"Zandra, I . . . very well. You and Fir'umil should best be going then. I need to catch up with Sacredos, there need be no further argument. Good luck and gods speed to you both?"
With that Karthan turns and hurries off after Sacredos.
"And good luck to you brother, I hope you find the answers you are looking for. I am ready Fir'umil. I took back the items that might be of interest and carry them here in my bag. Let's be on our way. I can ride Thor unless you wish to take the coach."
Zandra gives a happy wave to the paladin.
"We are back and in no less than 10 seconds from the time of our reunion, we need your assistance. My cousin and I must go to the Arcanium with all due haste. I see that you are well. I hope you have better news to share than we do for our part, but ours must wait until we have reached the wizards sanctum."
"We are back and in no less than 10 seconds from the time of our reunion, we need your assistance. My cousin and I must go to the Arcanium with all due haste. I see that you are well. I hope you have better news to share than we do for our part, but ours must wait until we have reached the wizards sanctum."
Olivia smiles warmly, and her relief is apparent when she spots the group before her and those with Sarcedos. The typical glow that Zandra had detected in the paladin's aura upon their first few days of contact is all the brighter.
ઋઋઋ
"I'm at your service, of course." She turns to one of the young soldiers next to her. "Willum, you and Mard see to the report of our patrol. I'll be departing for the Wise Quarter. Please pass word to Lord Liberios." The trainees salute and move towards the stables, their camels in tow.
"We've had to step up patrols in a few areas around the temple complex," Olivia begins as she climbs back into the saddle. "The Chamber of Ecclestials, which is headed by Nomarch Sindoi was none too pleased by our venture into Copprrwood to capture the Rook. They've conveniently reallocated half the Gray Cloaks normal to our section to other areas." She gathers rein and gestures for Zandra to go ahead and saddle up Thor. "They sited that 'if the Temple is able to conduct police actions so far afield, then they can manage more of their affairs closer to home.'"
Olivia simply shrugs. "More training for the squires and clerics."
Speaking of which, a squire arrives with a camel mount for the wizard. "As requested, milord. Her name is Penelope, and she favors the use of...."
"I don't recall ever caring for the names of these flea bags, boy. Just have my belongings fastened tightly and covered well." Fir'umil cuts him off, waving the young squire to be about his business. "The faster we get to the Arcanamirium the faster I can have this thing sold for gl..."
"Fir'umil..." Olivia warns.
He just waves her off and gestures at the squire. "On with it, boy. Close your mouth or one of Penelope's flies will get in."
In a matter of moments, the trio - griping wizard - and all - are on the city streets and making their way North. Along the way they pass the Starstone Cathedral and the myriad of pilgrims who've traveled from all points to toss their prayers into the Holy Chasm.
Perception
"That may backfire on them. If they insist on that for too long half the city will be burned, crime will be a thing of the past and they will be out of a job! In all seriousness though, how bad is the political fall out and have there been any interesting developments while we were gone?"
Zandra is inwardly amused at Fir'umils dramatics over having to ride a camel, but she doesn't let it touch her face.
"Hummm, maybe now I understand why my brother went to such pains to bring his horse over on the ship. These camels sure seem to be much different than we are used to, but they must have some advantages."
"Don't worry about him, he just has an odd way of saying thank you sometimes. Here, a silver for your service and for the way you treat the animals under your charge. An animal with a beloved name is more seldom mistreated.". She says to the boy.
Zandra studies the throngs, feeling the separate lives becoming one as they flow through the Ascendant Court. But the coweled figure of her cousin draws her eye briefly. His own attention - though he tries to hide it - is drawn to a peculiar temple whose stone bulk resides in the Northside of the Starstone Chasm. In its midst are black-robed figures moving to and fro, clerics or caretakers of some sort.
The temple itself seems to have a core structure to which other areas and rooms have been added. As though the years have given need for more and more room. More interesting is how the different styles of architecture still maintain a semblance of unity.
Zandra takes care to mark the temple and its angles so that she can inquire to Olivia about it later.
"interesting. . . I would have thought him to have been more interested in the big one in the middle of it all."
"While it is good to have solid ground under my pads again, you'd think they could sweep around here a little more often. . . Why the center one?"
"Because THAT one, can actually turn you into a god."
"We must have been out of sync too long. That came across with no hint of humor."
"There is nothing wrong with our connection. . . Keep your guard up in case my cousin is drawn to that place because of specific danger."
"This place is danger itself cub. I can smell it waft down every street. Every stone in this place has felt blood, tears and things best left unmentioned, but yes I am ready."
". . . Do you think the god temple accepts cats?"
The trio makes their way from the Ascendant Court and into the Wise Quarter, the measureless throngs of the faithful giving way to the students of various institutions of learning. They pass the Library of Kortos and its shining walls and the Learned Guard - armed men with the light of intelligence in their eyes. ”They only accept those who know their letters and in multiple languages,” Olivia offers to Zandra. ”Otherwise, how would they know the importance of what they protect?”
”The only place I’ve experienced in my travels that takes the protection of knowledge seriously.” Fir’umil puts in, his tone a bit more agitated than normal. But he takes a deep breath and it seems to set him right as he continues. ”Assuming we can gain permission, this would be an excellent place to do so research should Master Tabir’s own materials not bear fruit.”
On they go, past the Silk Castle with its endless supplies of kites and kite materials, past the low-slung bulk of a metallurgy school where a group of dwarves sat on barrels and benches out front smoking pipes and discussing the importance of a flash cooling versus a steady cool.
Soon enough, as the sun continues its climb to noonday, they arrive at the Arcanamirium. The guardsman out front, satisfied with the turtle talisman Fir’umil provides waves the group forward. ”Good midday to you, Arcanscenti.” the guard says formally. He nods respect to Olivia as well. ”Chaplain-Protector.”
The pass the solid stone bulk of the magical library with its crafted dragons and griffins standing eternal guard. The practice yards where wizard and warrior combine their might to learn new tactics in battle. Then to the main tower with its dizzying heights, the center of the magic school.
”I should think Master Beleg has had time to reopen the lab.” Fir’umil puts in, tapping his heel impatiently against his camel’s shoulder. ”Down you fool of a beast!”
Olivia swings down easily enough and leads the reins of her camel over to assist the elven wizard. ”Penelope, remember?”
”Oh how I wish the coddling of these smelly beasts of burden would end!” But the camel responds well to the paladin’s touch and lowers to her knees. Fir’umil quickly gets to the ground and gathers his bags, half expecting the camel to retaliate for his ill will towards it. ”My thanks, Chaplain-Protector,” he rasps after getting a few paces away. He coughs into his sleeve, that old sound the others had grown to know. After a few minutes of milling about, a servant arrives to see to the two camels. But the short human with well-groomed, black hair balks at handling Thorendel. Fir’umil simply shoos him off, thankful to be rid of the camels.
Up the stairs they walk, entering the titanic double-doors at the front and the immensity of the inner atrium within. Across the way, the lifts open and close then raise and lower passengers upon the lines of magic and machinery that seemed so alien to Zandra on a few short weeks prior. The magics that govern the cacophony of sound generated by student and teacher and servant dwindles to more manageable level, descend like delicate gauze over their senses. As Fir’umil had explained on their first visit, without the enchantment, the resonance of the stones used to built the structure would mean little conversation could take place.
”We can start at the middle lift, it will take us where we need to go.” Fir leads the way and awaits the doors to the lift to open. Once inside the carved turtle is used to operate the lift, the room rising this time instead of lowering to the asylum level they’d visited before. In short order the doors open and the carved turtle floats back to Fir’umil’s hand.
Shouts the reedy, old voice of Tabir the Gray. The old man, garbed in thin cotton robes of blue and gray comes bounding towards the elevator, a small crate uplifted in his hands with the opening pointed downward, white hair and beard cast all about his head like a nimbus cloud.
But something else draws the attention of the arriving four. The slimy and sloping creature to which Tabir gives noisome chase. Along the floor a foot-long oblong shape of undulating flesh and dozens of extending feelers is weaving its way rapidly towards the open doors of the elevator. To say it resembles a slug of prodigious speed would not be far from the mark, save for the feelers rapidly carrying it.
Zandra ogled at the land loving sea cucumber that sped towards her. She suspects the thing had to be far more dangerous than it looked at first glance. Her first reaction is to kill it before she found out, but knowing wizards she had better clarify what he meant first.
"Do you mean stop it? Or kill it?"
Tabir responds with heightened incredulity, "Don't kill it! I just made it!"
Zandra considered her options quickly and began to intone a summoning spell.
She opened her hands and flung dirt from one and a stream of water from the other. The earth and liquid mix in a ever growing puddle of mud that then begins to froth and rise like leavening dough. This animate pile of mud seems barely able to maintain the semblance of a humanoid form made of dripping sludge as the mud elemental rises then slams itself down on the oncoming invertebrate.
The creature has an ability that restricts another creature’s movement, usually with a physical attack such as ice, mud, lava, or webs. The target of an entrap attack must make a Fortitude save or become entangled for the listed duration. If a target is already entangled by this ability, a second entrap attack means the target must make a Fortitude save or become helpless for the listed duration. The save DCs are Constitution-based. A target made helpless by this ability is conscious but can take no physical actions (except attempting to break free) until the entrapping material is removed. The target can use spells with only verbal components or spell-like abilities if it can make a DC 20 concentration check. An entangled creature can make a Strength check (at the same DC as the entrap saving throw DC) as a full-round action to break free; the DC for a helpless creature is +5 Greater than the saving throw DC. Destroying the entrapping material frees the creature.
The little oblong critter slips and slides along the floor leaving behind a viscus trail as it zigs and zags. An accompanying sound of slurping and slopping causes the gorge to rise in the back of their throats.
But the druidess is quick to respond, summoning forth an elemental of mud to lumber forward and slam itself over Tabir's fleeing creation. The elemental stands up, rudimentary arms like pillars holding its middle in a strange pantomime of a stomach ache. Bulging lumps form along its torso as the beastie attempts to escape its sludge prison.
"Ha haaaa!" Tabir shouts and dances back and forth, flipping his little crate around. "Quick thinking Zando-zan!!" The old wizard steps right up to the elemental, the summoned being looming over him as it continued to keep its enemy engulfed. "Okay, you, bring it over to my containment vessel and you can go back to the swamp dimension where you belong!"
The wizard spins on his heels, Zandra and the others noticing that he is indeed bare foot, and heads towards the middle of the laboratory and a large, heavy workbench littered with vials and alchemical devices and other unknown apparatuses. "In here, in here, place little Gib-Gib in here." He points to a riveted brass box with a cloudy window on one side and a circular opening the size of a man's arm on the top. The aperture of the opening is sealed with a rubber access flap where an arm could be pushed through and pulled out.
As for the lab itself, it's a wonder of mismatched worktables and shelves of books and strange mechanical devices that would be more at home in a gnomish workshop of the fabled Clockwork Academy.
Zandra nodded and the walking dribbling mass of mud trundled over towards the brass box. The roughly humanoid shape grasped the box as its abdomen obscenely extended and forced penetration of the the rubber seal. From without the mudman was visibly diminishing as its body spilled into the interior of the vessel like a mudslide. The mudman lost its form and collapsed over the top of the box and slid down the sides. His mass spreading out over the fine rugs which covered the floor.
Then with a snap it was gone. Gib-Gib was safe and sound in its new enclosure.
"Thank you for the complement Magus. I am glad that I could be of assistance. Now that it appears to be well secured, may I ask what this thing is and how you came to create it?"
Zandra peers in at the slug like prisoner.
knowledge nature
Spellcraft
Zandra peers into the creatures prison, watching as it slips back and forth through a golden-hued ichor the consistency of a thickened tar. The things little feelers appear as adept at moving it about in the container as they did moving it along the polished stone floor of the lab.
"Create?" Tabir asks, bare feet flapping along as he took up a position next to the elven druid. He scratches at his bearded chin and taps the thick casement glass with his other hand. "By the 7 hells I didn't create little Gib-Gib! I..."
"...made him bigger." Zandra mutters in completion of the wizard's sentence. Her observation of the creature has revealed something in her experience with spells.
Tabir thrusts his index finger into the air and shouts "No!" But he quickly does the same gesture again and shouts, "Exactly!"
She can't help but grin at the old man's enthusiasm, but her eyes go back to the creature dubbed Gib-Gib. The swimming thing is like nothing she's seen in nature. On the docks of Greengold, the neutral port town serving as a connection between the outside world and Kyonin, there had been fishermen selling things call sea cucumbers, but they had different size and articulations and skin... Zandra shakes her head, no, nothing closer in proximity to anything she'd seen before.
But what had drawn her attention a moment ago were the ephemeral traces of magical workings, powerful spell weaving and control being channeled into the wormy being. Something akin to an Enlarge spell but exponentially more complex.
Over her shoulder, she feels the feverish warmth that is a constant aura surrounding her cousin. Fir'umil studies the creature for long moments before stepping back and drawing conclusions that he elects to hold for the time being.
Olivia, for her part, remains on the periphery resisting the urge to draw a weapon and end the slimy creatures unnatural existence.
"Never fear, my little olive, it's not as fearsome as you'd like it to be." Tabir whirls on the paladin as though sensing her concern. Then abruptly he claps his hands to his face and sneezes so powerfully it lifts him off his feet an inch. Settling down he slowly withdraws his hands from his face and eyes the palms and fingers in rapt fascination. "Ha ha!! Gib-Gib!!" The old man shouts and jumps for the container to jam his goobered hands into the rubberized aperture.
"Widdy and I posited there's an entire world within our world, just so small we couldn't see it." After wiggling his gnarled but dexterous fingers in the ichor sludge, he withdraws them and - dripping the substance everywhere - moves his hands to the side of the brass container and brings around an apparatus with multiple lenses. It was like a dizzying array of spectacles placed on spindly arms to be aligned in a row. "Come look, come look!" Tabir says excitedly after positioning a set of 4 lenses in alignment.
Interestingly enough, Fir'umil is first to the strange contraption and peers through the lenses in line. His eyes widen and he jerks his head back in marvel. "Like a spyglass..." he mutters, then looks again. A grin that dances the line between learned student and a devious nature plays across his thin lips. Fir steps back and waves Zandra forward.
She views through the aligned lenses and is struck by the similarity with a ship's spyglass. But this combination of lenses looks inwards versus outwards. Getting over the initial appreciation of the contraption, her vision settles on the things swimming around in the ichor. Dozens of creatures just like Gib-Gib swam about in rapid motion. It isn't until she steps back from the sight and compares the regular view of the container with the view through the lenses that she sees the tiny motes in the ichor. "Tiny Gib-Gibs..."
Tabir claps his hands together. "Tiny Gib-Gibs!! These are the things that make us sneeze!!" He stares off into space for a moment, consciousness disconnected from the room. But as quickly as he drifts away, his mind returns and he leaps into motion. On the side of the container he grabs a hose and connects it to the side of the brass machine, a polished brass and copper socket accepting the nozzle. The other end of the hose is already feeding into another brass container, this one empty.
"Watch...watch!" Tabir says gleefully. After a few moments, the ichor begins to glow, like dawnlight shining through it. Then golden ichor flows into the other container...equal in speed to the growth of the dozen or so tiny Gib-Gibs. "Ha ha, see? Can you imagine if someone drank that before they grew?"
"You'd kill the host, master!" Olivia says in horror and anger.
The wizard's thin shoulders sag and he sighs. "Precisely why Widdy and I stopped the experiment. There was a chance others could find it and use it. So I hid our notes and didn't think of it again...*AAACHHEEWWWW!*...until I sneezed..."
Something occurs to the archmage and he whips his head around to study those who'd just arrived on the lift. He counts each person, including Thor, muttering to himself. "Feedmill, Sandrawing...where is the Ragathalian? I was promised bodies."
Zandra looked about to see if anyone deciphered what Tabir had just said.
"Feedmill is obviously Fir'umil, Sandrawing is obviously me, but how could Ragathalian be? His dead apprentice?"
"Don't look at me. He is one of your species I might remind you."
"Hardly Thor, look at him he is a human."
"Oh, how interesting, this sense of indignation from a representative of one of the breeds of primates who have spread over this planet like muck on a swamp. You all call us cats regardless of our caste species and you are even more racist when it comes to the smaller cat breeds lumping them all into the term, 'house cat'. Spare me the whole, they all look alike business."
"Well Tabir, we fortunately did not have to bring bodies before you today, but we do have some interesting adventures, magic items and evidence to show you."
"Bah, adventures are for adventurers. I was promised bodies. The stern fellow, where is he?" Tabir slams his fist on a nearby table.
"Master, do you refer to Sacerdos? The Inquisitor of Ragathiel?" Fir'umil inquires, a look of concern at seeing the sweeping mood shifts in such a powerful wizard.
Tabir extends his arms out and interlaces his fingers to cracked all his knuckles. It's like several twigs snapping. "Where is he? Shall I go and collect him and the bodies I was promised?" He coughs into his hand and begins searching all over his person, muttering to himself. "Now where is that confounded wand...Herbert...where are you?"
The archmage's wand appears before him, bobbing in the air as the old man continues to fumble for it. Strangely enough, therei is the sound of ghostly laughter echoing faintly in the lab.
"Oh, I think I know what you mean. We had to take the priests directly to the temple. When we went to retrieve them off the ghost ship we discovered that it was not as abandoned as the Merfolk believed. Instead, it was occupied by minions and creations of chaos."
"In fact we may have stumbled upon a powerful wizard, or an alchemist, that might be a part of the larger plot. There was a pocket plane accessible from the ship that contained a subdued and surgically altered demon housed in some clockwork device."
"We can give you the full details later, but we had to destroy the demon and hopefully the room. Fir'umil collected what he could. We were then set upon by another ship captained by another presumably chaos touched helmsman and crew."
"One of the clerics was compromised in his holy vessel, two remain. Sacredos is planning on freeing the spirits at the temple."
"Merfolk, you say?" Tabir leaps to one of the other laboratory tables and begins looking inside ceramic jars with beeswax stoppers and even a porcelain bowl where he splashes some water about. "None of those jellyfish chasing squid heads here..."
"Master," Fir'umil says, trying his best to not be frustrated by the eccentricities of the powerful archmage. The elven spellslinger grips his staff and takes a breath that barely stops short of another of his coughing fits. "They are part of the story, not actually here."
Tabir blows out his mustaches and crosses his arms. "Of course they aren't. I was seeing if you knew they were here. A lesson for all of you, no merfolk or gillmen allowed in my lab!"
The room grows quiet, the sounds of strange mechanics whirring and hissing about the room to go along with the boiling and bubbling. Then the rumbling of a stomach.
"My apololgies," the Chaplain-Protector holds a hand to her midsection and rose touches her porcelain cheeks. "I've not eaten in a while and the aroma..."
For the first time since having to corner the little Gib-Gib the rest of the group notices the intoxicating aroma of baking pastries and grilled meats that permeates the lab. Tabir just grins under the whites and grays of his facial hair. "I cook when I'm bored," the archmage responds, a light of mischief in his eyes more at home on a precocious halfling than a wizard of his venerable age. He whirls and begins striding towards the back of the lab, giving the brace-reinforced aquarium with Gib-Gib and his brethren a tap. "Cook, cook, cook!"
Fir'umil shrugs, giving up on trying to keep Tabir on task as he follows the elder to the back of the lab. Olivia smiles a bit and follows suit along with Zandra and her tiger companion.
"So this jumped up blaggard of Ragathiel wants me to leave behind the most useful tools in Absalom so I can traipse over to a temple to look at the bodies?" Tabir passes through a set of open double doors and into a stone-walled kitchen area where a group the oddest gathering of creatures is hard at work chopping vegetables and cranking the wheel of a rotisserie.
"You have elementals running your kitchen?" Fir'umil mutters, eyes wide in shock.
Tabir finishes running a finger along the pig being rotated on the spit by what looks to be a fire elemental holding the shape of a rotund chef. "Of course I do! Why are their gillmen about that need killing?" the wizard queries, casting a weather eye over the kitchen. "Can't trust those water-breathing fish-heads. They don't think like us..."
Over at the chopping table across the room, an ice elemental uses humanoid hands with keen edges to chop away at assorted vegetables. The area around the elemental emits vapors of cold and the table on which it works has a thin sheen of ice.
"Come, come...eat!" He claps is hands and over in the far corner a heavy oak table thumps its way across the room and plants itself near the large stone fireplace, clattering chairs scrambling to get into place.
"Tell me of these foul demon you faced and the contraption in which it was trapped." He says and plops himself down at the head of the table. The chair underneath him trembles and protests with a slewing of the ladder back, but Tabir gives it a thumping with his wand and all arguments are terminated. He eyes the chair with a burning hatred but nods satisfaction and glares at the group. "Sit down, sit down. Let's eat and talk of your adventure on the high seas. Did I ever tell you the time I was sank off the southern coast of Mediogalti Island? That's why I don't trust ships..." He reaches to the table and grabs up a napkin to afix about his neck and drape down his front. "...and it's also why I don't eat shrimp!"
"After our meal we'll travel to this little temple of yours, Olive."
Zandra was inclined to humor the wizard. After alll, the food smelled delicious after so many days at sea. She recounted the story from her point of view being to sure to explain the finer points of what her natural magic had revealed to her. She spent quite a bit of time detailing the strange force that reigned in her Raven as the infested ship was sent to the bottom as it had puzzled her greatly and was freshest on her mind.
"So here are the things I collected from the captains wardrobe and the laboratory. Karthan made these sketches here, but I think Fir 'umil made his own. This is the candle and here is the captain's log. . .
Zandra continued to unload the items she had collected from the magic satchel, leafed through a few pieces of paper before setting one of the sketches before Tabir.
"This one gives you a good idea of it. The middle of the far wall was dominated by a bizarre machine standing nearly 5 feet wide and 10 feet tall. It was a hellish amalgamation of brass gears, smoking pipes, and glowing red orbs, the device superficially resembles a great leering fiend. I don't know that it was gnomish, it had a different intelligence behind it that I could not identify. Worse yet, the machine contains a swollen brain-like fleshy mass with two ropey arm-tendrils and a wide, many-toothed maw squats in the center of the machine, linked to it by dozens of metal wires, gurgling hoses, and shimmering chains. Its arms and legs had been surgically removed."
"The demon gave us its name, Ugoxyl’glek. As I mentioned we had to destroy it. It was so powerful that even when it welcomed our presence it threatened to overwhelm our minds with its mere curiosity. . . A waste to be sure, but necessary."
Will do. I was actually get to go some material put together for this over the Friday holiday.