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Samen glares silently at Tallmind Theta. I don't have time for this.
Samen reorganizes his mind to make a wing of his mind palace that contains his childhood, the kindness of Krissa, the brutality of her family, the loss of his own one after the other, Abby wearing her skin, the exhilaration of learning and discovery, constant threat of imminent death, a changing and breaking world, and finally the passive aggressive judgmental ghost of a past long forgotten in front of him.
He quickly copies it. Folds it. Folds it again. Folds it again, until it is a dart shaped paper airplane. With more aggression than is strictly necessary, he flings this crystalized collection of his memory directly at Tallmind Theta's tall head.
Now stop asking questions.
Samen sees the tangled air currents and knows they follow an order of their own. Better to flow with its circuitous route than insist on a straight line being the shortest path. The trick is to know when to exit the current.
As for the creatures, Samen summons a tangled mass of his own that follow his rules to impede any interference.
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Gabe tests the emotional storm, getting a feel for how it pushes and pulls at his mind. Taking refuge in his discipline, he creates a wall around his own emotional triggers. Manifesting the mental wall into the physical, he crystalizes the protecting thoughts into a fortress to keep back the encroaching storm.
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***
Absolute vacuum. Every sylph has a nightmare of asphyxiation death at least once in their life. The greatest pain - cut off from the very core of your being. Superstitions still persist that one's soul is destroyed if they die in the old ways: dehydration for a sylph, hypothermia for an ifrit, and so forth.
After the carrion altars, there is a terrible space that somehow drains the ambient light of the surroundings. Samen's spell still holds, and you can see each other, but everything is dimmed, like a candle seen though a dirty window.
Tiny pinpricks of light, like distant fireflies, float in the ugly space like dead fish. There is no motion or life in them, and the impression of an ocean persists, invisible waves of nothing that you must swim through.
At the boundary to this dim, awful place, you sense the air is poisonous, and thin. To breathe such an atmosphere for even a minute or two would be certain death.
This was the ultimate test for Aisling. But he is prepared for poisonous air with his necklace. And he has a legacy item that he is reluctant to sacrifice because these are irreplaceable. But his hope is that once The Sky is restored, air crystals will be possible again. Thus, he heads straight for the polluted air taking his air crystals.
Plunging straight into it, he exhales each breath from the crystals as hard as he can, bringing clean air at least in his nearest space. In addition, he pulls out few reagents and creates a combination of purifying chemicals and his lightning bomb components.
The bomb components are here to ionize the air to create channels in the miasma and the cleansing...well, if given time he might clear it completely, but right now, the group only needs to pass through.
+ air crystals
Feeling like Aisling is struggling, Benedetto whispers a quiet prayer to Phoenix, trying to channel some holy power into his concoction to ward off the venomous airs.
Samen sees the tangled air currents and knows they follow an order of their own. Better to flow with its circuitous route than insist on a straight line being the shortest path. The trick is to know when to exit the current.
[dice=Know planes]1d20+24
[dice=Know planes]1d20+24As for the creatures, Samen summons a tangled mass of his own that follow his rules to impede any interference.
Like an old river rafter reading shallows and currents, Samen applies to his mind to the reading of living Air within this plane. He sees the patterns like a set of mathematical equations that balance in a pleasing way, and he shows his companions the solution. The tentacles keep the cloud-beasts at bay.
Gabe tests the emotional storm, getting a feel for how it pushes and pulls at his mind. Taking refuge in his discipline, he creates a wall around his own emotional triggers. Manifesting the mental wall into the physical, he crystalizes the protecting thoughts into a fortress to keep back the encroaching storm.
[dice=autohypnosis]1d20+15
Gabriel's mind expands to form not only a wall, but an entire stone cottage out of his mental resilience. After reviewing the structure, chinking a few holes, and reinforcing the roof, he invites his friends inside to shelter.
Though the wind howls its hate outside, it cannot find a way in to spread its insidious cold.
***
Absolute vacuum. Every sylph has a nightmare of asphyxiation death at least once in their life. The greatest pain - cut off from the very core of your being. Superstitions still persist that one's soul is destroyed if they die in the old ways: dehydration for a sylph, hypothermia for an ifrit, and so forth.
After the carrion altars, there is a terrible space that somehow drains the ambient light of the surroundings. Samen's spell still holds, and you can see each other, but everything is dimmed, like a candle seen though a dirty window.
Tiny pinpricks of light, like distant fireflies, float in the ugly space like dead fish. There is no motion or life in them, and the impression of an ocean persists, invisible waves of nothing that you must swim through.
At the boundary to this dim, awful place, you sense the air is poisonous, and thin. To breathe such an atmosphere for even a minute or two would be certain death.
This was the ultimate test for Aisling. But he is prepared for poisonous air with his necklace. And he has a legacy item that he is reluctant to sacrifice because these are irreplaceable. But his hope is that once The Sky is restored, air crystals will be possible again. Thus, he heads straight for the polluted air taking his air crystals.
Plunging straight into it, he exhales each breath from the crystals as hard as he can, bringing clean air at least in his nearest space. In addition, he pulls out few reagents and creates a combination of purifying chemicals and his lightning bomb components.
The bomb components are here to ionize the air to create channels in the miasma and the cleansing...well, if given time he might clear it completely, but right now, the group only needs to pass through.
[dice=Alchemy]1d20+20 + air crystals
Aisling's inventive idea is spoiled at the last moment by choking on one of his sharp exhalations --elens need to breathe, after all -- and halting the small ritual mid-spell.
Quick as a striking hawk, Benedetto slaps him on the back with a broad hand and a dose of healing magicks. With renewed energy, Aisling finishes purifying the atmosphere for the rets of the party.
The Tallmind endures Cleansed Samen's barb stoically, focusing only on the conveyed information, dwelling not on the manner of delivery nor the intentions behind it.
Suddenly-
Like an owl's sensitive, concave face, Tallmind Theta's scanning goes wide, in all directions. They are still. They listen.
An emotional storm is coming, unpleasant in the extreme. Damaging. We can save all, except-
Well, the lightning rod can fend for itself. Pragmatism is ever the virtue of the enlightened...
Just as a deep-buried cyst is protected by a shell of hard flesh, so this corruption is guarded by cloaked poisons and banshee-winds. The way is hard, but you peel back the layers of malicious resistance until nothing remains between you and...an unremarkable bed chamber. An inn? It almost feels like a distant memory to Aisling.
(but the bed is covered is shredded black dreams like veils of mourning, and a face Aisling cannot see, not allowed to see-)
You are temporarily driven mad. Roll 1d4 under an unmarked spoiler each 'round' (each minute or so).
1: Babble about 'her', and how you aren't sure who she is, but she could be a loe from another life, or a truth about to be revealed, or...
2: Grapple with your nearest ally, and insist they are baptized by lightning (drag them toward the nearest storm area)
3: Act normally, but you are in GREAT pain (headache, blurred vision) from whatever is in that bed chamber
4: Nothing. BUT If you roll this 3 or more times before someone cures you, you are convinced now is the time to call out the name of your patron!
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?
"No, you cannot be here!" Aisling suddenly shouts hiding his face
"I saw you dead!" he turns to the group, pointedly looking away from the Inn, but then sneaking a peek back
"She cannot...she isn't...impossible!
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Qizz (see) trouble. Qizz (give) potion.
Stupid priest. Getting too close to the gods' madness always drives elens crazy. It's not fun to become witness to what your god fears. Invisible, undetected, Abby smiles to herself.
Abbygailiwy, spirit of wind, hunger, plasma, and pain, springs into battle, sudden as a tigress' strike. Just before she appears, she throws her last reserves of Stof the dust demon directly at the elens. Stof's despair and hate is so sweet. I feel him disperse and die as he is useful to me one last time.
Enjoy your dust bath, stupid elens.
The bed chamber seems to gain detail as you linger: the bed grows drapes of purple velvet. obscuring the back and the sides; a dour portrait now adorns the stone wall; a vase of purple-blue forget-me-nots rests upon tall, wobbly wooden table.
does necklace of adaptation help against the dust of this kind?
Tilting their head and staring at the new figure in the air. The dust is pretty is a morbid way. Death might as well be a pretty and scary figure of dust.
"What is that?"[/b] Growling at the dust and moving to cover Qizz who is staring in open mouthed fascination.
Aisling's skin goes even paler than usual as he is overtaken by a voice that is not his own. It is a glib voice, one with a hint of laughter in it.
"The silent still have not spoken, do not say my name
But I can tell a little story for you, all the same
A maiden fair, black-raven hair,
A stupid dare, A headful 'f air,
A tragic story teller went and lost his dame,
Now get-this message if you please - do not say her name.
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Ah. Here, at last, is a target for a holy blade.
Silently calling on Pheonix, Benedetto lunges forward, his sword blazing with holy flames.
For once in her life, the impulsive Abbygailliwy shows restraint. Rather than trying to murder Samen straight away, she takes a deep breath, then blows out with a loud raspberry sound. As she continues to exhale, small copies of her spill from her mouth, six in all. The small Abbys take their own deep gulps of potent Air, growing to Abbygailiwy's size.
The six copies spread throughout the chamber, giggling all the while. Two end up on the ceiling, one in a far corner, one on top of the canopy of the bed, one sits vertically upon the portrait, and one hovers upside-down at the foot of the bed.
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Benedetto, before Abby completes her mirror images, you get one solid hit. You hear the furious clarion call of the Phoenix pierce the air as you score the twisted elemental's flesh.
Abbygailiwy screams, and throws hateful vengeance upon you. She's been eating up so much lightning since she got here...
She gapes as the paladin emerges unharmed, thanks to the mobula's protection from all things based upon thunder and lightning.
Using his superior speed, Gabe whirls around the elemental to appear opposite Benedetto. Aiming at what he hopes is a weak spot, he gathers his psyche to his fist and thrusts it forward.
As quickly as he appeared next to the demon, Gabe disappears from sight.
Using the momentary disappearance, he looks to the "bed" to try to see what's really going on there.
Samen coughs and gags as he tries to clear his adversary of old out of his lungs.
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Samen takes the full round to hack the last of the phlegmy dust from his lungs. Lacking the power for any fatal death throes, the malformed, malicious dust genie known as Stof...stops. It is gone.
Extinguished on its "home" plane-- an elemental environment as turbulent and unstable as the demon itself-- there is nowhere for its essence to escape. Quietly, the last traces of cohesive anger break apart and drift into the whistling winds.
Gabe, you connect with something that feels solid for just an instant, then poofs into nothingness. The Abbygailiwy next to you starts in surprise at seeing you so close to her, sticks out her tongue, then mixes into obscurity with the other copies.
**
Gabe peers at the distorted space that pretends to contain blankets and pillows, but can make nothing of the oddity.
Qizz finds it particularly easy to summon here, in this place where planes rip each other asunder. With a casual flip of their limbs, they summon a giant acid-beetle thing that charges at one,
and the beetle charges right through, almost losing its balance in surprise as its target vanishes. Hmm. lady is there but not-there.
**
Kallik grimaces and swings her axe. The damn things are too far apart for me to hit more than one at a time. I'll just have to enjoy each one separately, she thinks with sour anger.
-you hear Abby's laughter echo all around, intentionally obnoxious, as another image disappears.
Benedetto isn't the sort to banter or shout when faced with this kind of evil. He lets his blade do the speaking for him, rapidly stabbing at two of the shifting enemies.
Aislings mind clears after the message and he nods. Only glancing quickly into the room, he focuses shortly there.
But there is an enemy to defeat first and he quickly takes place Gabriel vacated and slashes quickly through ephemeral form.
to see what is really in that room
activate daredevil boots
+2 if she is still elemental, +2 if she can be flanked +2 if tumble succeeded
Benedetto connects with Abby's 'solid' body on the first attempt. She shrieks like wounded cat, and the remaining images fade as she loses her grip on the spell.
Abbygailiwy looks less a tempting, dangerous spirit now, and more a hungry hag. She hardly resembles anything elenoid, all sharp teeth and unhinged jaw. Going slightly transparent, she leaps into the sword-wielding ifrit,
and is summarily booted out by a burning presence within the paladin - the very essence of his belief. It burns the faithless creature, causing her to shriek in pain once again, high-pitched like a knife scratched across a plate. She falls to her knees, opaque once more.
With the demoness subdued for the moment, Benedetto does not hesitate- he lines up his blade and strikes true. Aisling follows up with his baneful dagger buried deep in the base of her spine. She is defeated, but not dead.
This one observes the thin shell of illusion and suggestion that makes this room a 'reality' to the others.
"Interesting," this one will broadcast to the others.
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Samen feels no joy in the death of Stof, but he does feel great relief in a breath of fresh air.
On her knees before them, Samen dares not feel pity for her once again. One of us was always going to be the end of the other.
While his temporary invisibility holds out, Gabe takes extra time to investigate the scene.
Samen feels no joy in the death of Stof, but he does feel great relief in a breath of fresh air.
On her knees before them, Samen dares not feel pity for her once again. One of us was always going to be the end of the other.
[dice=Mind Thrust]10d8
"Wait! I have-"
But the psychic barrage has no pity or hesitation, and the elemental known as Abbygailiwy falters, dims, and goes out. The room seems somehow lighter without her hunger invading every seam.
50% chance to get to DC 30 and this is third roll I think :D
After the weird voice change, Aisling relaxes a bit and seems more like himself. He looks at the room with some interest and returns his weapons to their respective sheaths.
Benedetto flinches slightly, surprised at the sudden execution, though after a moment he understands the need to keep the dangerous being from trying something again. Still, he wishes there'd been another way.
"Everyone all right?" he asks, looking specifically at Aisling.
The closer you look at this awful room, the more it appears to be pasted-on pieces of other rooms- the floors do not quite match, the bed is a few different shades of purple, and the walls are half stone and half wood, all mashed together like mismatched jigsaw pieces.
It hurts to see reality so misshapen. It gives you a slight headache. You push through, squinting against the pain, and finally you see her-
She has the look of a godly aspect; a silvery, graceful swan of a woman. You have a feeling this distorted space, and this trapped swan-girl are all at the heart of the storm surrounding you.
Samen the Clean One, where do you propose to go after this air-thing is settled? To the rock-thing? It is asked because this one could employ psychoportation to translate all minds to the destination directly, saving time and effort. Your thoughts?
Benedetto flinches slightly, surprised at the sudden execution, though after a moment he understands the need to keep the dangerous being from trying something again. Still, he wishes there'd been another way.
"Everyone all right?" he asks, looking specifically at Aisling.
Qizz (gives) many thumbs up. Weird, claustrophobic places that are half death and half dream (remind) them of home, so this weird place (is) no problem. They (cannot shift) this feeling, so (waves and eats) cookie instead. (Grinning) brown and blue.