Luc will lend a hand to Rannveig and Donovan once Nicu is up on the stair.
"Come on jump!"
"We should keep moving to the top," I say with worry in my voice. "There might be a way for us to reach the roof and then escape this building and begin our search for the puppets who control our bodies. Luc, I'll move to the next step, and when you've helped Donovan get up, I'll assist the two of you. We'll make quick work if we spread out and aid one another every step of the way. Wait, did you hear something?"
Nicu lends a hand to Donovan's climb, then proceeds to scaling the steps as fast as possible to escape the toy army assembling below. "Jump, Donovan, jump!"
Once everyone gets on the first step, Luc-ie will continue to make his way up the towering stairs. "Guud plan Boote."
Combat Map for the Journey Upstairs!
Initiative Order/Round 7 summary
Artegal - Climbs one step and aids Luc.
Donovan - Climbs up one step with help
Rannveig - Climbs one step and aids Artegal.
Dimitrio - Withdraws, but the toys give chase.
Luc - Aids Donovan up and then climbs one step.
Nicu - Aids Donovan up and then climbs one step.
TOYS
The group on the stairs manage to haul Donovan up to the first step and then begin to climb, helping one another as they ascend one step at time. Dimitrio withdraws and comes to the edge of the steps, hoping the others can lift him to safety, but the toys pursue and crowd around him. Most of them slash and swing at him clumsily but the frightening looking jack-in-a-box rends and tears at the little pirate puppet.
The darts leave off Dimitrio and come at Donovan instead, but he easily avoids their barbs as they stab at him.
______________________________________________________________________
Meanwhile, upstairs...
Cinder lays quiet and still, now listening to the animal making low sounds as it tries to figure how to get at the scrabbling things it hears moving in the box. Lanarial and Shi-ru stare at one another, trying to make sense of this nightmare.
I assumed we helped Dimitrio get up to the first steps relative safety before Luc-ie begins to climb up the stairs.
Lanarial is able to free both of his box-mates after a little effort. Standing up in the box is a little cramped for comfort and they notice the bottom tends to slip beneath their feet. When the sacks are moved aside, they find the bottom of this box is lined with playbills and programs for a children's puppet show. It features a kindly looking old man with white hair and a mustache with his hand opened. Standing atop his palm on one leg is a foot tall puppet wearing a feathered cap and lederhosen. The text on the bill proclaims: Come and see Figlio! Giuseppe's String-less Wonder!
A tiny pinhole of light streams in through the locking mechanism. This box is locked, but it was never meant to hold living things with hands. Lanarial thinks it might be possible to simply force the latch open if he had something slender enough to go in the lock.
Nicu begins the climb, helping the others as they struggle up the barrier of the steps. "Luc, Dimitrio sacrificed himself for our escape, let's make the best of it!" Nicu salutes the fallen puppet with a caricature of a dance step he admired from the dextrous man. "We'll avenge his loss, let it not be in vain, climb my friends, climb!"
Luc-ie will scramble up the stairs as fast his his little arms and legs will carry him. Cursed place!
"Come on, lets scale these steps but be ready for further horrors."
Lanarial looks for anything he can use - a weapon, a tool to pick or force open the lock, maybe even a stout piece of wood and a sturdy string he can make into a bow. But taking on a predator with a handful of paper is not really his idea of a good plan...
The playbill's picture and words settle into the back of his mind, but he is too engrossed in finding something useful that the meanings are not conciously available...
Shi-ru looks around completely bemused at the little... doll? That has freed her. And at herself. Also a doll. What madness is this?
(in Tien) "Tcha! I should not have eaten that vendor's meat pie!" she mutters to herself. Clearly this is all a bad case of indigestion.
Grumbling beneath her breath, she squints down at the paper sheets. An idea strikes her, and she picks up one of the papers.
One of the monks had loved to fold little pieces of paper. Cranes. He had decorated his cell with hundreds of little white birds, and tiny paper frogs that jumped when you pressed on their behinds... now how had he done this....
"You standing in the light," she says testily at the doll-thing who had freed her, as she tries to see what she's doing in the dimness of the box.
"I have no need of light to see...or to know that thing you are folding will not open this box or kill the creature waiting to eat us. Maybe if we roll it up and stick it in its eye..." And of course, as he says it, it occurs to him that maybe rolling up some paper would work to pick the giant lock on the box.
I stand for a moment unable to accept Dimitrio’s sacrifice.
”No matter what else happens, Dimitrio, I will not allow your body to be used by those abominations. Rest in peace, my friend. Luc, is anyone else injured? Gast! I just thought of something, will we be able to heal or mend these bodies if we are injured?”
I will try to be the last one up each step, giving a leg up to those ahead of me. When we reach the top of the stairs I will look for a window that can give us access to the roof or to the roof of a nearby building.
Meanwhile, the third doll in the box begins to stir. No! Leave her alone. let me up! comes the voice too loud for comfort and in obvious disorientation. The third doll then quiets and begins to struggle in her bonds, finally realizing she is restrained.
Suddenly Cinder sits up and removes the hood on her head. Her bonds, tied in haste have failed to take into account her new proportions and slump beside her. She blinks a couple of times, turning and taking in the other occupants of the box and a look of horror comes to her features. Slowly, as if fearing what she will see, she raises her right hand to her line of vision, and screams.
"Hssst! Be quiet!" the doll that is trying (horribly) to fold paper says in alarm to the one that just let out a high, thin, scream.
Shi-ru tries to clap a hand over her fellow puppet's mouth...
With a tiny hand over an equally tiny mouth, Shi-ru says--
"Peace, peace! Yes, it is not your skin! We all eat bad sausage tonight. But careful and quiet, yes?"
Sensing that this strange doll means no harm and is truly trying to calm her, Cinder stops her screams and tries to stay herself. She still struggles weakly, her eyes are wide with terror, shooting back and forth madly. In a moment she calms and seems to have possession of her senses again. Sausage? No. Puppets ambushed us. Stabbed us with bright pins. She flexes the joints in her arms and legs remembering. I am Cinder. Are either of you Hazel? she asks, almost sure that you are not. A worried look manages to manifest itself across the doll's static features. What has happened to Hazel?
Map of Giuseppe's Second Floor
Dimitrio sees the jack-in-a-box stretching out of it's horrid box like some grotesque snake, reaching to grab Nicu's leg and pull him back down the stairs and launches his wooden form at the thing. He catches it before it can reach his friend, collapsing back into the box with it. It snaps shut like a crocodiles jaws and the box rocks and shudders from the deadly struggle taking place inside.
Finally the box is still as a coffin, and nothing comes back out. The majority of the toys hop feebly, unable to make the climb to pursue them. Donovan and Rannveig catch the two darts that fly after them and lodge them in the joint of the stairs to slow them down and the party scrambles up the stairs, saddened by the loss of the noble rogue but eager to not let his sacrifice be in vain.
The stairs open onto a homey looking kitchen/dining area that looks in need of a cleaning. There is a mug, dirty food bowl, and wooden spoon on the table. A soiled cloth lies crumpled next to it, loose threads beginning to unravel on one end.
An iron pot hangs in the fireplace, which appears to still contain some sort of soup that has cooked down to smoking mess. A long table in the far corner looks to be where the toymaker prepares his meals. Atop the table is assorted cutlery and dishes while cookware and firewood are stacked underneath.
The sound of muffled, squeaky voices can be heard around the corner followed by a dull crack and a bright chirping sound of a curious feline, "Purrr'ow?"
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Lanarial searches the bottom of the box, rifling through the playbills but coming up with nothing beyond dust and wooden splinters. He contemplates trying to dig one of the fastening pins from his own constructed body, but as he's still not certain he insn't hallucinating this whole nightmare he's understandably hesitant to rip his own body part off.
Shi-ru fumbles with the paper, cursing herself for not having been more observent. But it seems her purpose today was to serve as a muse. The hulking, masked puppet selects the longest, most substantial splinter he can find and wraps the paper around it tightly, making a conical stick. Once he thinks it is strong enough, he turns to the pinhole lock and presses it into the mechanism. He probes carefully, judging the point that gives most against his pressure and then raps his tool on the end sharply.
The fragile implement snaps from the impact, but he is certain he heard the tell tale *pop* of the latch unsnapping. Sure enough, a light pressure on the lid and a line of glowing light appears at the seam of what you now recognize to be a very simple storage trunk.
A pink nose snuffles at the tiny gap and a large pair of olive green feline eyes peers into the dark interior. "Purrr'ow?"
"I tell you all I heard a sound, a sound like a house cat, which in our current state could be as terrible as a tiger. Is everyone alright? Follow me, let's find a way out of this place."
There's no reason to be afraid, the situation is what it is, and yet who am I again? Am I just a gardener, a mockery of a gardener, or a tomb guard, yes, who am I after all. I will not let this condition impede my sight, I will keep her vision always ahead and above me. I will serve her memory and her dignity with honesty compassion and strength until there is no strength left in me.
Nicu, crestfallen at the loss of Dimitrio, climbs the stairs with Luc, Artegal and Donovan. "We'll avenge him, my friends, those responsible will be held accountable!"
As they view the homey upstairs, the rumble of curiosity from the cat demands their attention and Nicu follows Atregal's lead. "A feline monstrosity will be much more a threat than the toys below. Should we climb that firewood and gain the high ground of the table?" Nicu braces his spear for a charge from the cat, hoping to protect his companions as they devise a new plan.
Cinder frees herself from Shi-ru's graps and stands fully erect. I am Cinder. She says again, firmly claiming her identity. And I am not to be trifled with. Turning to the others she says We are victims of some type of possession and magic jarring by my guess. That would mean that someone, or something likely has our bodies. But they have miscalculated if they think we are helpless. I am still in contact with the elemental plane of fire. I feel its heat in my very soul. I may not longer be a full druid, but I have power and by the gods will not lay in a trunk and do nothing while someone else wears my skin. Before you open that lid further. Please tell me who you are and what you know of how you came to be in your current state.
"Call me Lanarial. I escaped from the Undergloaming and have been running from the drow slavers. I thought to hide from them in a swirling whiteness in the Overrealm, only to awake like this." he says, holding up his hands at the end. "If you can touch the plane of fire, then perhaps you can touch it and this beast's nose at the same time so we can escape this crate. You say we are possessed, but we may have been poisoned with a mind-altering drug by the drow, so it only seems that we are dolls...we must be cautious lest they remain outside."
A cat you say. Yes, I could burn the feline, but perhaps I will not have to. I have an, well an affinity for most natural animals. This one could be an ally. Raise the lid and let me see what it thinks of me. She stands near the lid ready to encounter the cat. She begins to coo and our as the lid is raised. Good kitty….
"Plain-fires? Under-glowings? What are you *Tien word excised* *Tien word excised* *Tien word excised* talking about?" Shi-ru grouses, tossing her piece of paper to the floor of the box in irritation. It's not rice paper. If it were rice paper, she would be able to fold it, clearly. What sort of barbarians don't even have rice paper?
"I am only an old woman looking for a foolish boy. Tcha," she grunts, and sits down on the bottom of the box to see if this body allows her to sit cross-legged. Stupid pork sausage. She should have listened to old Nen-Nen who said that all meat was poison. Tasty poison, though.
She squints up at the doll that says she will talk to the cat. "Works better with fish," she observes with a low chuckle.
As the lid to the trunk swings open, the brown and grey striped tabby cat pulls back, flattening her ears to her head and hissing as she sees and seems to recognize the wooden creatures. A low growl rumbles in her throat as she watches them warily, looking more ready to flee than pounce.
But as Cinder extends her hand, making soothing, cooing sounds, the feline stretches toward her, sniffing more delicately this time. Finally she presses her forehead against her hand, moving sinuously under the puppets hand and arm, giving herself a nice long stroke down her shoulders and back and then sits down on her haunches before them. She alternates between washing one paw with a bright pink tongue and batting playfully at Cinder's yarn braids.
Upon closer examination, Cinder can see that the animal has many wounds, some long healed and showing sharp lines of shining grey scar tissue through her fur, and some more recent and still oozing blood. She wears a finely made leather collar with the name "Gatto" scorched into it.
Thats's a nice kitty. Cinder rubs the cat affectionately .
You go by Gatto? How clever. I bet you are much more clever than your owner. Your old owner that is. And my but you are in rough shape. Lets see if I can help you some. Cinder will try to climb from the box and begin to care for the cat's injuries carefully removing the metallic item if she thinks it can be done safely and without too much pain.
Gatto responds to being petted by standing and pressing against Cinder, purring voraciously and nearly pushing her down as she was just as tall as the wooden puppets, but much longer and heavier. The feline shows signs of very differing treatment. She is healthy overall and seems well-fed, but the signs of physical abuse appear to go back at least a year. Many of the old wounds look to be slashes and cuts from a very sharp implement, recent wounds are more bruises though an older, deeper stab wound still oozes on her flank. Cinder can feel the thickened calcification of healed breaks along some of her bones as well.
Her tail is indeed broken, which is plain to see when she stands up and swishes her tail upright through the air. The break is about last third of the length so that the stiffened end of it hangs down at a sharp angle, making the shape of an inverted check mark. As she swished it from side to side, the deadened, paralyzed end flops from side to side and occasionally swings forward and bops her about the head and ears. Unfortunately, this side effect looks to be entire purpose of mutilating the poor beast in such a decidedly undignified way.
The end of her tail is completely without sensation and she does not even react as Cinder gingerly touched the silver needle. Confident that the animal will feel no pain, she extracts the needle and her tail again becomes supple, though still broken.
As Cinder checks the animal over, another group of wooden puppets has been observing them from around the corner. A pair of them look like monkeys with silver glinting claws, another like a woodsmen caricature in a green tunic and hat, then comes a scarecrow in green-jean overalls and a silvery painted thing like a fully armored knight, though it is clearly just painted wood. They carry various small tools and makeshift weapons and look on cautiously at the puppets climbing out of the trunk and making a new feline friend.
Giuseppe's journal contained instructions about "fixing" damaged puppets. You guys should be bringing along glue and string that you found, plus some other things, plus the tools you selected as weapons may aid you in that process. Did anyone document that in your gear?
Healing HP in this form will be accomplished by Craft checks and you will be able to add up aid-anothers.
Nicu watches the puppets climb from the box and observes the very different interaction as they show compassion to the kitty. Lowering his spear, he slowly, then with a little more exuberance, waves to the new group. "My friends, look at those puppets, they don't attack, they tend, maybe we've found more like us?"
Lanarial comes out the box warily, like an animal cautiously testing the area before moving. At the sight of the new puppets he alerts the two others from the box and looks around for a weapon...any weapon...and a place to hide.
This silver needle pulled from the cat's tail could work as a small javelin or perhaps like a rapier. If the cat-friend still has it he will instead just try to hide.
"Tcha, now that thing will follow you around forever," Shi-ru grouches as Cinder makes friends with the cat. (There is just no pleasing some people.)
Shi-ru, who looks rather like an apple-cheeked lawn gnome, clambers out of the box and blinks around the cavernously huge chamber they all stand in. Well, huge to her, anyway. Painted eyes scan their surroundings, then-- ahh, monsters!
Or monkey spirits? Or more souls like themselves.
"Ho-ah!" Shi-ru calls to the other group of dolls, her tiny unbending hands cupped around her jointed mouth. "You also were eating the bad sausage? Well, a fierce lion is with us, monkey spirits, so you be careful or we will eat you all up!"
Cinder will continue to tend to cat's wounds and to keep it calm and friendly once she feels there is no immediate threat from the other group. You new puppets, no fast movements around Gatto here. He is friendly enough for now but I fear he has been abused by puppets in the past. Everyone act extra friendly to him please. I need soap and water and maybe some alcohol to clean these deeper and older wounds. Would anyone have any healing magic? No use saving it for ourselves. If we are constructs now its not going to do us much good.
After the two groups of living dolls size each other up and investigate the top floor, they find another box of stray tools.
One of the windows is open and a narrow ledge appears to run all around the building. Gatto leaps to the sill and strides easily out onto it. It would be barely a foot-hold in your normal bodies, but it is easy enough to navigate in this smaller form.
Shi-ru ambles over to the tool-box. Past her initial shock, she is seemingly wholly unbothered by the fact that she's been transformed into a doll.
They say customs are different in the west. Perhaps all visitors become little dolls, here. Perhaps she really does believe it's a dream brought on by indigestion. Perhaps she's just very accepting of strange twists of fate.
A paintbrush catches her eye. She chuckles and picks it up, examining the bristles on the end. Good for jamming into a cat's eye, should Gatto stop being Cinder's friend.
"Tcha. Now. We have the problem, yes? Perhaps we all will be awake from bad dream, perhaps not. I am not knowing any of you, and you are not knowing me, but it seems we are, how do you say, in the same raft? And I am too old to be doing the leap and the fight and the climb. We put the little wooden heads--" she raps with her knuckles on her doll-head, "--together, maybe we find who is thinking we are dolls! Then you can go hit and punch and stab. And I can have nice tea. Will you all stay with old Shi-ru, help nice old lady who is lost in your land?"
Lanarial also approaches the tool box, looking for an item that can be used as a bow and possibly arrows. Using some strong thread (or maybe sinew? hard to tell) and a thin strip of metal he attempts to create a bow. He finds some wood splinters and a few small bird down feathers and creates a handful of makeshift arrows. l l
"Yes - there is safety in numbers now when stealth not a choice. We find the truth of our selves and escape from puppet-bodies. But what can you do besides talk about sausage and sweep, Shi-ru?" he asks, turning to the cute little lawn gnome and pointing to the small brush in her hand.
"What can I do?! A hundred things! I can fish, and tell stories, and cook, and sew, and clean! Disrespectful young man, asking old lady what she can do! Tcha!" Shi-ru says, waving her paintbrush around and looking truly ridiculous if she could only see her doll self.
"What can you do, eh? Poke paper into locks!"
Cinder pipes in I know herbs and can make all sorts of teas. Oh, and I like animals, and most of them like me. She rummages through the tool box and pulls out a pair if curved scissors, its two halves held together with a small screw. A few quick turns of an appropriately sized screw driver and she has them in half. Holding up one have it seems she has a make shift scimitar sized just right for her. Holding up her new weapon she adds And I can cast fire spells.
Nicu looks to Boote, hoping he has some insight into the new puppets and their domestic disputes in the face of peril. "Can that be the way to salvation? Do we dare not chance it, given the fates of our former comapnions?" Spear lowered, Nicu approached the new puppets cautiously, "Ho there, friends(?), we'll be slow about your cat, most certainly! We've no idea of this sausage threat, our paths must be very different, but we find ourselves in the same situation I fear, and I for one would join with you as we turn the tables on those that have stabbed us with shiny needles. What say you, are we welcome to join you and your tiger among puppets?" Nicu glances again to Gatto, still afraid of the giant creature.
"I strike from the shadows and fade away before you realize you are dying. I disappear into the darkness. I survive. For now I survive with others." he says to the old lady, acting tough but softening to her slowly. Although he talks tough, Shi-ru has seen this kind of teen-age bravado before, and knows he still has a chance...
"So the rest of you know how we became puppets? How we can return to normal? Is this needle what turns us into this?" he asks, holding up the needle retrieved from Gato. "We can follow the cat out of that window and see if we can find those who did this to us."
"Yes, you are very scary," Shi-ru says amiably to Lanariel's words about striking from shadows and disappearing into darkness. (Of course you are, dear! Now would you like tea?)
She peers over the table's edge towards the other puppet holding his tiny weapon.
"Friends, yes. We are all small together! But we can be big together also, maybe, heh. I do not remember a needle, only eating a sausage. But all together, we will go. I am new to this place. Are any of you being born here?"
Once everyone is ready, Lanarial will proceed out of the window and look around. Seeing the connected buildings, he calls out to the others, "Come on. We should check out these buildings for our captors. Let's clear the two to the southwest and then we can check the rest of the ones attached to the east."
Do we look for our walking bodies? are there still emery dolls about who hunt for other bodies?
Outside the window the night sky is flat black with no stars visible at all and a thick, heavy fog that lays like a ghostly blanket over the town. Visibility is low, and you can only see about five to ten feet ahead in the opaque mists.
:
Happy to go any direction to get away from the toy shop, Nicu looks for a way to climb along the buildings.
after a deep sigh, Nathaniel recounts the events of the last few days to the other dolls
"It all seemed to start when we, a small group of friends travelling together, found this village. We met a few of the locals, a woman who runs a tavern and inn, as well as her children,”
he pauses here and looks away, trying to recapture the image of the fair Halfling girl in his mind
“and then things began to happen that are difficult to describe. We heard a scream in the night, and discovered a man murdered, and one of these silver needles was embedded in his neck. As difficult as this is to believe, we cornered a strange animated doll that taunted us with riddles, in the house of the murdered man, but the doll escaped us. We followed clues we gathered around the town until it lead us to a small theater where we were ambushed by several more of these strange doll like monsters. We managed to fight them off, but when we returned to the inn to recover from the ordeal I, that is my normal living self, was ambushed by more of these dolls. I did not know it at the time, but learned latter that my body was taken over by a kind of enchantment, the enchantment that is tied to these silver needles. I was no longer in control of my body, but instead my awareness, my sense of self was trapped in this doll. I learned, from my companions, Nicu, here can verify my story, that my real body, under the control of a puppet spirit, worked to aid a master puppet to overcome the rest of my friends, and all of them were taken control of in this way. These needles are our only clue to the magic that is at work.”
I hold up one of the needles
“There is a book, downstairs, that has information about the master puppet, these needles, and how they are the tool that allows this master puppet to take over the bodies of people, like me, and I can only assume you as well. Somewhere out there, in this town, our bodies are being used by these puppet spirits, for what purpose I do not know, but we hope that if we can find our bodies, and repeat the same actions that were used against us, inserting one of these needles into the neck of our body, we may, we should, regain control of our bodies. I do not know if this will work, and I cannot speak for my fallen friends, nor would I presume to place any of you in a situation you did not ever imagined you’d find yourself in, but, let me be clear about this. I am still Nathaniel Artegal Boote, Paladin of the Lady of Mittonwir of the Golden Horn, a Keeper of the Rosy Star, a Knight of the Silver Sash, and nothing this side of my death will keep me from searching out to the very bitter end the monster responsible for these enchantments and I will do everything within my power, with or without my natural form to see this curse ended once and for all measure. You have no reason to trust me, or to join my cause. Go your own way, if the fates call you to do so, but also know this. I do not fear death, I do not fear damnation, I do not fear pain or suffering. Failure is not an option. We can work together. I will give you all and hold nothing back, and ask nothing in return, will you join us?”
A glimmer of hope begins to burn in Lanarial's heart at Nathaniel's words. Never before had he heard someone offer to selflessly help others, asking nothing in return. No...he was used to others taking what they wanted. If you were too weak to fight or trick the others, then you didn't deserve to have whatever it was. This was something new. Something unexpected. Could it be true? He was almost afraid to believe it.
But maybe. Just maybe. Lanarial will see if this is just a clever means to take something he has or use him for this man's own ends; if so, he will be ready for the surprise stab to his back with a little surprise of his own. But if this man is telling the truth...well, he will see...
Hearing the Paladin's story angers Cinder. The idea that someone one, or some thing has control of her body and might do any number of unspeakable things while in control of it pushes her past some limit and her hands begin to smolder. Her palm actually blacken slightly as her fixed facial features are nearly, nut not quite forced into a visage of anger. Grrr! I cannot even scowl in this little doll body! I too shall have my body back. That I pledge. I will join you, but do not expect me to show mercy to these creatures Paladin. I do not hold to your code. I have chosen a more "natural" path.
I approach the slightly charred and smoldering doll with a look of confusion on my face
"That might be how you feel, now, but let me remind you that in every possible way, the first thing we must remember is that we must be careful. Mercy, perhaps that is not the right word, but something like that must guide our actions for it is our own bodies we are going to be up against. Somehow we must manage to incapacitate them, and work the magic of these needles, without doing too much harm. To attack these puppets that are using our bodies, mercilessly without careful planning is a risk we, none of us, can afford to take. Hmmm, perhaps there is a way to wear them down. Exhaust them, overwork them or something like that. They, these imposters, probably do not understand the limitations of the bodies they posses. We should take care in finding them, observe them, and formulate a plan. I've told you my name. May I ask yours, fire wielder?"