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Prologue...
Constantly roving the byways of the First World, the Witchmarket is a traveling caravan of merchants and performers that migrates between portals and breaches to the Material Plane, setting up temporary camps in order to sell their wares to planar wanderers. While most of this business is done in good faith—or what passes for it in the First World—both the customs and the wares of the Witchmarket can seem bizarre to foreigners. Gold and other currency rarely hold much interest for the fey, and those who trade in wonders often require magic items, new spells, or dangerous services in return. In addition to these obviously valuable offerings, however, some merchants charge seemingly nonsensical prices: a true love’s name, the ability to see the color blue, a single breath, and so on. These “fairy prices” have long been enshrined in Material Plane fables and morality plays—usually with the protagonist discovering the significance of the offering only too late—yet in reality many mortals never learn the ultimate purpose of what they’ve bargained away.
Each of you, whether knowingly or not, recently came into possession of a magical silver coin—a token from the Witchmarket. The coin responded to your fervent desires or wishes, and when you were least expecting it, opened a portal to the First World. The portals were only half-visible, and formed in seemingly random places—in the middle of a field, in a doorway, in the back of a closet, or such. Before you knew what was happening, you stumbled through!
You now find yourselves in this weird and wonderful bazaar of the bizarre. Little do you know that this seemingly chance occurrence will set the course of your destinies...
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The sunlight pours into the richly appointed room lighting a mound of silken sheets in the center of a large circular bed. A muffled groan of waking emanates under the peaches and creams, followed by the sudden eruption of soft gray wings scattering the sheets. The woman they are attached to rises from her belly to her knees and stretches with various winching as she works out knots in her toned muscles. Lifting an arm high in the air, grasping it with the other and twisting to the right and then again to the left, as her wings stretch all the way out to their full six-foot span.
The movement makes her bedmate complain still mostly drunk and asleep, rolling to his side. A frown of disgust accompanies a sigh of disappointment.
“Another dead-end…” the woman’s wings flare up and then down quickly to pull her body to her taloned feet, followed by another to jump off the bed to where her gear is scattered, after her night of exploration. For him, the night was a story for his friends of the conquest of the Strix Princess, beautiful and deadly, but lost in the lands of man, lonely for comfort she sorely misses from her homeland.
For her, it was about hope. The time was running out. The tournament was approaching startling fast, and she still did not have a team. This man’s father leads one of the leading gladiatorial pits in the city. But after the initial sweaty 'discussion' was over, he let slip that his father was not entering a team this year.
Irekeet had been in ‘character’ last night, dressed in her snow-white leather cuirass over a cotton blouse, tight against her body, with a flaring skirt of leather scales. As well as high shin guards, leggings, bracers, shoulder guards, and a helmet over long white hair. All shed as she was being ‘comforted’ now pulled back with sullen grace.
Slipping an odd silver coin out of her pouch, she talks to it “The only thing I got from this waste of an evening is you.” A grinning minstrel had peppered her with unwanted advances all night. He was funny though, and when he made her laugh so hard that her strong but vulnerable warrior princess persona cracked, she gave in and pulled him into a passionate kiss that made his toes curl. At the raised eyebrow of the noble’s son she was trying to woo, she forced a blush and commented on not being used to this strong drink. The minstrel laughed again and slipped her this coin.
Lifting her obscenely large and heavy polearm off the floor, she was ready to leave. She flipped the coin in the air and caught it before stepping through the doorway.
Instead of the tavern hallway, she was in a bazaar filled with the truly odd, “What in the fudge dripped peaks is this?” Princesses do not swear.
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Having fled the tavern incredibly early in the morning, so as to avoid the innkeeper and settling the fee for their rather extravagant rooms, a vulpine woman finds herself walking down a woodland road away from the town, the sunlight not yet peeking over the trees.
Scuffing her feet across the floor, disturbing the collection of fungus growing alongside the path, she scrunches up her face with annoyance at another plan gone awry. "Well, that didn't exactly go to plan Orchid. If only you had convinced that woman to tell us of the drug lord's whereabouts, then we could have disbanded them and returned to our main...patron with the money!" The kitsune says, with an unusual emphasis.
She grabs her fairly light coin purse from her waist and opens it up, looking to count the coin and very few gemstones they have left to keep them traveling in style. Spying an unusual larger silver coin, she plucks it out from the purse. "Oh-Oh! Where did you find this? It's magnificent!" She asks, before examining it closer. "Maybe this could make us enough coin to pay them off? Or maybe it leads us to a new quest to slay an evil tyranical dragon subjugating a poor city....or even..." She sucks in a deep breath, her unusual amber eyes with swirling specks of reds, blues, greens and white lighting up with her excitement. "Maybe it will lead us on the course to become Hao Jin's personal champions!"
The Kitsune pockets the coin before grabbing the small flower and swirling him through the air. "Oh Orchid, just imagine the crowd shouting our names at the torunament, cheering for us both as we strike down our opponents! We'd be famous, we'd be rich, we'd be able to do anything!" The Kitsune's feet glide gracefully across the woodland path, as she swirls with the lesy in her arms.
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Orchid was having an perfectly nice walk, enjoying the cool air, the early morning sunshine and the soothing background babbling when Akira suddenly grasped them and started attempting to toss them back into the trees.
"That would be... good?" The leshy asks once its companion finally stops the spinning and the swirling. It's a good thing that it doesn't actually eat, or else said food would probably be all over Akira by now. "Actually I think I would like..."
A strange scent cuts Orchid off mid sentence. A waft of powerful light, heady flowers and mysterious pollen. The scent of life itself. Orchid grasps Akira's paw in one long tendril and starts literally dragging the kitsune into the woods, all its petals straining to track down this wonderful aroma. Passing between two great trees Orchid doesn't even notice the slight shimmer in the air and then suddenly they're elsewhere.
The sky overhead is a piercing cerulean blue, brighter than the most flawless sapphire. The air is thick with promise and the cries of vendors. "Bottled Fame, your name to be known forever! Charms, wards to protect your loved ones from enchantment and snares. Part the weft of fate, the True Seer can tell you your heart's desire at a price most reasonable!" Orchid can't help but bounce a little, petals fluttering in a dance of pure excitement. They're home.
"We're in the First World." It says eventually - the pure energy of the place leaves no doubt on that point. "Do you feel it Akira, the life? The joy?" Orchid is giddy, practically drunk - Akira has never seen the leshy quite so abandoned. "We have to go to the market! Please? Think of the tales you could tell!"
Allowing herself to be dragged by the small leshy's tendrils, Akira hurries along behind her best friend, deftly hopping any tree branches and brambles that attempt to slow their progress. "Wait, slow down. What's got into you? Where are you leading us?" She asks, curiously - the leshy has never once shown such excitement about anything.
So focussed on the leshy's unusual exuberance, Akira also does not notice the shimmer between the trees as the scene around them suddenly changes.
Whirling around at the sounds, smells and sights Akira cannot take enough in at once. "This. Is. Amazing!" She states, throwing her hands into the air with abandon.
"Orchid, how did you do this? Have we found your birth place after all this time?" She asks, her head whirling with all the possibilities. "Of course we can go to the market! But I still don't understand how we got here?"
Irekeek's eyes widen at the sights, smells, and outlandish everything. 'Too Much' her head screams. Worse than even the human's market places. Thousands of people crammed together to satisfy their endless greed for 'things'.
She spins around quickly to go back the way she came, to GET OUT.
The door is gone. No Tavern, just another packed in stall, this one filled with of flittering insects in cages, glowing in purples and pinks.
She grabs a creature, an elf, maybe. Their face is too wide, ears too long, with eyes that swirled color like madness "Where! Am! I?" she demands, each word somewhere between a growl and a hiss.
The elf like man laughs at her fearsome rage, "The witchmarket, luv" he beams, before becoming a could of lilac smoke, enveloping her. His face coming out inches from her own "Where all your hopes and dreams can come true... for a price" he kisses the tip of her nose, and then the cloud, and he, is gone.
Irekeek is stunned for a moment. She has been paying price after price for the last ten years with nothing to show for it.
Maybe here, she can get something in return. Taking a deep breath, she smoothers the sacred angry girl she still is, despite being ten years past a nestling.
Princess Irekeek, proud, regal, and with better manners, asks the owner of the insect stall "Excuse me, where might I find the stalls renting people?"
The transition from the sketchy pesh den to the First World marketplace seems to phase the Tien woman not at all. However, her dialated pupils indicating the influence of the hallucingenic substance might have something to do with it. The large black bird on her shoulder, however, gives out a roucous 'Caw, Kraa!', but the woman simply smiles.
"Relax, Shigi," she says in a slow, drawling voice. "This is all either a very entertaining vision or we've moved ... elsewhere. In either case, we won't have to deal with Yang Zhang Wei until it's over. I have no interest in attempting to magically woo that woman over to him, but he's not going to take that very well. He's a crude lout and doesn't deserve someone as beautiful or delicate as she."
She moves through the press of individuals with a swaying grace, taking in first one shop and then another. Her attention doesn't settle on any one thing, but that also could be the effects of her chosen pleasure.
Until she spies the female strix demanding to know where people can be rented. For some reason this strikes her as inordinately funny. "I imagine the 'Where' would depend entirely on what you needed to rent them for," she says with a grin, interjecting herself into the conversation.
The strix woman turns her head, and then cocks in as she takes in the other woman talking to her. “Pretty bird” she compliments before deciding to answer with a smile “Fighters or mages, clerics or thieves. Gladiators in truth. The Ruby Phoenix is fast approaching and unfortunately the possibility of victory is slim if one goes it alone.” she dips in a very human like practiced curtsey, her wings ruffling a little at the posture “Princess Irekeek of the Serrated Feathers. And you are?”
"Ooo... a princess," the woman replies with a smile, but narrowed eyes. "Are you a real princess or just Daddy's princess? And if so, does that mean you're waiting for some handsome prince to come and rescue you?" The raven lets out a rude croak and the woman shushes it with a wave of her hand.
"Yes, yes, I'm being rude. I am Mizuta Nomi," Nomi says with a respectful tip of her head. "And this is Shigi, but feel free to ignore her - she's in a mood today." Nomi looks over Irekeek with glazed eyes and dark, wide pupils. "So you need mercenaries to hire for this ... Ruby Phoenix? It is a tournament, I take it?"
Irekeek rises from her dipping, standing at her not inconsiderable height, staring at the woman with her questions and quips. “The bird is forgiven.” she says simply, ignoring the comments about princesses.
Her gaze considers for a moment before continuing “You look like the type of human that is from the land that holds it. A ‘Tien’, I believe. But yes, that is what it is, a tournament.” her wings flex again, a subtle sign of irritation. “Mercenaries, unfortunately, are not ideal. There is more to these battles than swinging a sword and flinging a spell. The grace, the spectacle, the performance is just as important. So again, I need gladiators, Mizuta Nomi.” a pause as she tastes the name “Do you know the ‘Where’ now that you know the ‘Why’?”
"I wouldn't, unfortunately. I'm not from here as you've noted. If here really exists. It might be a wonderful pesh dream, but that's the way of things," the woman replies in a dreamy voice.
"And, yes, I'm from Tian Xia. Tien is the primary language spoken there which you speak very well."
Further attempts at conversation or shopping among the market stalls are interrupted by a loud crashing noise. Several of the merchants and customers run away, crying out in fear, as a monstrous aberration smashes its way through the market! A hulking brute with banded muscles clobbers anything within reach. It wears an ornate wooden mask, and fiery magma flows through its veins.
”Who could be strong enough to stop this rampaging monstrosity?” shrieks a faerie noblewoman within earshot.
Irekeek is about to snap about inserting oneself into a conversation if you don't know a damned thing of value, but the rampaging monstrosity takes priority. She doesn't give much of a flying dung bomb if it destroys this place, but that would be one less avenue for finding a team.
Her taloned feet flex and along with a mighty flap of her wings (knocking over plenty of glowing cages), the warrior jumps into the creatures path. "You will stop, foul fiery fool, or I will be forced to impale you quite painfully." the 'princess' announces in a loud strong voice, pointing her pole arm (sized for an ogre) at the creatures ornate wooden face.
The creature laughs heartily behind its mask. "You? You are nothing but a little songbird! I will pluck your feathers and crush your bones!" it declares in a booming voice.
Before anybody can react, the creature leaps at Irekeek. It delivers a brutal punch to the strix's midsection and grabs her in a headlock, holding her against its red hot body!
The creature is much faster than Irekeek expected, maybe she preened a little took much to show off her feathers to the crowd, instead of paying attention to the bulging monstrosity.
Agonizing pain tears through her, crushing and burning, making her calm explode into rage, screaming her fury.
Grabbing the things muscled bound arm, she pits her own considerable strength against his, slowing breaking its hold her has on her, then pushes off away from him.
Facing him, twirling her guisarme, "Was that all? A tiny love tap? Maybe you need a rest before we continue." she lashes out, hooking the back of his leg and pulling hard to try and send him on his ass.
Nomi's eyes widen when the strange creature appears and assaults Irekeek.
"Wow," she says to herself. "This is intense."
She snaps off a quick spell and then moves into a more complicated one, concluding with a green ray arcing from her hand towards the beast.
Hearing the commotion behind them, Akir whirls around, dragging Orchid with her. "Orchid, look! Its our chance!" Chance, for what, Akira does not elaborate, but without a moment of hesitation, the vulpine woman rushes forwards drawing a hefty blade from her back and swinging it at the creature's back.
{A}Move{A}
{A}
{A}
Orchid is used to this sort of thing. Akira dives into a situation and it is Orchid's job to get her out again. Thankfully the plant is a lot faster than the kitsune and it bounds into combat as though skipping across the sunbeams.
Akira rushes forward, swinging her sword wildly and not hitting the creature. Irekeek flies into a rage as she breaks out of the grapple, but she fails to either demoralize or trip the hulking brute. Orchid misses with their kicks, and while Nomi's disintegration beam connects, the monster completely shrugs off the magic!
"I will show you a love tap!" the thing booms as it pummels Irekeek again.
Grabbing a hold of the strix, the masked monster whirls her around its body, smacking Akira and Orchid before hurling the barbarian bodily at Nomi! Luckily, the sorceress sidesteps the strix!
Impeek’s body screams to charge in and rip the thing apart (if that is even possible) but she pauses to speak to the Tain-Xia woman “Your green ray was rather impressive looking, unfortunately just as effective as my attempt to trip him. Do you know anything about this creature, weaknesses perhaps?” as she waits for an answer she Grows, another four feet in height the corresponding width, becoming a Truly Glorious Amazonian Warrior Goddess. Then she charges back in the fray, but between the creature and the mage, since she hopes the glazed eyed woman has another trick up her sleeve.
Nomi attempts to clear the pesh fog from her mind to try and remember anything at all about this type of .... thing.
However, due to the effects of the drug or perhaps simply because she's never seen anything like this before, Nomi simply shakes her head. "I know nothing about it," she says.
She composes another spell and sends an arrow of acid flying towards the behemoth.
Akira yelps and circles around the creature to strike at it again with her freezing greatsword.
{A}Step/Move{A}
{A}
{A}
Akira and Orchid move in sync to flank the creature - the fruit of long practise.
The creature dodges most of your attacks, but Akira lands two powerful blows that wounds the thing and knocks it off-balance. It focuses its fury on the kitsune, delivering two critical hits that knock her out! It then whirls on Orchid, but the leshy ducks under its swing.
Orchid strikes at remarkable speed, but little effect.
A broken rib, burned skin, and mild frustration is making Irekeek perform like a toddler in a battle meant for veterans.
Akira's limp body lies on the floor, her fur singed badly from the creature's flames, blackened and smoldering. Her chest rises and falls ever so slightly, as she just about manages some shallow breaths.
"Oh, I know what would be even better than destroying it ..." Nomi says, chuckling to herself.
Picturing a small fluffy white bunny in her mind, the sorceress moves through the motions of the spell, anticipating the results with excitement.
Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target’s body gains minor features of the harmless animal. Its insides churn as they partially transform, causing it to be sickened 1. When it recovers from the sickened condition, its features revert to normal.
Failure The target transforms for 1 minute but keeps its mind. If it spends all its actions on its turn concentrating on its original form, it can attempt a Will save to end the affect immediately.
Critical Failure The target is transformed into the chosen harmless animal, body and mind, for an unlimited duration.
The crearure sprouts bunny ears and fur, but doesn't fully transform. Orchid lands a blow, and it retaliates with a punch to the blossoms!
The leshy proves surprisingly inflammable and continues lashing out, attempting to bind the creature in vines which crackle with strange energies.
"Bunny ears?" the barbarian princess exclaims in wonder "Besides the cuteness, how does that help us?" she asks the spell caster behind her as she pokes and prods the thing.
"Petal Protector!" Irekeek calls out to Orchid "Our individual attacks are hampered by space and a lack of coordination." well Irekeek's are, wielding a fifteen-foot polearm in a cramped marketplace is insanely stupid. Her last twirling hack would have looked splendid if it hadn't cleaved through a stall full of iridescent scarfs and now trailed them with every swing... actually that looked amazing, maybe she'll -- Focus --
"If you wish to continue to protect your fox friend, and I to protect this perfect stranger with strange ineffectual magic, we should work together." in truth Irekeek doesn't care a wit about the fox, the stranger, or the leaf, but she is in Princess Irekeek mode, who does.
"I was trying to turn it into a bunny," Nomi replies with a giggle. "Wouldn't it have been adorable? I mean, aren't those ears just so cute?"
The sorceress repeats the two spells she tried earlier, but with more ... oomph behind the second one.
{A} True Strike
Irekeek and Orchid miss, but Nomi manages to land a hit with her acid arrow. The monster grunts as the acid burns it, and though it is badly hurt, it fights on. It pummels Orchid with a critical hit before grabbing the leshy and swinging them at Irekeek!
Still trying to stifle the giggles that pop up every time she looks at the bunny-eared creature, Nomi takes a few steps to the right so as not to catch her fellow monster slayers in her spell's blast. Spreading her hands out in a fan-shape, a cone of ice and sleet jets forth and engulfs the fiery beast.
Orchid doesn't respond to Princess Irekeek due to the bludgeoning and the burning, but still hammers the monster as best it can, landing a surprisingly brutal strike in the monster's eyes.
Orchid lands a telling blow, cracking the monster’s mask and sending it reeling! The pain of its partial transformation slows its reflexes just enough for Nomi to hit it full force with a cone of cold! Ice crystallizes over its body, extinguishing the fire in its volcanic veins! It falls with a thud, and a moment later, the gathered crowd erupts in to cheers at your victory!
The leshy wriggles free and immediately heads to Akira.
"Come on Akira. Wake up!" It demands, shaking the kitsune gently. "I'll buy you ale. Lots of ale!"
"Is she okay?" Nomi says, approaching the leshy as it tends to Akira. Her smile fades a bit, but her eyes are still glazed.
Akira's eyes flutter a little before cautiously opening. "Ale, Orchid. I want that." She says, muttering woozily. [ooc]Wounded 1 0HP
She goes to move her arms, but as she does so, an intense pain shoots across her bones and she realises not only is she severely burnt, but she also has multiple breakages. She mutters a few requests quietly to Orchid in order to ease her own pain.
Orchid grabs Akira in a tangle of vines and hugs the kitsune tightly and has to be reminded to let go so Akira can actually repair the damage done.
"Don't do that again!" The leshy demands, "You aren't allowed to die."
"Wow! What a fight! What a fight!" comes a chipper voice from above. A tiny, winged woman flitters down from the sky and sits on the edge of a nearby tent, looking down at you. The sprite's body glows like a torch, emanating a warm, orange light. Her skin is a pinkish hue, and her bright red hair wavers and flickers like flames. She wears scant, wispy clothes, but a comically oversized bow is strapped to her back.
"Not many can go toe-to-toe with a doprillu and live to tell the tale! You may be just what my liege is looking for. I'm Princess Hot-Bottom! How would you all like to try out to compete in the Ruby Phoenix Tournament?"
Nomi giggles again. "Glad to meet you, Princess Hot-Bottom," she says, just barely containing her laughter. "No one's spanking you I'll wager."
Akira continues to tend to her own wounds, allowing a spare moment to hold her leshy counterpart tight and reassure them. Akira knows full well that Orchid wouldn't cope without her.
"Now, Princess Hot Bottom, that better not have been some sort of elaborate test to find out who here was worthy of this challenge! I could have picked people out of the crowd for that. I have an eye for such things don't you know."
Akira, now feeling somewhat more like herself, thinks about the proposition for a mere second, before nodding a confirmation. "Well, my friend and I are certainly interested, aren't we Orchid? Wasn't I just saying how much I wished for a chance such as this. It must be fate that has pulled us together for such an opportunity."
"As long as Akira doesn't get hurt again." Orchid says, vines on its stem. "She's not allowed to get hurt." The leshy is remarkably vehement about this fact.
Irekeek swirls her blade to clean it, even though it is completely void of any bloodstains since that would have required her to have hurt the @#$@# #$@ #$@#ING thing! She thumbs the shaft on the ground and bows to the cheering crowd. At least that makes it LOOK like she was involved in the @#$@# #$@ #$@#ING thing's defeat.
Not really, Ugh. 'I should just look for a way out of here' she moans to herself, but doesn't manage to slip away before the fiery fae appears. "The Ruby Phoenix Tournament? You are... a manager? A patron? A potential contestant?" even with her practiced persona in place she sounds just a tad too desperate.
"I can neither confirm nor deny that releasing the doprillu was a test," Hot-bottom giggles. "But I am a member of the Lantern King's court! He's gathered together a bunch of oddballs as a potential team to enter into this year's tournament, but I wanted to gather a group of even odder balls to challenge them! If the five of us can beat them, then we'll take their place as the Eldest's team of choice! Then we can fight in the tournament, and we can win!"
Irekeek's eyes narrow dangerously for a moment, a look she feels is very warranted as her broken ribs grate against each other. "You found us in the world, lured us here with the coins, and then dropped a fire-headed thing in the middle of a crowded marketplace to test us." she assumes Hot-Bottoms statement about not denying meant confirming.
But she waves that all away. She stretches to lessen the pain, then dips into a low curtsey, flaring out her wings, "Princess Irekeek at your service, Princess Hot-Bottom, and I would be delighted to help teach your King to make wiser choices." she does hope there will be some kind of healing first.
Orchid's eyes actually glow and it bristles fiercely.
"You do not get to nearly kill my friend for a test!" The leshy yells, in something close to a scream. Its vines writhe in clear agitation and possibly the desire to grasp a small fey and squeeze until she apologises...