"Thank you," acknowledged Fadilah as she ties the rope about her waist.
It's a bit uncanny watching her scale the side of the tower with her bare hands and sandaled feet, going up silently and without any support yet never sliding or slipping. Finally she reaches the window, pauses to get marshal her strength, then slips through.
Fadi ties the rope to one of the doors in the room and lowers the rope to the rest of the group.
Liath looks around the rowboat, thinking she should think of something, shrugs her shoulders and scratches her chin.
"Don't forget to tie up or anchor the boat!" shouts Fadilah back down. "And make sure it isn't going to wash out with the tide!"
Nura weighs anchor and begins her ascent of the rope.
Maleek tries to climb up next.
Nura and Meleek scale the wall and meet Fadi at the top.
Nabila smiles and grips the rope.
You’ve entered through the window of this round tower. You see seven doors.Three are spaced evenly along the eastern edge of the tower wall. Two more are in stand-alone door frames in the middle of the room. Each of these doors is in front of a 10-by-10 force cage. In each of the force cages is another stand-alone door frame with another door. All the doors are locked. The rest of the room is filled with magical apparati of all kinds, as well as several books opened to various pages
Nabila crinkles her nose and looks around. She feels a little confused and flustered by the strange room. She walks to the freestanding frames and looks on both sides wondering about their purpose.
Liath looks at the books but they seem to be written a language that she does not understand.
Nura studies the room carefully, not sure exactly what she wants to do. Her weapon is sheathed, but her hand is at the hilt.
Nabila walks around one of the door frames perplexed. She laughs at the absurdity of them before attempting to sashay through the door as though it actually went somewhere...
Gm Rolls
Nabila walks through one of the doors and she ends up in the force cage directly in front of it.
Nura is shocked out of her reverie when Nabila materializes in the forcecage. "Sorcery!" she breathes. She looks at Fadilah. "Can you free her?"
Nabila blinks. Then laughs. "I walked into a cage!" She seems to be more amused than anything. She backs up looking up and down and all around.
Nabila backs up back out of the cage and ends up in the room with everyone else.
Nabila blinks yet again. "I...well." She frowns and thinks before walking through a door again. She tries to turn around and walk out the way she came, rather than backing out.
Nabila walks in and zips over into the cage she then turns around and comes back into the room with the rest of you.
Liath looks over the different apparati and can tell they are definitely magical and used for making magical experiments.
"I think..." Nabila frowns and looks at the magical paraphernalia Liath is examining then the doors and cages. "We are in the middle of the water, difficult to access. That is a magical laboratory. These cages? I think that they're either for trapping...things...or protecting the sha'ir from...things. Maybe we better go?"
"It would be a shame to leave this structure fully unexplored. Perhaps down?" Nura asks, stepping to the ladder.
"I was going to say up - maybe we can get a better look at the rest of this island from the roof of the tower," says Fadilah.
"Very well, then we go up!" Nura climbs the ladder.
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”As you wish,” Maleek nods and follows Nura up the ladder.
You climb up the ladder and as you open the hatch, you’re looking into another round room, the same dimensions as the one you’re currently in.The room is literally piled high with gold – there must be thousands of gold pieces strewn about randomly. Various other glittering treasures can be seen peeking out of the piles of gold. Sitting atop the pile in the center of the room is a well-formed man of a dark complexion, nearly twice as tall as a normal man. He holds up a warning hand and booms out in a jolly voice,
“Please do not enter, my friends! I would not wish to harm you.”
"Oh! Oh, my! You're uh, a rather...well, you're tall, dark, handsome, and wealthy!"
To her friends Nabila whispers, "This is odd. I am worried what this might all mean. Magic and large men and piles of money?"
"Oh, ah, where do we need to stop?" calls up Fadilah.
She whispers to Nabila, "He could be a genie!"
The large man sees your marid gen and says, "A sha'ira, interesting. I am a Djinn to be more specific."
He then turns to Nabila and says, "Well, see that is the root of the problem. It is not my money it is that of the sorcerer who has been dead for about 4 centuries. But I have been imprisoned by him and a stuck in this situation and cannot leave for another 500 some odd years. And my task is to guard his treasure." he laughs.
"Oh? A long time to ask you to guard something past one's lifetime, interesting. That must be very tedious and lonely. Do you just guard this room then? Have you seen any other places in this tower?" Nabila keeps reminding herself not to get too close.
"Is there a way that we can free you from your task early?" Nura asks.
Fadilah is about to ask something when the other two women both speak up, so she holds her tongue and waits for the djinn's answer.
The Djinn says, "I have not been anywhere else in this tower for a very long time. To free me you would have to Wish for my freedom, get my master to set me free and there is a third way but I do not remember what it is called....
He says, "there is an item made of tumbago."
Nura snorts. "If it is that simple, then I wish you free." (She knows little of the ways of djinn, but does recall that they can grant wishes.)
"Tumbago... I don't know what that is. But how can we find this object if we cannot enter? Or are we allowed to enter as long as we do not touch anything?" asks Fadilah.
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Liath followed the others, merely observing. She knew very little of the odd things going on, and was beginning to feel that she might break something if she tried to experiment with it too hard.
She did that sometimes.
She tried to remain very still, and listened very carefully as the odd conversation took place. She had heard many tales about...magical beasts such as this, and a far away memory naggled at her brain.
"Mr. Djinn, what, _exactly_ did the mage command you to do? Did he say to guard against anyone removing anything from this room? Or did he just tell you to guard the contents?"
Everyone else was asking questions so she determined that just asking couldn't hurt anything.
'You should just kill him.'
Her orcish half wasn't helping.
The Djinn smiles and says, "In order to wish me free, you would have to be my master or a shair..or shaira of great power or a sorcerer who has the ability cast a spell called "wish". I guess you could find a different djinn who is in a brazier or something like that and then you could wish me free."
The Djinn then says, "Tumbago is an alloy made of gold and I think copper, although it might be brass which is extremely popular in this place called Maztica, which is fairly far west of here."
He turns to Liath and says, "My oath is to protect the master's treasure and I am not allowed to leave the room unless to retrieve the master's treasure. I do not want to hurt anyone."