"Sounds like a good idea, we should be at full strength before exploring it.....she'll like the heat in here too," Yelenn says taking in the verdant contents of the green house. "Let's go!"
By way of conversation, Yasmin says as they backtrack to the snow-covered trapdoor, "So have you and Mylyna been together for a while? Or did you meet on the island? She's definitely a standout."
"We met here on the island. Actually" Yelenn replies as they walk."Her cave was one of the first real source of shelter on the island. She'd been here alone for quite a while."
Thinking for a bit she considers, "I think that....things like this.....being sent here, isolated from anything you know.....it fosters making connections with others faster, when you have only each other to cling to it sort of accelerates the bods between people. She definitely is pretty unforgettable." she adds with a smile.
Walking back to where the raised pile of snow stood out, Yasmin and Yelenn find that a single shiny metal rod is barring the doors down into the cellar, and would be simple enough to remove and open.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"Yeah... when you are in exile, and you have nobody to trust or talk to, you kinda cling to any companionship you can find," says Yasmin. She brushes some snow off the trapdoor with her foot, then bends down to brush the snow off her foot. "Brr! I am not dressed for cold weather." She squats to carefully remove the bar.
"That's strange... this bar is made of silver. But why would you use silver just to make a rod? And silver isn't very strong, why use it as a barrier? And outdoors - it'll corrode. So it must've been put here recently." She looks back up at Yelenn while remaining in her squat. "We should hang on to this. Take a peek below?"
"There are creatures that are difficult to harm, but can be hurt by silver. Perhaps it can also be used as a weapon." Edynn says, looking at the rod.
"Sure, let's head down." she says resting a hand on the hilt of her sword, "Maybe I should head down first. It's odd how many different environments there are here, the forest was a lot warmer than it is around here."
Opening the heavy doors reveals stairs leading down into the darkness below, your eyes adjusting enough to show the beginning of a hallway at the bottom of the stairs.
"You're right. Strange series of changes. Do we have a light source?"
With a brief arcane gesture, Yelenn speaks a word of magic as a quartet of little bobbing orbs of light manifest and float ahead of them. "We do now."
"Thanks." Yasmin draws her bow and prepares to head down the steps behind Yelenn. "After you!"
Yelenn nods, drawing her sword and leading the way down the staircase.
Yasmin's snowy sandals slip slightly on the stairs. She steadies herself and leans down a bit to reduce her center of gravity as she follows Yelenn down into the arcane light below.
With the boon of Yelenn's arcane light their trip down into the darkness is illuminated, revealing the hallway turns to the left, or rather, a wall and a single step downs separates the hall as the path reverses before heading off to to the left (your right) again, heralded by another step down.
As you walk you through the tight maze, which, thankfully has a ceiling high enough that you do not need to crouch, you hear a rather pervasive skittering... slurry... something, before it all abruptly stops as you continue throughout the short halls, leaving the basement deathly quiet save for the sound of your own steps.
Finally to your right with one last step down you are presented with a short hall and a door.
"Who makes a cellar like this?" wonders Yasmin in a quiet whisper. "Let's not get too deep without Mylyna. I think she may have had the right idea of taking a nap."
"Okay, want to head back now or should we go a little further?" Yelenn whispers in response as she steps down the short hallway.
"Let's give these walls a good check for the possibility of secret doors, but before we open anything we should all be together as a group," whispers Yasmin. "Back to the house for now - how long does it usually take for Mylyna to wake up after a meal?"
"The cold makes her more sluggish, it has to do with the serpentine aspect of her biology, so it may be a while." Yelenn replies. "Could possibly be until morning."
Yasmin bites her lower lip, thinks for a little while, then says, "Well I don't want her to wake up and be worried if we're missing. And we're safer all together. But I do feel kinda antsy to explore what we can. I guess the house isn't going anywhere, though. We could relax by the fireplace, bring in some extra firewood, maybe explore the house a bit and see what kind of amenities there are - if the kitchen has tableware, beds have blankets, that sort of thing. What do you think?"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"I think exploring the house makes sense." Yelenn replies after a moment of consideration. "At the very least if we encounter something and need help, we'll be in the same building. And I'm a bit curious as well....not that that hasn't gotten me into trouble before."
"All right. Let's back out of here and have a look around the manor, make sure we'll have places to sleep and a kitchen for cooking - worst case we can roast things and boil water in the fireplace like that poor kid has done - and maybe we can take a look around some of those floors that he hasn't visited."
"Works for me." Yelenn replies, sheathing her blade as they head back upstairs. "So was I the first person you encountered when you ended up here?" she asks conversationally.
"Yes, after I exited the strange traveling inn where I had discovered myself, I arrived in the maze near the forest - the one with the mossy walls - and I walked looking for landmarks and found the river where you were bathing," says Yasmin. "So I haven't seen too many people so far. And there's still much I don't know about this place."
"Even after being here for a while there's still a lot I don't know about it." Yelenn replies with a shrug.
"My first goal was just survival - could I find food? Shelter? Now that we have shelter - hopefully - we can work on making sure we have food and water. Then we can start learning more about the surrounding landscape," says Yasmin. "After that, more abstract goals... finding a way off the island, if we want. Developing our particular talents. Who knows? Maybe we'll find more exiles, a place to settle down; or perhaps a way back home, a second chance. Or something stranger."
"All sounds good to me, though for me going back home isn't really an option." Yelenn replies with a hint of a somber tone. "This was essentially an alternative to a death sentence, a banishment of someone deemed to dangerous to just kill or imprison I suppose."
"I suppose that is somewhat similar in my case," says Yasmin. "So we just have to find a new place to call home." She hikes up her skirt for a moment to keep it out of the snow as they make their way back toward the house from the mysterious cellar.
Attempting to reenter the manor the two women find it locked, again, but that is soon remedied by sound of hurried pitter-patter as Wallace comes back over. Opening it just a crack he smiles when he sees who it is before opening it the rest of the way. "Did you find anything?" he quietly asks.
"A bit," says Yasmin to the lad. "There's a greenhouse in back. Lots of plants in there! I don't know yet if it has any herbs or vegetables, though. Also we found a cellar with some windy passages that go below the house. We didn't go too far. I don't want to get into anything risky without Mylyna with us!"
She hunkers down to address Wallace at his level and asks, "We're going to take a look around the house and see what else we can find. Maybe we'll even sneak a peek in the third floor where you heard those noises."
”Cool!” Wallace replies in a stage whisper. ”She hasn’t moved very much, she must have been really sleepy. I was gonna eat my rat but I didn’t want my chewing to wake her.”
As Yasmin suggests checking out the third floor he nods. ”Okay, did you need me to look for anything? Oh, and, um... it might be hard to get up there though, I moved some furniture to block the stairs.” he says in a bashful tone.
"Oh, I think we will be able to manage to move it together," Yasmin says, indicating herself and Yelenn. "You should eat. If she's so sleepy that our walking around and talking isn't waking her up, your eating isn't going to wake her up either."
”Okay... but if she wakes up it’s your fault!” he says with a smirk before turning and heading over to the fireplace.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"If she wakes up and is grouchy, tell her I said it was OK. I'll take the blame," says Yasmin with a firm nod.
Wallace turns back to nod before picking up the skewered rat and, despite Yasmin’s permission, slowly and gently begins biting and chewing the food.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"You'll be fine, besides, you were nice to her she doesn't forget things like that." Yelenn says with a smile.
"Wish us luck. If she does wake up, we'll be somewhere around the house. Shouldn't be too hard for her to find us," says Yasmin. She readies her bow again and says to Yelenn, "Let's see what we have on this floor, then make our way upward."
Wallace nods to Yelenn. ”Good luck!” he says after he swallows.
Starting at the door closest to the entrance it opens into a coat closet, filled with coats, unsurprisingly.
I’m the middle of the western wall is a double set of glass doors that open into a large library, tall bookshelves line the walls while ladders set on rails adorn them in spots. A table surrounded by chairs sits off to the side while bookshelves sticking out tries to cut the second half of the room off from the entry.
A door in the northern corner, the same wall as the fireplace, leads into the kitchen.
Opposite that a short hallway loops behind the fireplace. At the end is a room stacked high with firewood, and a frozen glass door leading onto the deck overseeing the lake. Another door off to the side presumably leads down into the basement, as there’s not anywhere else it could go.
"Nice to see that there's already some firewood, at least. I wonder who used to live here? It's a lovely house for a lonely island of exiles like this," says Yasmin. She nods in the direction of the kitchen. "Let's check the cupboards. Plates and bowls? Tableware? Spices? Or perhaps totally empty? Good to know."
Heading into the kitchen Yazmin spies a door that she guesses would open directly to the wood pile, for use in the giant cast iron stove in the room. Looking throughout she finds all manner of knives and silverware and plating and pans and pots on display, and even spices, and somewhat surprising, stores of food that have a perfectly edible appearance filling the cupboards to the brim.
Bread, fruits, vegetables.
One of the cubpoards is even chilled to the touch, but opening it reveals instead of an ice box a rather deep and dark room with a mist spilling out from it. Skinned animals hang from hooks within.
"Why would someone just... leave all of this? An enchanted cold-box? Fresh fruit? This is... very strange. I have an odd feeling. I mean... it's not the first time I've stepped into a mysterious lavishly-appointed kitchen, but... someone had to stock this place; where are they now? No sign of Wallace's 'grams,' maybe she can answer questions when she returns. I feel like I'm intruding on someone's private home now," says Yasmin.
Yelenn takes it all in with equal surprise. "It does feel a bit invasive, and yst with magic in play, there could be centuries between now and this place's former occupant, with everything remaining perfectly preserved." she muses.
"I am relieved at the prospect of not having to eat rats though." she says with a chuckle. "Perhaps something in the library might hold some hint to the original occupants." she suggests, her academic nature clearly intrigued by the sight of such an extensive collection.
Yasmin finishes checking the pantries and says, "That's a good idea. Maybe someone kept a record of the house's finances and inventory - if it has dates in it we could even tell when was the last time that someone was here. Lead on!"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yelenn eagerly leads the way back to the library, taking a deep breath, thrilling at one of her favorite scents in all the world, old books.
"This is a respectable collection of books. Not easy to amass," says Yasmin. "I wonder if there's anything that relates to our situation now? History of the island or something like that?"
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
"Definitely worth a look." Yelenn says scanning through the vast array of books for something of note.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yasmin goes through the books, looking for any maps, journals, or histories that might be useful, but also keeping an eye out for things that might be interesting and unexpected - whether a book about the elemental planes, a treatise on magic, or just a pillow book of salacious poetry.
Scanning through the shelves reveals numerous tomes concerned with the otherworldly, ranging from tales of fairies and ghosts to Outside beings and even the various planes themselves. Though it quickly becomes apparent that most of the tomes are more poetic than academic, a repository of knowledge for a storyteller rather than a summoner. That is not to say they are low quality resources, quite the opposite is immediately shown, as rather than text alone most of the books are lovingly illuminated with depictions of all manner of curious beings and extraplanar landscapes.
A fortune in prose and art could very well sit around you on the shelves, a questionable fortune, what with not having a buyer on this island the Gods forget.
It would take a good deal of reading to parse through everything present in order to gleam any valuable insight away from fanciful farces, in no small part as a good number of the books switch from Common to an Outside language fairly regularly.
With specific books in mind you are able to spy a few that might deal with the Elemental planes, as well as entire shelf seemingly devoted to the more commonly beautified Outsiders, from songs of the Lilend and Trumpet Archon to detailed choreographs of the wild Veela of the Elements to poetry and musings purportedly from the more seductive and passionate fiends such as Succubi, Pairakas, Erinyes, and Erodaemons.
[spoiler=Knowledge DC 12 for Yasmin on "Veela"]Capricious yet alluring, veelas are elemental spirits given shape. On the Elemental Planes, veelas revel in the unbridled energy of the elements from which they draw power. On the other planes, however, they lose some measure of the elemental energy saturating their forms. To compensate for this, they can siphon vitality from other living beings by engaging them in their ancient dances. Veelas typically do this with a creature’s permission, leaving partners exhilarated but exhausted. Only in the most dire circumstances does a veela use its dance as a weapon. Those few who can match these elemental spirits’ movements might earn a veela’s respect and compel it to share some of its beneficial magical powers. A veela typically stands just under 6 feet tall and weighs approximately 140 pounds.[/spoiler]
Fascinated by the myriad of titles and information, Yelenn is speechless, determined to spend quite some time here.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
"This is fascinating!" says Yasmin. "There's such a treasury of information here... the owner of this house must be, or have been, a studied magician. Stories about all kinds of places and creatures..."
"Since Mylyna might be asleep for a while, I think I'll take a little time to read."
Yasmin goes through several stories about outsiders, as expected, reading about the various otherworldly creatures.
She happily reads about veelas... but also lingers on a tale about a pairaka, and briefly touches her red, red hair to which her lover so strenuously objected.