Alice doesn’t know the sacred words… but she does know words that the metal guy-thing understands. But is it a guy or a thing?
If yes to that, <I would kindly request you speak Sylvan then. I would not want to risk offending Alseta due to a misunderstanding.> Nor would Alice care to be sworded by Guy-Thing.
Her third question is to determine whether Guy-Thing is more Guy or more Thing: <I am curious. Do you speak of your own mind, or do you simply give messages pre-stated by another.>
Her last question will be to see if Guy-Thing understands the common tongue:
<Do you understand the following?>
“Do you understand this common language?” And if Guy-Thing has already taken requests to switch languages, Alice will request a switch to speaking Common if Guy-Thing understands the language.
The construct replies in Elven again. Alice only understands “some,” same,” “own,” and “guardian.” It does not respond to her question in Common.
"Soooooo, nobody speak the native tongue? Usually offer them some husk and that speaks well enough...don't look like the type to partake though. Just ignore it and move on?" He suggests.
Alice says to Felitcia, “The metal Guy-Thing speaks of its own mind. It may be possible for us to work our feminine charm, so Guy-Thing will be friendlier… but there’s surely a risk. Attempting to affect his mind magically might be taken as an offense, if the magic doesn’t work?
“What do the rest of you think? From what Felitcia said of her magic, I believe we both possess magical charm. Who can resist the two of us?” The question is rhetorical, yet Alice gets the feeling she has seen, both in visions and in-person, several beings that could resist a thousand magical ladies.
"...how can you charm it when you can't understand what it's saying?" Siobhan asks.
"There's all sorts of strange fey magic about, no? Think maybe there's something lying around that'll let us speak its language?"
Alice *does* have an answer—she didn’t say a word and that lech Prince Leopold couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Hands would’ve been next, and who knows what else, had Alice not exited the party via rabbit hole!
She keeps this thought to herself, and simply nods at Siobhan’s idea and announces her next question to Guy-Thing before asking in Sylvan:
<I wish to honor your request. Is there something in this room that will allow my friends and I to speak and understand your language?>
The construct merely shakes its head.
Recite... sacred... pass...
Once Siobhan starts thinking about what the guardian said, she remembers the inscription Dr. Farthington translated upstairs.
"...A door must open, otherwise it is not a door." She speaks aloud.
The door warden inclines its head and steps aside, allowing you to pass into the next chamber.
Alice blinks in astonishment.
“Siobhan… that was absolutely brilliant!”
"...I just remembered the inscription upstairs..." The painted warrior mumbles, looking quite unused to such compliments.
While Siobhan was musing over the solution to the riddle Felitica shook her head at Alice's question about the other deities she had sensed and said, "I have no idea who the other two were but I don't think this was one of them." When Alice spoke of using their feminine charms on the thing Felitcia gave the tiny Alice a wierd look as she considered what she thought Alice was wanting to try and do. Felitcia wasn't interested in being whored out to some giant statue but realized she'd done worse and at least the statue wasn't ugly, she was actually kind of hot, for a statue.
Felitcia finally gave Alice an annoyed look and said, "So you want me to seduce the statue? That's the best you've got? Can we even speak with it...what am I asking," Felitcia placed one palm against her forehead and drug it down her face as she spoke, "you don't need words to have sex, sometimes it's easier that way anyway."
Felitcia was just about to turn the charm on and try to get the statue interested in her when Siobhan managed to come up with the password to get them past. With a shrug she said, "Or that works too."
“Have what with—???” Alice is clearly flustered. ”Charm! It’s a spell! I would never ask you to…”
Wait. She didn’t say no to this idea. Curiouser and cur—no. This is a rabbit hole I must not go down.
Her luminous skin illuminates a rosy hue from her cheeks to a circular emanation twenty feet in diameter.
“As for me… without getting into what is physically possible, please understand who I am. I am that girl at the party who said ‘no’ to Prince Leopold.” She looks back at the metal Guy-Thing. “You might have said yes. A part of my mind did. I fear that without me, my sister most definitely said yes. So I am not judging you for choices you would make or choices you did make…
“But I would never ask you to use your body to my benefit.” Alice is aware of what opening she left Felitcia. “Um… you know what I mean. I think?”
Jed cocks his head curiously at Alice, floppy ears bouncing as he does so. Then he gives a teasing grin. "Oh darlin', some women get along using their natural gifts. Long as everyone's on the up and up about it there's nothin' wrong with that." He pats Siobhan on the shoulder hip at figuring out their predicament. "So the statue is a door, huh fancy that. Good thinkin' there."
The room beyond the guardian is a small, circular chamber. On the far wall is an ornate carving of a tortoise, a gracefully arched door set in the center of its shell. The tortoise is looking back over its shoulder at the door, and a smiling mask sits on the back of its head.
Once you are all in the room, the guardian construct sets the door back into place behind you. The door in the tortoise’s shell glows with gray light as a large keyhole appears in its center. The hole turns, as if somebody put a key inside on the opposite side, then the door opens.
An unassuming human woman steps into the room. She has dark brown hair and hazel eyes, and she wears a simple but elegant white dress. She looks at each of you in turn and smirks. ”I guess you’re the ones I’ve been waiting for? Well, welcome to Golarion. Live long and prosper.” She holds up a hand with her fingers splayed.
Felticia is the only one to recognize this reference to a popular mid-20th century television series back on Earth...
Felitcia found herself amused at Alice's reaction and her eyes widened in shock when the tiny woman said she'd passed up sleeping with a prince! "Girl, I don't know what you were thinking passing that up! I mean, it's not every day you get a chance with a prince!" Felitcia was not sure just what would make a girl pass up a prince but she decided maybe it was from when Alice was from and that she'd have to work on that.
As they passed through into the next room and found the pretty human woman who gave them the traditional Vulcan greeting Felitcia, in all of her lack of nerdiness, still knew what this meant and said, "Ohhhh! I know this one!" Felitcia repeated the hand sign as she said, "Live long and prosper."
Felitcia smiled at the woman and said, "So, I'm Felitcia and you have no idea how good it is to see another human around here! It's just been Siobhan," as she tended to do Felitcia butchered Siobhan's name when she tried to say it, "and me, with these three former humans."
Felitcia looked the woman over carefully and considered her appearance. She was pretty, but Felticia was sure she herself was prettier, and the outfit looked good on her, for the setting they seemed to be in. The actress' eyes widened a bit as she said, "We should totally go to the bar together. We could pick up so many guys, or girls if that's your preference, it'd be a blast!"
”Oh!” the woman says, a blush coloring her cheeks at Felitcia’s suggestion. ”Yeah, uh, sure. Maybe later tonight. You’ll probably want to get out of this creepy forest first, though, right?”
She clears her throat and smiles. ”So, you can call me Rachel. Like you, I’m from Earth, but unlike you, I’ve been here on Golarion for a long time. Fourteen years, give or take. The church of Alseta sent me to be your guide as you transition into life in this new world. You guys were supposed to meet me in Crystalhurst, but I guess something side tracked you? Nice outfits, by the way.”
Richard’s eyes widen, ”You come from Earth too? How did you get here? If you know, that is.. I wouldn’t say we were sidetracked, per se. A clan of orcs met us shortly after we woke here and took us in, performed a ritual that awakened a sort of…heroic potential. Ah, where are my manners. I am Dr. Richard Farthington.”
I *was* thinking! Alice says to herself, only now there’s no part of her mind to argue Felitcia’s side.
She decides not to perpetuate the topic and when Rachel gives a compliment, Alice beams with pride. “Why, thank you! I designed the outfits myself with some very delightful magic. I could cast my spell on your outfit, but it suits you so perfectly.
Alice Pleasance Liddell at your service.” She punctuates the introduction with a curtsy.
”Doctor? Nice!” Rachel says. ”Medical or otherwise?” she asks Richard.
”It was just a normal day for me. I had recently graduated college, I and was wasting time on my computer when this big, glows portal opened up and sucked me in! I fell out in the middle of a circle of standing stones in a strange forest, and I found myself changed, like most of you did. It didn’t take long to realize that I was a long way from home.
“A priest of Alseta found me and took me in. The church has this old prophecy about how a group of people from another world are destined to do great things on this one. Except the thing is, the god of prophecies kinda died a century ago, so none of those old prophecies are really reliable any more. So it was just me, trying to adapt to a new life in a new world.
“But now you guys have appeared, arriving in the same place I did. I’m not sure what it means yet, but it’s got to mean something. So let’s stick together and try to figure it out, yeah? Unless you want to go back with the orcs. But, uh, I don’t think that will end well, personally.”
Siobhan shoots an annoyed look at Felitcia as she gets her name's pronunciation wrong.
"...your passage here was easier than mine." The painted warrior says to Rachel. She winces briefly as an ache flares up in her belly.
Richard chuckles and shakes his head, ”No, not medical. Anthropology, folklore specifically. I’m in a similar boat to mighty Siobhan here, I had just wrapped up a lecture when I felt my heart start to give out. I was older and smaller and a whole lot fatter than this new body is.”
He furrows his eyebrows when she mentions the orcs, ”Why do you say that? They were nothing but welcoming to us. Treated us like kin despite us being absolute strangers.”
“The god of prophecies died? Well… maybe He saw it coming. I mean, assuming Golarion centuries and Earth centuries are roughly as long—else birthdays will be strange!”
Alice finds herself sidetracked by her own comment, and by a very silly thought that if Rachel wanted to pick up a girl, Alice is very light and would happily permit it. Alice is then sidetracked by three more thoughts. It’s so good to be free of that voice in her head that wanted to be romanced by Leopold and watch cricket games instead of partaking and…
To those not in Alice’s head, the tiny girl simply pauses for a breath.
“What I mean is, the god of prophecy was among the living when I fell into the rabbit hole, and might have even been just a boy god in Siobhan’s time. We’re not all of the same millennium.”
”Oh, yikes. Sorry you died,” Rachel says to Siobhan and Richard. ”But, I guess you must be grateful to have a second chance now, right? And hopefully avoid dying again for a long time.”
She shakes her head when Richard asks about orcs. ”You must have sweet-talked them real good. And you being changed into a half-orc certainly must have helped. In general, orcs are a violent and brutal people. Most interactions between orcs and humans don’t end well...”
Rachel then furrows her brow when Alice says your group is from different time periods. ”Huh. Time travel, too? This is getting pretty complicated. Why don’t we start by going back to where I came here from—it’s a modern shrine to Alseta in a city called Oppara. You all can clean up, have a nice meal, and you can tell me about everything that’s happened since you arrived here.”
"No objections from me." Siobhan nods.
Alice shrugs off the idea that they won’t steal treasure for the dragon.
“Only if you tell us about this Oppara—and I mean on the way there! No offense meant to our orc friends, but it’s quite possible their wise dragon sent us here knowing it would separate us permanently.”
So Alice hopes. She does NOT want to be hunted by the dragon, but what they were asked to do here is stealing. And that will not do.
”A dragon? S!#~,” Rachel says. ”I think you’ll definitely be better off as far away from here as possible!
“Oppara is the capital of a country called Taldor. The city and the country itself used to be grand a long time ago, but they’ve fallen by the wayside due to corruption and mismanagement. Luckily, a new empress took over a couple of years ago, and things are starting to trend in a better direction.”
"...are they better or worse than Rome?" The Gael asks, her body tensing up.
”Better, overall,” Rachel assures Siobhan. ”More progressive, less warlike. Probably the same amount of debauchery?”
"...alright. Lead on."
When Felitcia heard Rachel mention computers the actress felt a wash of relief, "Finally, someone from close to my own time!" The star of the screen sashayed over to Rachel and looped an arm through her's as she said, "So, while we're on the way what year did you come from?" After a brief pause she added, "Oh, and I didn't die either, I don't think," Felitcia's expression fell slightly into a frown as she added, "well, I kinda wished I had the first few days. Walking through the wilderness with a massive hangover sucks! Then there's the lack of room service, hot and cold running water," she looked over at Rachel, "how have you survived here without the modern amenities?!"
Rachel clears her throat when Felitcia takes her arm. She keeps her eyes straight ahead, as if nervous to make eye contact with the actress.
”It was 2007 when I was transported here to Golarion,” she says. She does glance over and chuckle when Felitcia complains about the lack of amenities. ”Oh, you manage to get used to it. Some places are a bit more cosmopolitan than others, and there’s always magic to make things more comfortable. I’ve mastered a little bit myself. Nothing to write home about, though.”
Felitcia sighed a bit at the letdown that Rachel had been pulled from earth before she had started her movie career. It would have been nice to have a fan in this world. "Guess you missed a bit then, not as much as them," she gestured at the others, "By twenty twenty-one computers got faster, phones got smaller and smarter, and Hollywood continued on with ever impressive special effects, they're even getting dead actors and singers back on stage! It's strange but awesome! We are in the middle of this global pandemic," before Rachel could worry much about that she added, "don't worry, I've been vax'd, but it seemed to be dying down. The politicians are all still sleazy but nothing new there. Ohohoh! And they claim the worlds going to end in about twenty years when global warming screws up the world or the economy collapses."
”Wow, sounds pretty much how I would have expected things to be going. Didn’t expect a pandemic, though,” Rachel says. ”I hope my family back there are managing okay. But I’ve been here so long, that’s really not my home anymore. Golarion is. Shall we?”
She leads you all through the doorway, and you find yourselves in a small shrine featuring marble columns and an altar engraved with Alseta’s symbol. The door behind you closes and fuses with the wall, fading away into solid stone. Rachel retrieves an ornate key from the wall and drops it into a pouch at her belt.
From there, you step out of the shrine and onto a busy city street. The street is lined with cobblestones, and several large buildings topped with domes adorn the skyline. Dozens of people move about, some stopping to shop at stalls set up along the streets. The air is full of conversation and laughter.
”This is Oppara,” Rachel says, smiling.
Siobhan looks around the street with a mixed expression of uncertainty and anxiety.
"...looks busy." She offers in her usually terse manner.
Richard looks behind him, consternation clear in his face. He felt bad about leaving the orcs. They had been good to him and yet...perhaps an easier situation would be welcome. He steps though the doorway.
Once he steps out into the city his eyes widen. This was beyond anything he had expected from this new world. It was nothing like the medieval cities of Earth had been described. Oppara was wondrous, plain and simple.
The city of Oppara certainly exceeds Richard’s expectations. It is a sprawling metropolis, spread out over fifteen separate districts and featuring numerous bridges over central canals.
The Grand Bridge of the Empire is Oppara’s most impressive edifice. This massive cantilever bridge is set atop enormous stone piles sunk deep into the Porthmos River. Built 3,000 years ago to greatly increase the ease with which goods and people could be transported across the river, the Grand Bridge of the Empire remains an impressive architectural achievement even in the present day. The span’s surface is paved with delicate mosaic tiles laid across a foundation of thin granite sheets. Two causeways, one on either side of the central canal, offer Opparans easy access to the bridge.
Grandbridge is the largest district in the capital, spanning the central canal. A mercantile district of worldwide renown, it hosts the infrastructure needed to take advantage of Oppara’s international trade, including currency exchanges, factories, import-export firms, open-air markets, shopping squares, and warehouses. The city’s infamous Gray Market stands between the split rises of the Grand Bridge of the Empire, offering goods of questionable provenance straight from the docks.
Your group attracts a few curious looks. Though the majority of the people here are human, you spot a handful of other ancestries: halflings, elves, dwarves, and more. Still, the sight of three human women, a tiny sprite, a hulking half-orc, and a goblin all walking together must be unusual!
Rachel guides you to a modest inn called The Sleepy Selkie and pays for private rooms for each of you. The accommodations aren’t much to write home about, but they are a step up from the dank, moldy chambers in Zedoran’s lair. As you wash and freshen up, she heads out into the markets, returning with plain, if functional, outfits for each of you to change into.
Once you are comfortable, Rachel invites you to join her for dinner at a nearby cafe. Long, golden beams of the setting sun dance through the cafe’s smoky interior, highlighting breads, cheeses, and wine bottles behind the only counter. You can order any food or drink you like— the café is small and the fare light but high quality, specializing in various Taldan breads, cheeses, fruits, wine, and charcuterie.
”So, tell me everything that’s happened since you arrived through the portal,” Rachel says, taking a sip from a steaming mug of spiced coffee.
Jed had been following along quietly, a strange take from him. But he did shoot his eyebrows down at one comment. "Did nobody notice she said they're bringin' people back from the dead just to play act?" But his question gets bowled over upon seeing the city. His head peels back, bobbing so far it looks dangerously close to harming his neck. "Hot damn...heard about these big cities but never seen one before."
Jed flashes his rogues grin to the onlookers, and at the cafe immediately sets out for getting drink. It has been too long, far too long. Now he just needed a deck of damn cards..."Oh y'know, all dropped together in the middle of nowhere, killed some strange beasties who thought we were food, got in service to that bastard of a dragon, swiftly left his ass behind, and found our way into this beautiful city with an even more beautiful guide."
Felitcia considered Rachel's family’s chances and said, "It depends on where they live and seemingly their politics. The stupid politicians’ politicizing the vaccine and protective measures have made it far worse than it could have been. It shut Hollywood down it got so bad last year!. I think the US lost close to eight hundred thousand people to it and the world over five million have died! In some ways I'm probably better off here than back there I guess." Felitcia sighed and walked through the door with everyone and into the shrine in Oppara.
When they exited the shrine Felitcia looked around herself in surprise. This was not what she expected given the kind of world she'd seen so far. It was almost...civilized! There were lots of people though and the self-control that she had worked on began to weaken and crumble with the sudden addition of so many people's thoughts. She did pick up something from Richard, some sadness about leaving the orcs maybe? She didn't know and couldn't think of it as the volume of noise in her head became overwhelming.
How she made it to the inn without collapsing was unclear but made it she did and Felitcia quickly retired to her room. She really wanted a good bath but right now she just needed the voices in her mind to shut up! She tried to use the meditation technique she'd been taught by their draconic host to calm her mind and it helped, some, but not enough to let her rest.
Felitcia had only just washed up when the new clothes were brought for her. She hesitated to get dressed and go out for food, she really didn't want to face the voices again, but she knew she needed to eat something. When they did leave the inn Felitcia was very pale as she fought against the multitude of voices around her but it wasn't as bad as it was before.
While she didn't recognize much on the menu Felitcia did find some things to eat, bread, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and some bacon. She built it into a BLT and found it was actually rather good and helped her focus on something other than the voices which helped silence them. Felitcia told her part of the story, leaving out Jed's freak out about the dragon and having his mind controlled as agreed upon and only half listened as the others spoke while she tried to slowly and cautiously sift through the thoughts around her.
Rachel clears her throat and glances down when Jed calls her "beautiful." It seems like all the flattery being heaped upon her is making her slightly uncomfortable.
She listens attentively as you detail your adventures so far. As she focuses, you notice that the crumbs on the table slowly begin to shift and move, forming faint, indecipherable writing. When Rachel notices this, she frowns briefly and wipes the crumbs away before looking back up to you.
"Well," Rachel says once you've finished your tale, "it sounds like your first few weeks here were pretty harrowing. I know you're better off out of that dragon's clutches, and Oppara's pretty far away from the Fangwood, so with luck, we won't have to worry about any immediate reprisals from him.
"So, here we are, then. Golarion can be a dangerous place, as you've already seen, so I'd recommend sticking together. I've got enough money saved up to pay for food and lodgings for all of us through the end of the week, but we'll probably want to look for a way to make money. There are plenty of jobs around the city to help us pay the bills, but with all of the abilities that ritual unlocked within you, the life of an adventuring party would be the most lucrative path. Fighting monsters and exploring dungeons for fun and profit! It's sort of a time-honored tradition around here.
"We'd start small, but as we grow in power and experience, we can start looking to make our mark on the world. We're basically free to do what we want here. There's a huge breadth of people and nations out there, probably even more so than on Earth. So long as we can work together to overcome the dangers, we can accomplish anything we can dream of."
Rachel smiles and puts her hand in the center of the table. "So, what do you say? Party members?"
Siobhan numbly follows the group, feeling more than a little out-of-place among the thronging crowds of Oppara. Felitcia's chattering about plagues and lying scumbag politicians (whatever those were) and vaccines (whatever THOSE were) weren't helping matters either.
Too much. It's too much. I need to sit down. Drown myself in drink. Anything to keep my mind off bloody everything.
The outfit Rachel picks out for Siobhan is at once quite plain and remarkably extravagant--the Gael is used to wearing clothes of roughspun cloth or furs, not silk. The white blouse and skirt cover up almost all of her elaborate woad tattoos along with her orcish fur bikini armour.
She says very little as the group dines in the café, preferring to stuff her face with bread and cheeses before washing them down with wine.
"...So, what do you say? Party members?"
Siobhan sighs and puts a hand on Rachel's. "Got nowhere else to go anyhow."
And nothing else to go back to, I wager.
Alice quietly asks Siobhan for assistance, such as cutting a bread roll in half so the Alice might enjoy a morsel from the inside. The crust is too hard for her. She finds berries most agreeable. A blueberry or two does the trick, or if she might enjoy a blackberry, she’ll eat the berries one by one—referring to its entirety as a ‘bunch.’ Other than thinly sliced ham, meats are frighteningly chewy.
As she explores what foods her tiny body can handle, Alice is quite silent. But she is listening, and when Rachel holds out her hand, Hotcha walks across the table and places her hand on the tip of Rachel’s pinky.
“I appreciate you taking us in, Rachel. Provided we use our martial and magical abilities to help those deserving, and take out nasty predators, you can count on me to hurl fire and heal.”
She needs the wand for that now, but soon Alice will cast this healing magic from her own hands, she believes.
Richard takes a seat in the largest chair he can find and yet it still manages to be uncomfortably small. He smiles slightly. Felt like he was back at his boy's parent-teacher meetings. Maybe he'd see them again. Maybe...
Melancholy washes over him and Felitcia describing the pandemic that had swept over America in her time does very little to help.
But Rachel's proposition helps some, "If I can use this new body and my new abilities to help people that need it, then count me in."
Siobhan assists the small Alice as best she can.
Assuming Felitica and Jed are similarly onboard, Rachel lifts her hand up from the stack in the center of the table. "Awesome! We'll have to come up with a cool name for our party, of course, but that can come later. Tonight, let's just have fun!"
She orders another bottle of wine for the table.
It took Felitcia a few moment to answer Rachel, she'd almost missed the question, but she figured it out from the context of what the others said. Her first reaction was to scoff and refuse. She was not an outdoors girl and she'd had more than her fill of such things since they had arrived in this world. She stopped herself though and thought it over. She really did have nothing to do and there was obviously a lack of modern amenities everywhere she looked. There were also too many people. Far, far too many people.
Felitcia decided quickly that getting away from so many people was far preferable than living in relative luxury. She was sure she could bag some nobleman with little to no effort and live the wealthy lifestyle but that would mean likely remaining in a city and that wasn't acceptable right now if her headache was any indication.. Besides, maybe their travels would help her find a way to get rid of the voices and that would be worth the hassle of "roughing it". After a few moments she finally replied, "Sure, maybe I'll find out how to make the voices shut up."
"I'll help in any way I can," Rachel says to Felitcia. "It sounds like you might be developing psychic abilities. Telepathy and mind reading, that kind of thing. There have been a few notable psychic heroes who have risen to prominence in recent years. Maybe we can try to find one who can help you get a handle on your powers."
Alice can’t help but notice that Rachel is quite helpful.
“Rachel… you seem like a religious woman. I want to know more about Shelyn.”
Rachel nods. "She's a popular goddess. The Eternal Rose, goddess of art, love and beauty. Pulchritudo in oculis aspicientis," she suddenly says in Latin, then switches back to Common as if nothing unusual had occurred. "I know the basic tenets of her faith, and there's large temple here in Oppara. I'm sure her clerics would be delighted to educate you further."
Alice is definitely interested. “I shall waste no time!”
She doesn’t think asking directions is a waste of time.