Jek chuckles.
"Any idea what will happen to that plane with the ghosts now that he's gone?"
Nik shrugs.
"I dunno about the love-lost, but I doubt that Tcian Sumere would just crumble because the owner died."
Nik frowns "I wonder if cuddles is the owner now."
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Rinika looks off wistfully.
"Damn right he is."
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Baraxx just stares up at the sky, awkwardly holding hands and not knowing what a cuddles is.
"Uhm, Baraxx, you can...Savi, you can drop my tail now. Please. I don't think we need the circle anymore. We can walk back from here."
Nik, having already let go, looks around confused.
"You too shamblers. We're done holding hands." he finally remembers.
He sidles up to Rinika as they start to figure out which way to walk.
"What is 'the box'? Er- if you don't mind me asking."
"Uhm, Baraxx, you can...Savi, you can drop my tail now. Please. I don't think we need the circle anymore. We can walk back from here."
“Ohhh, but it’s so fluffy… I could get lost in your fur!”
Savi flutters about and seems a little awkward.
“I mean… I really could.” She looks at Lunk. “I’m not joking!—I…”
Lunk gladly frees up his hands, and he reaches out to Savi. But all he finds in his hands is two translucent sleeves and Savi’s rapier, ‘Needle.’
He’d sign to Rinika, but he can’t exactly use his hands right now. He just holds Savi’s belongings and stares in disbelief.
In Lunk’s hand, there is a faint greenish glow. A glimmering speck struggles to free itself from the sleeve like a mouse in a nylon stocking. Up close, it is Savi—a winged woman so minuscule she could sprawl on your pinky toenail.
She rises, flying erratically, disoriented by the gargantuan proportions! Even if she moves close enough for her companions to make out her shape, they probably can’t hear her words.
—at least not when she speaks the language of big people. Sylvan is the language of fey. Even the tiniest mouth has a voice.
Baraxx lets go of hands and nonchalantly stretches and rubs them through his hair, like he had planned on doing that all along.
He squints surprisedly at the vanishing fairy but shrugs it off as he typically does with all this group's myriad antics.
"Where to now? I suppose that's the task finished." frowning and scratching his ear with his tail, he grumbles "Guess that means I'll need something new to do. Lets get to that big city so I can find someone who needs something interesting done, preferably for coin."
"Yeah, we should get back to the big city. There's a thing in a warzone we should try to nab if we can. After that I- uh- I need to make an appointment with Lu. Oh, before we go, think we could find anything that flies and is as big as a horse 'round here?" Nik says, looking around.
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"Yeah, I have some errands to run and things to catch up on too. I think it's this way? And uh...Nik, can't you find something already dead for that?"
"If it's mostly in one piece and has most of the meat still on." Nik shrugs.
"If it doesn't need wings to fly, I guess I could use a complete set of bones." he adds thoughtfully.
Baraxx gives Nik a dose of the squinty stink eye when he mentions slaughtering things with wings for his undead abominations, or at least the implication thereof.
But only a small dose.
Thankfully the Outlands has a landmark that no one can miss. The infinitely tall spire, that impossibly has Sigil alighted atop it.
A character can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort. After this time, the character must make a Constitution check each day (DC 10, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. Characters that take an amount of nonlethal damage equal to their total hit points begin to take lethal damage instead.
Spying the city, Baraxx barks in laughter. ”That was a boring trip. First round is on me.” he offers uncharacteristically, privately hoping the group wouldn’t disperse and leave him alone again.
Taran’ri bounty hunters were much less concerning with a decently skilled group of somewhat friendly adventurers near by.
You return to the portal where this ride began, an abandoned mine, Chariamur.You're greeted by the stench of oily metal shavings and air that's heavy with leadlike dust. The ground at your feet is muddy, even greasy, with trickles of befouled water running through the kneaded, soggy soil. A rough landscape of oily tillings and syrupy pools stretches in every direction. Dark sooty clouds hang overhead, threatening a rain that you somehow know will only further pollute the environs rather than cleanse the foul area.
You still possess the feather that opens the portal back to Sigil, and good thing too, those of you not protected from hunger are ready to collapse from exhaustion.
"Sounds good. Let's hit the first pub we see." Jek replies while trying ever-so-carefully to only step on the least disgusting areas of mud.
Nik waves the feather around and hops through with his shamblers.
He continues to wave it around from the Sigil side as the others all climb through.
"Yeah, we need food." Nik agrees, glancing occasionally at Jek as well as his favorite half-undead person.
Rinika croaks, "My fortune for a salmon." She will attempt to lead to the closest tavern, and will try to get someone else to carry her in her exhaustion.
The Green Mill, lower ward
The nearest establishment is a leafy sanctuary that caters to elves and other sylvan creatures. The mill is painted a bright yellow-green in contrast to the soot darkened walls of the buildings that surround it. In the central courtyard grow large trees, perhaps the only ones in Sigil.
Savi is given preferential treatement, Lunk and Jek are tolerated, but the rest are turned away by a lithe elven bouncer with a curved blade at his hip.
Inside the Green Mill is opulent, with fragrant pillars and beams of cedar, richly gilded and carved to resemble vines and leaves. The walls are hung with thick sound-deadening tapestries in repeating leaf patterns of light and dark, like the sun in a forest. The light is dim at all hours, and the air hangs heavy with the scent of flowers and moss.
The house bards play an elven air "Care Charming Sleep"
"Care charming Sleep, thou Easer of all woes,
Brother to death, sweetly thyself dispose,
On this afflicted berk, fall like a cloud
In gentle showers: give nothing to it loud.
Or painful to his slumbers: easy, sweet.
And as a purling stream, thou son of Night,
Pass by his troubled senses, sing his pain
Like hollow murmuring wind or silver rain.
Into thy self gently, gently slide.
And kiss him into slumbers like a bride."
The trio are able to take some food to the rest of their companions as needed.
Savi flutters at her six-inch-tall size. Her golden aura keeps flickering white with every beat of her little heart.
”CaRrY mEeEeEeEe…”
But once the folks at the leafy sanctuary giver her preferential treatment, Savi is rejuvenated!
”Civilization! I mean… nature, at last. Lunk, take my worldly possessions!” Savi shrinks to her littlest form, letting her sleeves and katana fall into Lunk’s hands.
She calls out in Sylvan to whoever thinks fairies are awesome, which seems to be most people—
Lunk feels far less welcome than Savi.
He tucks Savi’s things in her bottle, then signs to whoever appears to be in charge, or tending to Savi.
<Savi has chosen a form that can survive on a mere morsel of food, so as not to take more than necessary to nourish her. She wishes to bathe. A crumb, a berry, and a mere cup of water will more than suffice.
<If she needs me… I’m here for her.>
Savi notices Lunk is signing a lot.
She looks at the people tending to her, focusing on one who is young and female and cute and maybe doesn’t look like Kid Artemis since Lunk missed that boat, but so what! Lunk’s looking out for me. He really cares, so I’m gonna have his back too!
Baraxx eyes the bouncer for some long minute as he’s denied entrance, briefly considering bloody violence and mayhem for the irritation, but shrugs it off.
Turning to Nik and the shamblers he asks, ”Anywhere around here that aren’t stuck up prigs who will serve our kind?”
Jek quickly puts his courier skills to work to deliver food and drink to the party.
[b]"Heh, sorry guys. I guess they don't know you well enough."
"Thanks, Jek. I'm mostly annoyed that they wouldn't let Rinika in." Nik replies.
He holds out the finger with his Ring of Sustenance on it. "I don't really get hungry anymore." he explains.
Rinika pouts and growls out, "I'm mostly annoyed about that too."
Looking up at Jek, she accepts the food and gives him a week smile. "Thanks, though."
Then she digs in her pockets and pulls out her, old, worn, annotated guide to Sigil and looks for a place nearby more to her and Baraxx's liking.
Streets strewn with bones wind past mountains of bricks and rubble. Rats nest in tangles of razorvine. Spiders scurry in crevasses so immense that a basher might think a power had hacked up the ground with a meat cleaver.
The Slags are the most miserable section of the Hive Ward, after the Hive itself. It hasn't recovered when a small skirmish of the Blood War spilled over into Sigil's streets, and canny cagers steered clear of the area ever since.
It's just before peak when you venture into the ruined mess, strangely on the breeze you smell of all things cinnamon. On your way to track down the box Lunk saw in his vision you come across a strange sight. Neatly arranged are a number of human bones in a grim artistic interpretation of a smiling face.
Baraxx strolls along eying the decor of the slags, mentioning ”Kinda reminds me of home.”
"Lunk, you said you saw the box, right? Think if I make you fly and Rinika makes you invisible, you can poke around and find it?" Nik shrugs, realizing that the petrified wood box in the crevasse isn't immediately easy to see.
Lunk uses his gloves to sign, <I can cast fly on myself. I will need help with invisibility.
<Savi can help me look.>
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”Uh, I can walk around and … kill something?” Baraxx offers.
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"Not one delivery or pickup in the Slags... yet here we are looking for a box." Jek contemplates. "This must be the cheapest land in Sigil."
"Maybe we can try to follow Lunk from the ground in case something spots him anyway." Nik suggests.
"Er- or- follow those little lights that Savi makes?" he says, after he remembers how invisibility works.
Savi becomes invisible in her bottle before she flies out naked, in case she needs to change size.
Before* flying away, she replies to Nik, “I tend to will myself not to glow when I’m invisible, but I can flicker a light if you want a signal.”
*Or so it seems. She really started to fly up, turned back, and spoke from next to Nik’s head. Being invisible means not having to admit to inefficient flight patterns!
Lunk invisibly scans the area while flying looking for some familiar landmark. The edge of Sigil draws his eye.
Lunk remembers something that one of his Cager friends told him once, ”Don’t look over the edge,” and he averts his eyes before staring too long.
Lunk spies many curious things on his flight, a three sided pyramid jutting out of some rubble, darkly dangerous. A rat sniffing amid the destruction, apparently not adversely affected by its exposed brain, a dull black claw as long as a scythe jutting from the ground and suddenly retracted.
Finally Lunk tumbles to familiar ground and finds the box, carved from fossilized wood, still chained and sealed.
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Baraxx stands with the remainder of the group, waiting patiently for ... whatever Lunk was looking for ...
Some box? What box? Who cares, hopefully it opens up and something interesting to fight will jump out
Idly picking up small pebbles and tossing them up in the air and swatting at them with his tail, playing an internal game of "how far can I whack a pebble with my tail".
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Rinika leans against a wall, idly picking at her teeth with a claw and trying not to brood over the possibilities of a mysterious box discarded in a Sigil trash heap.
As one of Baraxx's tail-propelled pebbles whizzes by her, her own tail darts out and whacks it back in Baraxx's direction. The motion startles her, and she looks down to see that her spot has taken residence in the tail and returned the pebble on its own accord. She chuckles nervously, but curiosity gets the better of her and she lets the game continue, watching out of the corner of her eye as it goes on.
Lunk looks at the box.
What’s in the box?
Can I safely move it?
Are there any traps in the box?
Are there traps ON the box?
Are there traps under the box?
Are there guards around the box?
Are there traps that I could set off while taking this box out of the room?
Is there a trap at all?
I guess I could have just asked that before. Meh.
What happens to the person who unseals this box?
What happens to the person who touches its contents?
What is the greatest danger here?
Lunk looks at the box.
[dice=Question 1]d20+15
What’s in the box?
Lunk sees a war. Blood, red, green, purple, runs in the streets mixing in a foul slurry. A horde of abominations fight; leathery skeletons with horns sprouting from their skulls, dog-faced monstrosities with pincers and bat wings, flame-enshrouded titans, humanoid insects, slime-spewing frog creatures all engage each other with reckless abandon, without regards to their surroundings. A building explodes threatening to blind and deafen Lunk as he peers into the past.
[dice=Question 2]d20+15
Can I safely move it?
Lunk sees a young man with dark hair combed straight back, a dainty pair of spectacles with dark rims adorn his face. He struggles to maneuver the box and has to set it down, coughing violently.
[dice=Question 3]d20+15
Are there any traps in the box?[dice=Question 4]d20+15
Are there traps ON the box?[dice=Question 5]d20+15
Are there traps under the box?[dice=Question 7]d20+15
Are there traps that I could set off while taking this box out of the room?[dice=Question 8]d20+15
Is there a trap at all?I guess I could have just asked that before. Meh.
[dice=Question 6]d20+15
Are there guards around the box?
Lunk sees a number of rats with exposed brains curiously sniffing the box. One even alights on top. Lunk senses a smug satisfaction from the creature, but he’s unsure how he got that sense.
[dice=Question 9]d20+15
What happens to the person who unseals this box?[dice=Question 10]d20+15
What happens to the person who touches its contents?
Lunk hears a cat purring and the faint smell of rotting flesh.
[dice=Question 11]d20+15
What is the greatest danger here?
Lunk sees a pair of svartálves, eyes large and completely black. They’re embracing and kissing each other passionately. The image jumbles and he sees the head of a bariaur laying in the street, tiny black wings sprouting behind its horns, the bariaur’s eyes blink.
Lunk loops a rope around the box, tightens the rope and gives it a tug…
If that doesn’t make something horrible happen, he tugs again so the box is sideways and he can fly and lift it. If all goes well his friends will see a box dangling from the air, moving toward them.
Lunk's foray into the Slags is fruitful. He safely retrieves the box and flies it back to the party.
Scurrying below lunk a number of cranium rats gather and follow. They spy him and the party with beady and too intelligent eyes.
Lunk signs to Savi (now that both are visible).
Savi shrinks to a speck and flutters around the box.
Savi suddenly grows to six inches tall—and naked!
”RATS!” she says, while kind of pointing her knees together, failing to cover her (flat) breasts with her forearms, squishing them together, and she’s just given up on the butt. “Not rats-I’m-naked, though yes, that too, but rats-under the box!” She swivels to face Baraxx (who WAS buttside), “I mean THAT box!”
Her aura is red as her cheeks as she points at the chained box.