Sean runs between the shades and the ladies, doing his best "Daffy Duck losing it" impersonation to get their attention. If that fails, he'll dive in front of any attacks, if he can.
"How are you able to stay so relaxed? There might be others!" Tom shouts behind him. Nevertheless, he slows down enough so that Sunny doesn't get left alone.
"I heard Sean yelling to get outside quick earlier, so I think we should pick up our pace. Maybe they're also in trouble."
Good news: your distraction works, keeping the shade off of the women long enough for Ari to finish her work.
Bad news: a shade has your shadow in its clutches. It hasn’t torn it off yet, but it’s about to. What do you do?
Sean pulls his knife, whipping it into a short slash against the shade. Might work. If not, I'll go out looking like a bada$$.
Shockingly, unexpectedly, it does actually connect. You slash out at the two dimensional form and...cut it. You rend the form of the shade, but your knife gets stuck in the wall the shade adhered to. You can wrench it free, but it’ll take both hands and leave you vulnerable, or you can leave it behind.
Sean blinks. F@^k me, it worked! Ditching the knife he turns to run. "I love that knife! Let's get the hell out of here!" He gestures the women towards the van.
"We can at least turn the headlights on and see if that helps!"
Sean tries to urge the two women to run. "C'mon. Let's go! We'll wait for Tom and Sunny, but we won't do them any good if we're dead!"
Quick recap in case anyone is confused and not sure what to do.
Tom: You’re in the cellar, looking to escape. You can move freely outside or deeper into the house
Sunny: you’re in the cellar, making no moves to escape. You can move freely outside or deeper into the house
Arianne: you just fixed Allison’s shadow. You had the idea that total darkness might protect your shadows. Your retreat is safe but moving deeper into the house will trigger act under pressure.
Allison: You lost your shadow but you got better. Dispelling works, but it’s slow and dangerous. Your retreat is safe but moving deeper into the house will trigger act under pressure.
Sean: You just speared a shadow to the wall, so you know they’re solid. Your retreat is safe but moving deeper into the house will trigger act under pressure.
As Her shadow returns, Allison grabs Arianne's wrist, and half drags her out of the house saying C'mon, no time to linger.
As they reach the edge of the house beyond the doorstep, He calls out to the others. Sunny, Tom. It's not safe in there. Again, it is not safe! she raises her staff high, and points toward the house, and utters an incantation of wind and protection.
You summon a squall of wind in front of the threshold. The shadows don’t seem to cross the barrier, even though there seems to be no reason why wind would affect shadow.
Better hope Sunny and Tom get out of there soon.
Sunny kicks the cellar door closed behind the two of them. "The others went in through the front. We should find 'em and tell 'em there's something in the cellar."
Arianne, you and Sunny/Tom meet up in the middle between the back and front and exchange information quickly. The shades don’t appear to be following outside, even through the cellar door.
As soon as Tom hears about what happened, he starts walking even more quickly towards the exit. "And I thought it was only the cellar that was dangerous..."
Tom walks together with the others quickly, the sooner to get far away from the dark house and to show the others his sketches of the runes calmly.
Tom, is your intention to head back down the path to the car? Are you making a full retreat from the house?
Is anyone looking to stay at the house or are you all bailing?
Okay... so that was a mistake. I think we need to figure more out, because those things are deadly. Allison says. I don't think they can leave the house, but I don't feel like staking my life on that hunch. Let's get out of here.
Sunny lags behind with Arianne. He puffs out his chest before producing a crumpled monkey-shaped sticky note with a magic circle scrawled on it. "This was downstairs, unused, with a cage. D'you think we could adapt it to contain this mess? I'm on strict instructions not to go twacking about, or we'd be done with these things."
Where do you all go to regroup? Are you just huddled in the car or do you drive to someone’s house?
Sean is in his van, behind the wheel. The engine is running, the headlights are on, and he's waiting for everyone else to arrive.
Everyone makes it safely to the van. Where do you go next
"Where to? We can go to my place, or if anyone else has any ideas, let me know."
While he waits for replies, Sean starts driving away.
"We goin' somewhere to get some chalk? 'cause I don't see how we're gonna find a better suspect in the case of the shadowless teen pensioners. You say you stitched her shadow back on, and she got better, right? D'you think one of those things in there is the kid's shadow, or are they shadow cannibals?" Sunny claps a hand on Allison's shoulder. "You feel like knitting, Als? -Ooo, Sean, do you think we could get a lightsaber like the one from that documentary on the star war?" Sunny cups his hand over the side of his mouth conspiratorially, but continues to speak at full volume. "I don't think mung bean is ready to handle my staff."
Leaning back into his seat, Sunny bites his cheek. "I don't get what that circle in the basement was for. Those lights, and the generator? I don't think the kids set that up, or if they did, they were following instructions."
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Tom barely stifles a laugh until Sunny mentions the circles. "Yes, speaking of that, I sketched a picture of them. Maybe one of you knows what they were meant to do?" He offers the paper to Allison or Arianne or anyone else in the car who might be able to understand it it.
Arianne/Allison: how do you research? Do you have books? Is anything computerized?
Anyone who knows how to do magic can do an investigate a mystery roll based on the sketch, but you might need extra resources depending on your questions. Now is the time to define what resources you have.
Remember: you just fought some minions. You can’t actually harm the monster (whom you have not yet encountered) without exploiting its weakness.
Sean focuses on the road, but says over his shoulder to Sunny, "I'll see what I can do about the lightsabers. The last shipment my contact was supposed to get was vaporized by a Star Destroyer." He grins, then continues, "I don't have any chalk at my place, I'm pretty sure. We can stop somewhere to get some. Might be a good idea to pick up whatever else we'll need, too. I've got two flashlights at the house, but couldn't hurt to have one each, so... any other ideas?"
I have some chalk at mine... and on me. what do you need it for? she asks Sunny, whose parlance was, as usual, half incomprehensible.
We could hide out at mine... but it's a little messy. not sure if the wards would be worth it.
Sunny pulls the sticky note from his pocket and turns it in his hands, squinting in the passing streetlights.
It's hard to tell too much from the symbols Tom copied down. He's not familiar with any of the Abyssial languages, plus the circle was not complete.
That said, it's fairly obvious that this was a circle of summoning, but explicitly not of binding. The runes and sigils focus on invitation and freedom of movement. Whomever drew this, they were bringing something in from the void and planning to let it loose. Whatever they wanted to do, they were interrupted before the circle could actually be used.
There's a partial word with a prefix that could mean "flower" or could mean "germ"
There's a section of the circle that leads up to what would probably be the creature's summoning name, but the name itself was obliterated before you got there. If you could see an intact circle, you'd be able to identify the creature quickly.
"-now, what I don't get is why have a cage, but no binding in the circle? Unless the cage had snacks in it..."
"Ooo, maybe they were summoning a cat to take care of a mouse problem, hoping to cage it once it ate up all the shadows."
You dig up a few books written by someone who knows a little too much about the other world.
Little things like the shades can be pulled across from the void easily and returned just as easily. That's why they didn't need a circle to be summoned, and why Allison could dispel them on the fly.
Something that needs a circle? That's a whole other story. It'd need to be anchored into the material plane just to cross over. A simple banishment won't cut it. If you locate and destroy the anchor it'd become vulnerable. It'd have to keep the anchor near it, but it's not always obvious what the anchor is.
If Sunny's theory is correct, whomever summoned the monster would want something they could destroy easily when they were done with it.
"As much as I hate to say it, I don't think we'll ever figure out what happened or why unless we catch whoever was doing it in the act," Tom grimaces. "I don't want to go back into that awful place. But maybe we can place a recording device inside there and get out quickly? Unless Sean is getting a shipment of hologram recorders sometime soon, or better yet, a robot to go inside instead of us" he laughs nervously.
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Sean waits in the van while Arianne goes into the shop. "I don't read much apart from nudie mags and Patrick O'Brien novels, and I don't figure this place has either."
He digs through a pile of CDs in the center console, finally selecting The Police, Outlandos d'Amour, nodding his head to the driving drum beat of 'Next to You' as it kicked in.
"Man... I really liked that knife."
There are some players in the magical world who might have information on a major summoning like this. Arianne, you know a local wizard who calls himself "Zell Metro, the Gentleman Mage." He's a bit of a creep, but he runs in a lot of different circles. An operation like this might have crossed his radar.
You're less tuned into the magical society of Spinethorn, but you may be able to cast a spell to give you more information. They're magically blocking out scrying, as you witnessed when you tried to look backwards into time, but you might be able to cast a spell to locate some potential spots where they're hiding.
You have a drawing of where the monster is hiding...but no idea of where it is. You might be able to narrow things down a bit if you do a bit of digging.
You try to keep your crew isolated from the more mystical side of things, but there seem to be human cultists involved. Large generators, multiple industrial lights. Someone had to buy (or steal) all this gear. You might be dig up some information from that angle.
You have a solid network of kooks, crackpots and weirdos that you source for your stories. Most of the time they're making things up, but occasionally they hit on something real. They might have something for you. You also have access to an assortment of police and news databases that you could access to narrow down options.
Brent McDonald is a homeless man who sets up camp the next block down from the Ashby manor. Tom figures he might be able to ask him about the subject.
"Hey, Brent? I was wondering, did you see anyone leaving the Ashby manor or walking away from it lately, probably also carrying away equipment of some kind?"