The man smiles. "Be right back, girl." He hustles off into the depths of the apartment, and returns a few minutes later with a leather case covered in dust.

They set it up on the table in the sitting room. He opens it and pulls out a jeweler's loupe, while the woman picks up one stone after another out of the case. Each stone is tiny. "Well, the king of gems is the diamond, it's hard, very hard, but fragile, if you hit it just right it'll shatter. Hit it precisely, and you can make a big diamond into smaller diamonds. You lose some value, but it's also next to impossible to recognize a stolen diamond once it's been broken up into smaller bits. Diamonds come in various grades and qualities, from flawed to flawless, and various colors, from clear to pink to blue to black..." The man then takes over, handing Luna a loup to look at the various diamonds being pulled from the case as he describes the qualities and color and grade of each.

The case looks to hold a few hundred small gems, none bigger than a pinky fingernail.

Luna resisted a sigh, this was better than them vanishing at least. She would cautiously indulge the couple's interest in the rocks before continuing her questions. "My friends and I are making a few trips over the walls and the people that already live there don't seem to like us being there, can you help us with this?"

Luna was careful to watch their face when she says friends if she could figure out more about how her gem owner acted she might have been able to get more information out of her compound.

That's actually another metaphor for the world, Luna :p. Or at least I think so. You'll note that we have shards of deities in us, which were once whole. Once a gem is broken down, the initial owner is nearly impossible to see, and the more it is broken down, the less of the original self is there, and the less value it innately has. But a dozen flawed diamonds will still make a small fortune. So too are our gems broken down to be passable, while we take gems from others to build our fortune. That, or it just fits the way my mind works so well that I see a metaphor where it isn't!

Metaphor or not doesn't really help her, also yea that is a ton of assumptions based on pretty much nothing.

Well, not based on nothing, no. Each compound has dealt with the concept of their deities in different ways. The bard's place treated it as a high stakes game... for entertainment. The thief's is currently treating it as a commodity... And thieves tend to care about resources more than anything (whether money, a good contact, a close friend, information, or a safe house). So it isn't without reason that I think they'd make that sort of analogy.

Johnny frowns slightly 10 minutes after the storekeeper had disappeared. "Hmmm, maybe I should have offered to go with her..." He looks at Lina. "Well, while she's gone, do you have any ideas for how we might get any rumors out of her? She seems a bit of an 'all business' type, but I think the shop keepers know tidbits about the world and what's going on."

Later once she comes back
"Yeah, I'm fine with store credit."

The shopkeeper nods. "I'll give you 650 florins per sword." She says matter of factly.

I'll assume Luna spends the next few days talking to people...

"Can we put some of that store credit towards the Robe of Twine, then? ...if that's alright with you, Johnny. I'd be fine leaving the rest for a rainy day, unless there's something you or the others want."

"Fine with me. If you don't spend it, you'll have to wait till the next time I come by. And no guarantees I'll have the same stuff next time."

Sorry all, life is complicated. Wife's surgery moved up, next week will be busy...

The woman takes the swords, and hauls them into her wagon. She reappears about 10 minutes later, and begins putting away things that she brought out. "Let me know when you want the robe. I can't guarantee I'll have it next time, if I leave, but your credit will still be good."

"We can take it now, so you don't need to look for it again."

People train and re-train, and also get beaten on repeatedly in Lina's new compound. Frankly, the aesthetic monks seem to take much more delight in working people into the ground than the evil knights took in training them with weapons. At least the monks don't make fun of the people after they are on the ground, black and blue and gasping for breath.

Toward the end of the time, Liisa calls forth the raven from before, sneaking over the wall to get it, and return with it to her compound.

Despite exploring the compound Luna still sleeps and spends a majority of her time in the home she built, she'd share what she learned about the compound and what it would offer with the group and take whatever items Lina decided to drop on her.

She'd ignore the raccoon for now since she didn't spend much time in the compound it would be a problem for her, so she'd leave it to it's meal.

Alrighty, updated my everything.

Neri threw himself into being bludgeoned into a working constitution. Better to be beaten bloody now than later. And besides, it kind of made sense. He'd heard somewhere that cracking and recracking bone made it grow back stronger. He wasn't sure if it was true, but at least at the end of the day, the monks were just as good at mending as they'd been at breaking.

When he'd emerged from the Volcano, not much had changed. He needed a haircut, and he carried himself a little differently, but he was carrying his sword. But with a rather large difference: It was now a two-and-a-half feet long spike. The edges weren't very sharp, but they grew out in a star burst pattern, nine 'edges' and each had a ring near the hilt. Between the edges were runes that danced near fire.

Lina smiles as she watches her monks at work--it was well past time the others learned to take a beating, and better that should come from someone not likely to stab them in the back the moment they hit the ground. And since her monastery could heal wounds just as easily as it dealt them, she was glad to see the others (especially Neri) take as many punches as necessary to toughen up. Training montage!

In her own training, she also does what she can to watch for sleeper holds and knockout punches; if it came to fighting more non-priests, she figures that as the master of kung-fu it might fall to her to take them out alive.

Later, while having his wounds tended to by the monks, along with probably everyone else nearby. "So... we've used a lot of the supplies. We've got another pull from the volcano in a few days if we want... but we're spinning our tires again. Do we go for the others that were imprisoned? It seems like that would be expected. I figure we can ask Mahb again. But she'll probably just spit at us some more. It wouldn't hurt for us to get allies... but I think it would help for us to have more successes under our belt before we try to win over the hopeless. So... Maybe raid some cities? There are so many options, and everything seems deadly." he sighs. "Do any of your gems have any suggestions?"

"Cities are big. We may not know what they're like here... but they could very well have actual armies."

"But... from what we know, that doesn't really make sense. At least no where close. Either way, we probably can't take on anything head-on. We basically walked into a trap there... speaking of which..."

Neri goes over what Ptaleon had to say regarding their fight and what they should try to change.

"Yes, Neri. I... apologize for not anticipating that—not paranoid enough, apparently. Next time, someone else can suggest a marching order if they like—and we need to get smarter about our scouting. More mobile as well, if we think we might run into a proper force."

"Oh. That is a very good point. We could -really- use some pack animals that can move quickly. I mean... imagine us meeting up with their version of Minestria. Not super scary alone... but with a hundred cavalrymen, assuming they could manage that..." he shakes his head.

"But on the other hand, there's also the other thing you just mentioned. Getting smarter." he says, "And I think the sword did that a little." he says as he calls it to his side, the broadsword gleaming from having been left within the heat of the volcano. He slashes outwards with it - flame trailing behind it - and with a clinking of nine rings, the sword turns to molten metal for an instant and reforms into an estoc that Neri has to work to keep from stabbing into the ground; it would if he simply let the point settle downwards. "I suppose it's safe to assume that the rest of you learned some new neat tricks as well?"

"The equipment helps me more. I should be able to punch people a lot harder now."

Johnny stretches sore muscles, making no auditory signs of his pain even if he's unable to hide his winces. It didn't really help that that weird little fox creature had followed him across the wall and seemed to be laughing at him the entire time he was getting his ass handed to him. I've had worse. And at least this beating was actually for my own good instead of just some drunk bastard who wanted to justify his sadism.

"I learned more of creepy ice-woman's magic. And hopefully with some of these rods here, if we wind up in a situation where I'm ridiculously far away from everybody, at least some of my spells will be useful. But I trust we're not going to try to do that again anytime soon. At the very least, no more scouting without mage armor."

Johnny pauses to think about what they should do next. Don't suppose you have any ideas Kiks?

"How much have you guys explored things on this side of the wall? I mean, we have raptor-folk you mentioned; are there any other groups of people...or people-like creatures over here? Seems like even with the killer squirrels and such, this side of the wall is safer, and it'd be great if we could find either more resources or more allies."

"Scrying hasn't shown me anything or anyone else on this side of the wall, but I wouldn't mind spending a bit more time on that. There's something to be said for actually knowing who our neighbors are... plus, I haven't scried since we got back... So maybe that's changed a little, too. Anything else?

"We gained a lot of power from that ice. If we fought another Arcane like the last one... I think we'd all be fine. But by now they're probably marshaling tougher agents, so I don't mind new caution. My last gem, may she rest in Hell, thought that there were no resources left for us on this side of the wall, but I doubt Minestria could even spell patience."

As she lay in a small pool of her own sweat (and some tears!), Liisa was once more reminded that PE wasn't her favourite subject. It is for your own good Liisa! Think about your health Liisa! Don't get stabbed by some religious fanatic Liisa! She remembered/imagined her mother saying. The thin smile it evoked turned into a wince as her bruised body made her aware of its existence again. Then the conversation started nearby - a welcome distraction from the monks harsh discipline. Gosh darn, I could use some! Neglecting to get up, she continued making her best impression of a stranded starfish from the floor as she spoke out into the air.

"I could ask the wild animals. They would probably know if there was something on this side - unless it is well hidden. Most would know to shun habitation..."

Random: 1d4 ⇒ 1

Half-way through the group's training, the wagon of Mystery and Ydyot Killing packs up it's sign, and the woman rides it off into the sunset.

In it's place, 6 wagons come rumbling in it's place. The wagons form a half-circle inside Johnny's compound.

An asian woman with dark hair and amber eyes alights from the lead wagon, and sets up a sandwhich board sign near the firepit.

Li Hai's Seamstress Circle
NIL VOLVPTI, SINE LVCRE
No work without pay!

Several women of various nationalities and dress come bubbling out of the wagons as well, all talking rapidly and excitedly, stretching in the afternoon light as if they hadn't seen the outside of a wagon in a long time...

As soon as she realizes the newcomers aren't monks, Lina has no interest in the new wagon. (And I believe Liisa's the only one who speaks Latin)

"And... that answers the question about where we get shoes, perhaps. If we have any spare money, I'm pretty sure I would appreciate getting new ones. These things were threadbare two months ago." Neri says, watching the women pile out of their caravan.

Will: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (13) + 8 = 21

There was a loud popping noise as the monk pulled on Neri's arm - pushing it back from its limp position - hard. Neri winced, but didn't cry out. After a slow exhale, he turned his attention to the new arrivals at the other compound. "I'm going to go see if they have anything interesting in stock. Like shoes." Neri headed that way, waving as he reached the compound

The three women who came out but didn't put a sign all strut over to Neri as he walks up. They rub up against him, hands touching him and perfume filling his nose. "Ooh, hi honey. Haven't seen you in a long time. Do you want your usual?" The redhead asks, causing the other two to give chuckles. "I think we're rested up enough.... It has been awhile. Just need the gold.. even for you sweety, you know how Hai is.. she'd slap us around if we gave you a pass on the coins..."

I foresaw this. I really did.

"Honestly, my size has probably changed a bit since the last time you saw me. You'll probably have to do a bit of measuring if you're going to get anything done." he says, as he takes his shoe off. "Or maybe you can guess the dimensions based on that?"

He scrubs it clean and makes it not smell with prestidigitation as he holds it out, wincing a bit at the soreness of his arm so soon after being pummeled.

The dark skinned woman laughs, and gives Neri a good solid groping where his legs meet his torso. "Hmm, you have changed a bit..." She leans in and whispers a number into Neri's ear.

The redhead and brunette laugh and the redhead tosses the shoe away. "You weren't into feet before..." She comments, rubbing her up front assets against Neri's arm. "Now honey, about the coins?" She holds out her hand, indicating Neri should put something more valuable than an old shoe into it.

Neri helps as the stranger grabs him, completely caught by surprise. "Explain what the term 'Seamstress' means? I seem to have become confused at some point."

He wasn't particularly certain how to react... he'd not really ever had need to pay for something like that. He'd been a star back home, and while that meant that there was a steady stream of companions... price hadn't been a 'thing'.

The trio laugh, and the woman in charge walks over. "It means they provide services that are required. Those services usually are taken care of in private, between two or more people." The small asian woman says, with a sly smile. "It also means that we don't discuss details crudely, if you want crude, I suggest the docks district in a coastal city."

The redhead laughs and leans in and whispers something extremely lewd and explicit in Neri's ear.

Neri slowly smiles.

"So... you won't talk about anything that goes on, even with the other transgressed, or the other... I have no idea what to call them. People like me." he suggests, "Buying time is also buying secrecy, right?"

If they affirm that, he'll pull out a gold raptor-ingot.

"I don't really have any coins at the moment... but how much 'time' will this buy with just..." he points at the readhead, and winces slightly. "You. I'm going by the name Neri lately, what do you go by?"

The asian woman shakes her head. "Nothing specific to you, as you know. If you say anything you don't want repeated, well, you're an idiot." She smiles. "But no one will know you were a customer, or who you requested, or what you requested in private..."

The red head smiles and takes the gold ingot, turning it over in her hand, and biting on it before hefting it critically. "Two hours, sugar, with your usual tastes. Four hours if you're not in a bad mood. And I'm, as I've always been, Garnet."

"I was thinking Ruby, honestly. But it's been a very long time. Garnet's a great name, though. Lead the way."

Once in private, he'd instruct her to stay clothed. "Do you have any tea or the like? I'm looking for a different sort of companionship today." he explained, "Not that I'd mind you being more comfortable, but it's not what I'm here for." he continues. "What we really need is information. I know you guys go everywhere, and... as you probably know, things have not been going exceptionally well for my friends and I."

The woman laughs and begins fondling Neri. "No no no, Pt... Neri. You know the rules. If you want to buy information, you buy it from Li Hai, and for a lot more than one chunk of gold." She nibbles on Neri's ear. "If you just want tea, I can do that... but you aren't getting your gold back. But, I'll save you some gold today, for old times sake. We've been out of circulation for awhile, so I doubt Hai has any up to date gossip to parcel out today."

"Alright, then how's this. A massage while you tell me about yourself. Avoid sensual stuff as I'm a bit sore. Lina's monks have been doing a number on us. He segued back to the more interesting topic to him. "Like... What do you like to do and the like. Tea would be great. What kind do you have and prefer." He seemed more comfortable with the closeness outside of public view, but was still a little edgy.

Do you want to do detailed RP or get a general gist? I'd rather keep anything more intimate than a massage 'off camera' to keep a PG-14 rating. :)