DM Brainiac's Seven Dooms for Sandpoint Table 1

Game Master Brainiac

Viviana winces as the Vyana's words hit her. She lets Vyana speak and vent. Because she’s not wrong to feel what she’s feeling.

Only once the anger starts to fade and Vyana turns away, does Viv take a slow step forward. She speaks softly, a thread of pain woven into her voice. "You’re right, Vy. I wasn’t paying attention to Scarnetti. I was paying attention to Arika. But not like that. Not the way you’re thinking."

Another step closer, cautious. She doesn’t sit yet.

"Arika's... broken. I saw it in her eyes. I recognized the shape of it because I know what it feels like. She needed some kind words and to know there is a shoulder to lean on if she needs to talk. That's all."

She finally lowers herself beside her, but leaves a careful distance between.

"And you’re wrong about one thing. I don’t want someone better than you. I want you. All of you. The parts that make garden benches from scraps... the parts that want to deck someone across a table... even the parts that sometimes doubt themselves."

She risks reaching out, fingertips brushing Vyana’s hair out of her eyes.

"I know I hurt you. I know I left. I hated myself for it. But I’m not here for Arika, or some pretty face, or because I want to be anywhere else. I’m here because I looked up and you weren’t beside me anymore."

She swallows a huge lump in throat. "And that felt wrong. Like I couldn’t breathe."

Viv’s voice drops to barely more than a whisper. "Please don’t push me away just because I showed someone kindness. I’m still trying to find my way back to you."

Vyana closes her eyes and sits silently attempting to puzzle through the morass of her emotions. After a moment she smiles.

"I remember when Mama asked me and you to make her this bench," she says, reliving the memory. "You were helping her clean up the mandevilla and I was gonna to head out with Von - I don't even remember what for. I was so annoyed because it was such a beautiful day and I was looking forward to getting out and doing something. But Mama said her garden needed a bench and you would help me."

She chuckles, the memory pushing away some of the more recent events.

"When we finished and you headed back home, I came inside and asked if she was happy now because she had a bench. She asked where you'd gone and I said that you'd gone back home. She just rolled her eyes and I think she even prayed a little in frustration."

Vyana's smile fades a little.

"I was so clueless. She tried so hard to open my eyes. I'm trying, Viv. I really am. But I don't know if I'll ever get past the idea of you literally leaving or figuratively by means of ... someone like Arika. I wouldn't be able to survive it a second time."

She takes a deep breath. Trying to bring some levity to the situation, she smirks.

"I guess that means that if you ever decide to have a snog session with her, you'd better do it somewhere I won't see or, by all that's holy, I will break that perfect nose of hers."

Viviana listens in silence, her eyes glancing down to the weathered bench beneath them as Vyana recounts the story. Her lips quirk at the part about the mandevilla (she remembers that day too). She’d pricked her finger trying to tie it up, and Vyana had laughed at her. Her mother had sighed in that way she did when she knew something her daughter didn’t yet.

"I was so clueless."

Viv smiles faintly and whispers, "Me too."

But it’s the next part,the real part,that makes her heart ache again. When Vyana speaks of not surviving a second time, Viviana doesn’t rush to respond. She lets the truth settle between them, warm and heavy. She turns her hand, offering her palm up between them, resting just close enough if Vyana wants to take it.

Then, the last comment catches her off guard.

Viv snorts loudly.

"Okay. Okay. First of all, if I was ever going to have a snog session with anyone else,which I’m [/i]not[/i], let’s be clear-" she gives Vyana a look, playful but firm, "it would not be with someone who looks like she borrowed her smile from a funeral and uses it to flirt."

She leans a little closer.

"Second, if anyone’s going to break a nose over me, I better get a flower after."

Viv pauses.

Then, softly and sincerely-"And third... I don’t want her, Vy. I want the girl who built a crooked garden bench with me, who thinks she can hide every emotion behind that smirk but doesn’t fool me even for a second. I want the girl who still let me into her garden after everything I did."

She bumps her shoulder gently into Vyana’s.

"You don’t have to rush. I’ll be right here. No matter how long it takes. I'm not going away again."

Vyana turns slightly and reaches up to the bushes behind her. Snapping a small section off of the bush behind them, she turns back and places it in Vivana's hand. She enfolds the hand in her own as the scent of night-blooming jasmine surrounds them.

"Here you go," she says with a soft smile. "Consider it a credit towards my nose-breaking account." She gives the hand a squeeze and rests it on her thigh. She shifts a little and leans her head against Viv's shoulder.

Viviana inhales the sweet scent of jasmine as she holds the sprig to her chest. She turns her head, resting her cheek gently against Vyana’s, and wraps her free arm around the half‑elf’s waist.

She glances down at their hands and says with a smile "Credit accepted, and well spent."

When you are ready, you return to the Pit and descend to the third level once more. You explore the remainder of the rooms that the dero occupied. Any others that might have lurked here have apparently moved on following the death of their leader. You find some Thassilonian books in a library related to necromancy magic, as well as several vats containing fleshwarped dero bodies that it seems like the dero were experimenting with.

A thorough search also uncovers a hidden room that appears to have gone untouched for some time. When you open the door, two candelabras in the room flare with flickering light.

The air in this octagonal chamber is stale and musty. A writing desk and a high-backed cushioned chair sit in the center of the room, while shelves to the north and south hold several books, a few skulls of strange creatures, and a few other objects. A canopied bed sits against the western wall, its deep purple sheets covered with a layer of dust.

The bed is magical. Spending 8 hours sleeping in the bed grants a character a +2 item bonus to all skill checks made to learn or cast rituals for the next 16 hours. In addition, if a character performs their daily preparations immediately after waking from 8 hours of sleep in this bed, they gain the ability to cast hypercognition once during the next 16 hours as an innate arcane spell. A character can gain these effects from the bed once per week.

Among the objects on the shelves are a few dozen books about divination magic and theory, as well as a codex of unimpeded sight. The skulls are painted with runes in Thassilonian meant to ensure that the souls that once were a part of these skulls would be judged harshly in the afterlife (fortunately for those who perished, these runes had no such actual power). One of the skulls has a removable top, and inside sits a choker of elocution that bears an eight-pointed star design. This choker grants the language of Necril. The shelves also display a silver flute (a lesser maestro’s instrument), a decanter of endless water carved to resemble a drunk marid riding a dolphin, a darkwood buckler adorned with the Shoanti word for greed, and a basilisk eye talisman inside of a bottle containing a dose of truth potion that must be smashed in order to get the talisman out. Finally, a bejeweled scroll tube worth 80 gp contains a scroll of banishment.

Additionally, extensive notes and glosses penned in Thassilonian can be used to research a mysterious woman who calls herself the Eighth Runelord, but the scattershot nature of the notes means that each Research check takes 4 hours of work.

Von considers almost everything they find to be somewhere between creepy and downright disgusting. She leaves Helmy (with his love of the macabre and mystical) to do the investigating and instead guards the secret door - which allows plenty of time for wallowing in her dark thoughts.

Ser Helmut grins.
Wees stays here fer Mees ta study's?

The Thaumaturge seems a bit excited.....

....while the goblin waits patiently for permission, he entertains himself by taking the Potion of Truth, drinking it and fishing the Talisman out of the vial....he seems proud of himself....

Viv is somewhat interested in the area, though the dusty, stale area causes her to keep sneezing loudly. She eventually needs to step out of the room.

She approaches playfully, lightly bumping her sister with her shoulder. "Copper for your thoughts?"