The bugbear in a suit buzzes, "Yes ma'am. We are just heading out from Windglum, we're stocked up and doing the circuit to the Madhouse. If you are headed that way I can locate a wagon for you to sleep in, for a bit of jink. This will take you through all the layers except for Agathion. I apologize, I don't know how to reach the deepest layer."
The path to the Madhouse will take a week at the cost of 10 gold per head housed, not counting Savi.
Asking around a bit more an off duty auguste offers, "Yah, I heard that goat-lady Antha and her freend Pirreg gots down there."
After a bit of leg work Rinika tracks down the pair. Pirreg is a stern looking man with a bastard sword at his hip. His eyes dart around like paranoid squirrel with a cat ready to pounce on him. Antha, a bariaur doe, doesn't look up and has an air of resigned sadness. Pirreg simply says "Pike off!"
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Baraxx watches the shows and performances in an almost childlike wonder, his mouth often open and tongue lolling. As the group discusses next steps he largely stays silent and watchful, taking in all the sights as best he can before they move on to the inevitable, much more familiar, bloodshed he could feel on the horizon (ok, maybe that’s just wishful thinking).
Lunk cannot sense Antha’s motives.
As for Savi…
Nik isn't sure what the hostility or sadness is about, but hopes Jek's usual do-goody-ness and Antha's bariaur-ness is enough to help somehow.
He elbows Jek, hoping that his large friend can do something helpful.
Baraxx isn’t paying much attention to whoever the group is taking to.
Savi flutters down to the sad bariaur. “I know your friend said we should pike off, but your eyes say ‘pike on.’ How can we turn your frown upside down?”
Jek chuckles at Savi's "pike on" suggestion.
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“Yeah. What he said.” Savi has no idea what Jek said, but it sure sounds encouraging. That or he’s hitting on her, which is my dumb luck. If he hit it off with Glimmerhoof, Bedu would see I’m as tall as she is. Maybe we would be friends…!
I wonder what it’s like to hang out with someone who’s casually naked all the time. I’d be like, ‘hey, Bedu, check out my outfit!’ And she’d be like, ‘ain’t ya too hot in that dress?’ And I’d be like, ‘snort-laugh, you’re so cool!’ And she’d be like, ‘whatevs.’
Aww, I can’t even fantasize us working out.
Lunk offers Savi a seat on his shoulder. He can feel a sadness behind her fake smile. The bariaur‘s sadness must be contagious. Hopefully Jek can cheer Antha up before Savi starts crying. Lunk hates it when Savi cries. She’s usually so cheerful, but when she’s not he’s got this tiny crying girl in his hands and has no idea what to say. And even if I did, I can’t sign my words with a crying fairy in my hands.
Now Lunk’s bummed out too.
Rinika addresses Pirreg. "My dear friend, we don't wish to intrude into your personal business but I think you'll find that we can help each other in our endeavors. We have the answers to your problems, and all we ask in return is a little help in getting to where we need to go."
She halfheartedly smiles at hearing her native tongue and replies to Jek,
Pirreg puts his hand on his sword and reiterates to the catfolk, "I said PIKE OFF!"
Jek stares at Pirreg's hand. "Manners, sir."
A bugbear whose been hovering nearby zooms closer and says with no nonsense, "Is there a problem?"
Pirreg scowls, "No. We were just leaving." He grasps Antha by the wrist and she reluctantly follows.
Nik waits for the bugbear and Pirreg to get too far to hear him before he elbows Jek and asks "Well? Did she tell you how to get to Agathion? You didn't say much, but I don't know Bariaur..."
Baraxx sways back and forth on his heels, staring at the ceiling and idly picking his teeth with his tail.
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"She said we'll need to wait for her under the stage, and she'll slip away to talk to us. I think she wants to leave... or maybe it's an ambush... or maybe she likes me... or maybe that's where the portal is... or maybe..." Jek rambles on for a bit.
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Lunk makes a shocked face as the very serious bugbear farts, the sound rising as if to ask a question.
He then looks at some cute girl in the audience, as if he hadn’t heard the bugbear fart. Of course, even the deaf might have made an exception to their impairment and heard that.
It’s not a sound that could be missed, as it happened in that quiet moment when no one dared give the bugbear any s$%@. (Even his ass didn’t. Clearly, it was not a wet fart.)
Savi takes the cue and wills ghost sounds to gasp and ooh in the kind of disgust one expresses knee jerk and then attempts to reverse time and stifle the sound.
The voice is genderlessly generic, so the bugbear shouldn’t know who to slug. And the many who made the sound are all dispersed and far enough away that they’re obscured by the nearer people who dare not react.
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Rinika brings up her shadow armor and wings, turns invisible, and floats off after Antha to make sure she gets an opportunity to slink off.
Nik tries to ignore Lunk and Savi's antics, with little success.
"Well, I'll come with you. Also I might do a thing that might make me collapse. Carry me?" Nik says, trying to cut Jek's ramblins short after the first minute.
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The bugbear’s face turns a lovely shade of fuschia. As his rear makes a noise he mumbles, ”Oh powers, not again,” before rushing off, abandoning the party to the show and their own devices.
Rinika tails the pair and observes them for half an hour. Antha makes an excuse to leave and she heads under the stage as she promised. When she meets with the party she starts by saying, ”I can help you but I need you to help me first. I need a way off this plane, a spell, magic item, preferably if I don’t have to head out into the winds again. Or at least jink enough to buy my way out, 5000 gold should be enough.”
Rinika scratches behind her own ear. "I can send you where you want to go. Or near enough to it. Do you know? Or can I make a suggestion?"
Nik squints at Rinika, wondering if she's been holding out on them.
She asks with uncertainty in her voice, ”Can you get me to Fortitude? Or anywhere on the Outlands.” Rinika is sure she can get her at least to the Outlands.
”There are creatures in Phlegethon, the third layer of this damnable plane, called the Ingress.” Antha looks about nervously before continuing, ”Chant is they’re native to Agathion, though most folks say that’s impossible, or just pretty sodding unlikely. Anyway, the Ingress seem to know the dark of the whole layer; what’s there, and where it all lies.”
Her tail flitters about as she checks her surroundings again, ”The trick is, the Ingress don’t talk. In many ways, they’re mindless. You’ve got to know just who or what you’re looking for and tell them. They’ll get you there. Somehow, they make you seep from the third layer to the fourth, right through the stone and into the isolated bubble you want.”
Antha pauses for a moment and stares at you, her eyes narrow and she stamps a hoof against the ground. She’s angry at something.
”You’ll find the Ingress in Phlegethon, in a cavern near a place called Caderis; that’s easy to get to from the Madhouse.” She sneers and quickly adds, ”If you come upon a tannar’ri by the name of Luthaccab, you’ll know you’ve gone too far.”
”It all sounds pretty easy doesn’t it?” Her words are sharp with bitterness and sarcasm, ”Well, know this berks: Whatever it is, whatever you’re going, and don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t care less about what you’re going, getting there’s not the hard part. The whole plane is cursed. You won’t succeed.”
Nik tries to nod along through who whole spiel.
"Whatever you're going"? "What you're going"? Oh man, reminder to self:
Do not stay on this wind-blasted plane for longer than necessary...
He manages to not say anything about her odd grammar.
"Cursed, huh? Cursed how? Somethin' bad happen to you?"
Savi experiments with the curse.
I’m gonna make something yellow.
She uses Prestidigitation to make a scale model of the Triforce.
"Do you want us to tell Pirreg something if he asks? Does he go with you?" Jek asks unsure of their relation.
Savi beats the curse of Pandemonium creating yellow triangle with a triangular hole in the middle without any trouble.
"Do you want us to tell Pirreg something if he asks? Does he go with you?" Jek asks unsure of their relation.
Her mouth twists with anger, "No." After an awkward pause she becomes insistent, "I've held up my part."
Nik shrugs. "Maybe we can go camping near Fortitude before we come back here?" he suggests.
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Rinika shakes her head. "In these caverns, there's no way we'd find our way back to this circus, and this is our ticket to where we need to go."
She turns to Antha. "I can get you to the Outlands. I might be able to get you close to Fortitude but I can't promise anything. Thanks for the chant. I'll send you as soon as you're ready."
Rinika nudges Jek in the ribs and waggles her eyebrows at him as she nods toward the Bariaur.
?
"Uh... Here's some rations in case it's a bit of a hike!" Jek unpacks five rations for Antha.
First Nik and now Rinika... did I forget something?
"Maybe enough rations for a twenty day hike? In case she gets unlucky." Nik suggests.
"It's not like we don't have enough." he explains with a shrug, attempting to avoid the protest of no one.
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With Antha sent to Rinika knows where you hunker down in a small wagon for your trip to Phlegethon. The comforts of the Cynosure make the wind bearable but just barely, and your sleep is still haunted by nightmares.
However in battle you fight with real desperation, almost like berserkers. The inner turmoil boils to the surface. You are always surprised in combat and suffer the effect of a rage spell for duration of combat. If you possess a rage ability like a barbarian's rage you enter it automatically on initiative, don't spend rounds of rage, and cannot stop raging until combat ends.
Stage effects are not cumulative.
In my dreams, I’m beautiful… and baaaaad!
I am the WIZARD MASTER!
Lunk and Savi both conquer their nightmares like Dream Warriors.
Savi wakes up singing, “And maybe tonight, maybe tonight, you’ll be gonnnnnne!”
Her ghost sound supplies power-balladesque backup vocals.
She finds herself clad in black leather and fishnet, and isn’t exactly sure why. (Or maybe her expression of bewilderment is just part of the act.)
After a couple of days the tenor of the winds changes and begins to sound like a wailing session of the most mournful bunch of funeral attendees a basher could imagine.
Daring to look outside you see the tunnels have changed, becoming smaller and more twisting. And if you didn't know better you'd say that the tunnels have been intentionally carved just to make the wind caterwaul the way it does. A painfully pensive perch pronounces, "Cocytus." The entire layer bears marks of having been hand chiseled at some time in the distant past now showing signs of being smoothed over by the wind.
The lonely day in Cocytus seems to drag on for a week but you do eventually pass to Phlegethon, marked by a shift in gravity pointing only one direction. The third layer is a place of deep darkness and dripping water. It's not just dark like the rest of the plane, it draws in any light as well as any heat, making it interminably chilly.
Windglum
The city lies within one of the largest caverns on the plane, one several miles in length and nearly as wide. Enormous natural columns seem to hold up the ceiling. There's no apparent plan to what buildings stand where among which streets. And each building seems to have been built without regard to its neighbors. Hovels stand next to mansions, bathhouses next to abattoirs, temples next to gambling houses.
Cynosure stops next to one of the five gates that lead to the town, unable to enter it properly, but they are able to attract a steady stream of customers nevertheless.
Nik continues to be annoyed with the winds but otherwise fine.
"So, I guess we look around for Caderis..."
Nik says.
"Think they sell earplugs in town?" he adds.
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Jek shrugs at Nik. Let's just get this over with..."
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As you walk through Windglum it becomes very obvious that you’re not welcome. Conversations stop as you pass by and people glower at you suspiciously. If you attempt to buy anything you find the prices are suddenly inflated, and any coin you pass to a local is weighed and inspected to be sure it's not a counterfeit or shaved. Someone even shouts at you as you pass ”Nobody asked you to come here!”
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Nobody asked that somebody to fart like a rhinoceros in public, but it sure sounds like he did!
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Savi wills Prestidigital special effects on the seat of That Somebody’s pants: warm, soiled.
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Baraxx walks with the group, increasingly silent and ornery, which is hard to tell except for a greater than normal number of growling snapping is jaws randomly at things that annoy him.
Clearly the winds are betraying him and getting to him.