"So, what, we make a poem?"
Naajy pushes his will against the diagram while Digger gathers a handful of powdered dark metal of some sort, like iron filings but non-magnetic.
His hands in the air, he nods at Digger, and Digger flings the filings into the air. Rather than simply splashing onto the icy floor, they swirl around the glowing lines. The lines unravel like the braided steel of a modern suspension bridge, splaying around the room. Where they touch you, they burn like ice dragged across your skin, but they leave no damage behind. Finally the whole mass collapses to the floor like a frozen spider web and then fades slowly from sight, leaving faint afterimages.
If this construct was truly providing the power to the gates, then they must have collapsed.
William sharpens a pencil and takes note of everything that is happening: Naajy's and Digger's motions, the diagrams' reactions and the metal filings' strange behaviour. There will be soon a time to examine everything and piece it together with theorycraft.
"So, that's it for the short-term goal. Now, I believe that we should hurry to Whitethrone, and try to make more sense of what exactly it is that we stepped into. After we check this floor for other valuables, maybe. And it would be great if we found a way to avoid the troops around this place, I'm in pretty bad shape."
The doctor cautiously opens the doors one at a time.
Sir Walter followed along, keeping on an eye on thing and seeing if there was anything else that was dangerous. They didn't seem to be returning there world, but maybe it would take time.
is a bedroom that is obviously uninhabited. It is tidy and well maintained, but lacks any individual touches.
A large bed, reading desk, padded chair, bookshelf, and storage chest furnish this long, angular room. Two windows provide ample light, and several paintings of winter scenes hang on the wall. The chest contains more landscapes, these of green forests, glowing beaches, hills covered with fall foliage, and other images of seasons other than winter.
A large bed, wardrobe, reading desk, and bookshelf take up most of this circular bedroom. A carved ice statue of a striking, robed woman with an owl on her shoulder stands next to an alcove of crystalline tiles. To the south, a white curtain hangs in a doorway.
Several crates, urns, decanters, and storage boxes fill this small room. A mirrored vanity and chair sit next to the east window. An ice statue of a tall, imperious woman stands in the center of the room.
This room is clearly a repository or treasury of some sort. It houses 12 metal tubes, each of which contains a rolled scroll covered in an illegible writing. There are 4 decanters, each of which contains some sort of magical liquid.
The crates hold 50 bars of silver bullion that are clearly some sort of currency (each worth 50 gp each).
There is a leather bag that seems to hold a pride of place above what you would expect from a simple bag. A tattered blue robe covered in patches.
There is also a small iron coffer that contains two large feathers, a ring of white gold, and an 8 inch ash branch about a half inch in diameter.
"Well my lovely home. My warm home. I hope that you're safe. I hope that I see you again"
Without saying anything, Naajy joins the others. If people stop to notice, they'd see him holding onto Haamid as if to gain comfort and strength from the cat.
Haamid nuzzles Naajy in support, but he pays particular attention to the fresh corpse of Radosek. Big cats, after all, can consume about 90 pounds of meat at one sitting.
"I'm sorry my friend, but I don't think I can let you eat human corpses. And you've had a LOT of food over the last couple of days you greedy little thing"
Naajy would also attempt to slowly use pychometry on the interesting items.
To whit,
Q24 -
The ice statue depicts a beautiful woman, and when Naajy touches it he sees flashes of the woman's face gazing upon the statue. She is pleased. It will make a fine addition to the square in Waldsby. It will make clear who rules here. Nazhena.
The second statue replicates the first, showing this beautiful woman. But this time, as Naajy gazes into the icy eyes of the statue, he has the intense feeling of the statue staring back. "The uninvited shall wither and die like the frost covered bloom..." echoes through his mind.
Naajy runs his fingers over the feathers, but his impressions are of different objects entirely. One gives him impressions of a towering oak in sunlight, the other impressions of a pigeon.
"Silver! Lovely, they used silver pieces as part of their currency, so this should fetch us a pretty penny." exclaims William, rubbing his hands with a wild, boyish smile. But it's the books he's eyeing most of all. "So, about this bag." he wonders out loudly. "It looks like a bag, but it's in a treasure room, which would suggest that it's important for some reason. So either this was a treasured childhood memory for Radosek, or form somewhat follows function in this universe, and this is indeed a container, although maybe a more useful one?"
The doctor goes back to the wardrobe and picks the most mundane-looking shoe he can find and drops it inside.
Dr. Johnson drops the shoe into the bag and finds that he cannot see the shoe. Picking it up, it appears to be loaded with something, weighing not quite two stone. But looking within, it appears to be empty. Reaching in, you can see the bottom of the bag, but your entire arm can sink into the bag without touching the bottom. If you wonder where the shoe is, you find that you can suddenly reach the shoe and bring it to hand.
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"Yes!" shouts William enthusiastically as the efficient bag's working is revealed. Grinning like a madman, he takes the bag to the bookshelf and starts loading it with any text about alchemy, magic theory and lore that are on it. "Mister Naajy! I believe we can take away more reading material than we anticipated!"
Walter looked over, intrigued at how the odd bag worked. "I wonder how much it can hold?"
"Excellent!!! Lets fill it with as many books as we can"
Seeing all the attention focused on the bag Haamid, of course, sits on it :-) :-)
"There are many stories of wonderous items that look like nothing special, or even rags. I think that we should experiment a little"
Naajy puts on the tattered robe to see if it has any obvious effect. Perhaps it makes him warm in the cold? He'd do a little bit of experimentation
"Maybe one of you wants to try the ring and see if it does anything?"
The robe is heavy and enveloping. It sits comfortably on Naajy's shoulders.
Once Naajy dons the robe, he sees the patches slide across the surface of the robe, taking on shapes like felt on a felt board. With some study, he sees 2 lanterns, 2 mirrors, 2 ten foot poles, 2 coils of rope, a small sack, 4 flasks, a ladder, a hole, a rowboat, two dogs, and a window.
"Unusual," Walter commented as he studied the moving patches from a distance. "I wonder if the patches indicate the function? The ladder might aid you in climbing, for example."
In the spirit of experimintation Walter slipped the ring onto the little finger of his left hand. It was the one he could most afford to loose if extreme options needed to be taken.
"I've a feeling we'll test this thing's limits with the library downstairs." muses William, dropping the silver bullion in the bag."Which reminds me, we had something else that I wasn't eager to test before..."
The doctor goes through his backpack and recovers the kindjal, the plague doctor mask and the tuft of white hair, placing them on the table before tentatively wearing the mask.
The ring sits on Sir Walter's finger, acting like nothing so much as a ring.
Taking it on and off a couple of times to make sure it could, Walter shrugged. "Seems this may need a word or gesture to activate."
The plague doctor's mask cover's Dr. Johnson's face like a primitive and ineffective gas mask, and the hair is simply a strong strand of white hair. The dagger is finely made but otherwise unremarkable.
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You pack up as much as you can carry comfortably of texts, supplies, and clothing. The weather remains wintry for the first day of travel. Tallak judges it wisest to skirt the northern fringes of the Hoarwood, travelling West toward Whitethrone. The temperature stays below freezing, but your new furs keep you warm, and you hope your hide tents will keep you warm overnight.
Tallak seems to become a new person as the party leaves the tower behind, striding through snow-covered woods with the same ease most people display in their home.
"The ravens seem to like you foreigners," he quips as he heaves a fallen log to the side of the trail. "They're making me nervous; birds usually only act like this when there's witchcraft afoot."
"Mister Singh, you handled the ones in the tower, any ideas? I'll look ahead."
Using skills learned in another world and another war, William hides beneath the foliage.
Sir Walter watched the birds warily. He liked his eyeballs in the end.
"I am not at all sure that this will work. They seem less one unit than they were before. Still, its definitely worth a try"
Naajy again attempts to convince the ravens that we're really, really, not the people they're looking for using mesmerism (and sensitive intuition)
As Naajy reaches out with his mind toward the birds above, suddenly the skies and trees are filled with ravens. Thousands of ravens swarm down from the cloud filled skies like black snow flakes
Naajy is about to succumb to the attacks of the Ravens but then suddenly he remembers the stories about Shani and realizes that Shani would not allow the Ravens to pluck out his eyes
"Everybody, scatter!!"
Haamid tears into the disgusting birds
for
for
for
He then steps back a little
'
Naajy shoots some ravens and then retreats
for
Haamid has little trouble filling his mouth with crow flesh, and smashing a few with the swipe of a paw, but there are many...
Grunting as the swarm englufed him, Walter lashed out to try and smash the birds into the ground in great sweeping arcs, and using the shields to defend his delicious eyes.
Still in bad shape after Radosek's spell onslaught, William braces the rifle and fires at the closest swarm, hoping that the noise and the smell of gunpowder will scare the birds: the bullet itself, being made for larger game, passes through the swarm without drawing blood.
Digger takes total defense and scrambles away. This is a New Yorker's nightmare and he's getting the hell away, turning the air blue all the way.
Tallak runs to cover within a sagging conifer, drawing a longbow, nocking an arrow and launching it at the ravens.
Sir Walter smashes at the swarming birds with his strange shields. Feathers fly, and blood and guts spatter the snow. Bird carcasses litter the ground as the living ravens circle like a corvine tornado. The birds flatten against the sky, swirling above you, but not attacking for the moment.
"I'd suggest tactically retreating at full speed, chaps. Impressive as those shovels are, we're not properly equipped for hunting fowl." notes William, keeping an eye out for the murderous birds.
"A spot of birdshot would be a blessing right now, wot?" Walter did as suggested, falling back away from the birds in the hope of keeping his succulent flesh on his bones and away from the bellies of the murder of crows. Or ravens. He could never remember the difference. A beak to the eyeball hurt regardless.
Haamid scarfs down several ravens as the group retreats/
Tallak leads you further into the dense forest. The going is slower, but it is harder for the birds to keep track of you, and their numbers dwindle in the skies above. You make camp under a massive conifer that offers almost complete cover from the surroundings with its snow laden branches. In the morning, you eat cold travel rations, grains and nuts pressed into bars with honey. And dried meat for the carnivores among you. The birds keep an eye on you, but they do not attack.
Tallak says, "We will have to break cover today and cut across the open land to the Northwest. This area is sparsely populated, so we should see not many people. We will stay close together. Unless there is blowing snow to make it hard to see, we will easily keep our way."
After a day of slogging through snow cover and bright and blinding sun, you see a cabin in the distance. The rough cabin sits in a small copse of trees. There is no sign of movement, but smoke rises from the chimney.
"Bet you a dollar there's a cannibal in there." groans William. "But that looks like the safest place to rest, doesn't it?"