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Habiba slumps as her best...no, BETTER than her best magic meets the same fate as all lesser spells thrown at it. I don't know what to do against this creature. There has to be SOMETHING that can faze it. Right? She thinks for a moment. Well, there's no guarantee there's even anything to affect, but dragons casts spells, right? Maybe I can dispel one. She looks at Wormwood, and attempts to override any magics that might be on him.
And fails miserably, as before.
Habiba searches her mind, looking for something, anything that could hurt or hinder this beast.
Habiba flashes to a previous life...no. THIS life. Mere months ago. Some memories resurface, wandering in the desert, searching for...something. A long, finned creature erupts from the sand. She looks at it contemptuously and says... to the dragon. It feels a hold as Habiba tries to overpower its mind with her own.
Habiba stares at the creature and curses her inability to fly. She bides her time, climbing to the top of the tallest building she can find and waits for the beast to fly low enough to fling spells at.
"Thank you very much, Fox."
Habiba nods her head as her search of the immortal library is completed. "Where we go is dangerous; we'll need to stop in places where enormous, prehistoric beasts and magical beasts of every shape and size are common. The Christians may be happy to note that the Ethiopians share your religion, however. Apparently their royal house is descended from Solomon, so maybe they can help us."
Habiba is polite, but cool to the Cardinal. She remembers the arguments that were made against the Pyramid, and still rejects them; only an outside force acting on them had proved the use of the device a poor idea. The fact that so many accepted that he was completely right using only results-based hindsight nettled her. Still, they were all on the same side. They did not need to like each other to work together, but neither did they need to be hostile.
And is the real Ashikaga Yoshinori Shogun still alive somewhere!? Habiba comes close to offering her own services as a diviner, but shakes her head and thinks better of it. Not my problem, and the communion may be more helpful to us on our grander mission in any case.
"Well, I AM knotted up from all that time as a maid. If it's not too much trouble, I would love a massage as well, after I bathe."
Habiba does not partake of alcohol, or mind altering substances in general. She instead takes her satisfaction from a good meal, the company of people she has grown to like and respect, and the schadenfreude of watching those who do partake suffering upon the dawn's breaking. "People never do learn, do they? Your actions always have consequences." she says. Thoughts unbidden return to the recent memories she had as an Irish priest, and the fun she had drinking with certain companions, and feels a slight pang of hypocrisy. Well, they never need to know about that, do they?
Habiba looks at her ratty cloak, and then to the well made cloak draped upon the mannequin. Trying it on, she is pleased by its fit and flattering color. "Wonderful. I had not expected any real reward beyond saving our companion, but this cloak is simply beautiful."
"Rosa Luminass, lesser angel of death and you are?" "If what you say is true, it looks as though you were sent by Below." Habiba says, gesturing toward the literal Hellscape Rosa just came from. "Why would one of Satan's minions dare show her face to us?"
Habiba: Round 1 She casts See Invisibility on herself. Round 2: She feels as though she didn't get quite enough use out of her last casting of the spell, and begins summoning a rain of frogs again.
Habiba looks on in annoyance. Can this boy do anything without such theatrics? Subtlety is clearly not his forte. She nevertheless waits to see the effects, as she's in much the same boat as Lord Perpireen when it comes to facing Undead, unless she uses valuable and hard to replace Phrenic energy.
Habiba is sympathetic to the woman's plight, but not skilled in either medicine or showing empathy. She instead climbs the stairs to investigate the sounds from above.
Habiba tries to recall a spell to deal with multiple weak enemies; it seems they may have to fight many such battles today, and her skills are ill-suited to it.
The answer comes to her in a flash, back to a life as the spiritual leader of a small tribe in the deepest jungles of Africa; calling downa curse upon those who would harm her village, a rain of poisonous frogs descending from the heavens to slay the aggressors. An unnatural cloud begins forming over the ninja...
Habiba shakes her head. This boy is overly dramatic. She merely looks at the Ogre Mage, and his mind is overwhelmed with searing, sourceless agony.
Habiba screams as essential facets of her personality are dampened, but fights on! She too, wracks her brain...
Round 1:
Habiba, unafraid, waltzes around the battlefield and grants everyone protection from fire's sting!
Habiba is quiet most of the way, digesting the implications of their future-travel and the subsequent revelation of the widespread destruction of much of this country. "This may be more complicated than we expected. The guards are likely to be on extra guard after such devastation."
Habiba looks on in shock as Zagathoth is snuffed out, like a candle in the rain. She'd not known him long, and was not impressed by his behavior and lack of forward thinking, but she could not fault him for lack of courage, or loyalty to his friends. She takes a silent moment to set her feelings aside, then joins up with the rest of the group, listening more than speaking as they discuss what's to be done. One phrase in particular sticks out to her: Ihrin shakes her head but asks again.'Are we to bury him? Cremate Him? Do you know what he would have wanted" She thinks for a minute, long and hard before her suggestion. "I can...attempt," she says slowly "To search my past lives for a way to communicate with the dead. If it is important to you to know what he would wish. Communicating with the recent dead can be traumatic, however. I understand if you would not even wish it."
Habiba targets the undead creature's mind, wrenching her thought patterns to align with its unsettling intelligence for a brief moment as she unleashes the telepathic assault.
Habiba unleashes a cone of overwhelming sadness on her enemies!
Habiba invades the Asura's mind!
Habiba spends much of her time in the library, barely stopping to tend to biological needs like food and sleep. She learns all she can about this strange land they'll be spending the next few weeks and then branches out, searching for volumes on lost histories, like what exactly precipitated the Bronze Age Collapse.
"I am sorry to hear of your abandonment issues Johann, but i'm afraid i am not equipped to treat them." "Perhaps it is best if we focus on the task at hand? The Ogon Fox needs his friend to come to his aid, no?"
Habiba rouses, finishes dressing, and runs to the door as Johann's pronouncement begins. The Cardinal left? I knew we'd had disagreement, but I'd not thought he'd abandon his mission so easily. Though perhaps he has good reason, I should ask- she manages to think, before the next exclamation reaches her ears, door halfway through twisting the knob. At that, she releases the knob as though it burns, and moves back to her bed to sit. Whatever it is...for once believe I don't want to know.
Habiba snaps awake. I do not often have the dreams of a cycle's end. What would bring such a vision on now? she wonders to herself, shivering slightly at the memory of death slowly creeping over her. I find myself torn. The Mirror is such a powerful artifact, and sure to aid in our quest, but the thought of raiding a Pharaoh's grave goods sits ill with me. Perhaps I should research magics to directly commune with the soul of the dead, so as to ask permission?
Habiba's eyes snap open, pure white, with the pupils slowly fading in over the course of several minutes. "I have made contact with an entity that refers to himself as 'Baldur'. One of the Norse pantheon, I believe." "He has informed me that the Ogon Fox is in danger, but still alive, in a place called 'Edo'. We still have time to save him, and the Pyramid's powers CAN be used to return to a time not long after we've left, though he warns it is very dangerous." "When I asked what the Ogon Fox was in danger FROM, he merely replied 'Tyranny'. The king of 'Edo', or a local lord? I must admit I'm not familiar with the location." She hands the paper to anyone who wishes to see the conversation's transcript afterward.
4.) Is it possible to help or save him from this danger? 5.) Is it possible to use the power of the Pyramid's time travel to eliminate the time lost from going to Edo? 6.) How dangerous is the time traveling ability to use? 7.) Who or what is causing the danger to the Ogon Fox? Habiba hesitates for just a moment, but in the absence of any more pressing questions coming to mind, she decides to sate her own curiosity. 8.) Who are you?
Habiba opens her mouth to respond angrily to Mwikali and Johann, but is cut off by Johann's second pronouncement:
Her eyes widen slightly in horror and shame. "In all the excitement I'd...forgotten about him. Hold a moment, I'll see what I can do." Habiba roots through her pack for parchment, a quill, and paper. Seated on the floor, she sets quill to ink, then to paper, and sits quietly for a moment. Letting go of the quill, she stays seated and enters a meditative trance, as the quill begins to write of its own accord...
Questions: 1.) Where is the Ogon Fox? 2.) Is the Ogon Fox still alive?
3.) Is the Ogon Fox in immediate danger?
"'Young lady?'" Habiba says incredulously. "There lies the problem in its simplest form. You are all to eager to take your assumptions as facts and act on them, as are most people. The easy path is so tempting that all others appear inconceivable. 'Faith' is little more than the purest expression of that! You are willing to take a statement as fact and search no farther, and confronted with even the POSSIBILITY that you have assumed a lie as truth you hasten to destroy the object or person that may enlighten you. As your ever so 'kind' and 'righteous' compatriots are. Burn me as a witch? For speaking the truth? So be it; I'll not live a lie. Perhaps the world will have changed by the time the great wheel grants me new life again." "We know full well your Church is corrupt, to the absolute HIGHEST echelons of power, the Pope himself! And yet you do not stop to think, just for a moment, that this might mean you were misled, or otherwise mistaken about aspects of your faith? Even should your god prove real, and your blind faith is not generating its own power -a thing I've seen before, mind, conviction is its own source of divine energy in strong enough concentration- could not your teachings have been corrupted by a Pope who has fallen to evil, or the simple mistakes of man reading into a god's intention that which isn't there?" "You stand within something that could prove your Church's arrogant conviction that it is the 'one true faith of the one true God'...or disprove it. IS not that knowledge valuable of its own sake? And the same goes for anything learned by this travel. Whether people believe you or not is their choice, but why continue to let them believe a lie if there's even a chance you could prove otherwise? Are they children to be placated by false platitudes for the rest of their lives? If that is how you see the rest of the world, no wonder your Church is so easily cast into darkness, that they would WILLINGLY ELECT the unliving spawn of the creature that is the ultimate enemy of your religion!" "As for the fact that kings will covet the power of this device? Certainly. Gods and kings ever desire more power. Should we burn the whole world to deny them their desire? Cast down any scholar on the brink of a new discovery because their king might use that power for ill? Knowledge and the devices that provide it ever have the potential for evil to be done in their name. And that is why people like us stand against them." "I do not argue that the device must not be PROTECTED from the rapacious appetites of amoral or immoral people, but to destroy it simply to deny the CHANCE that some harm may come from it, ignoring the overwhelming good that may come instead, is shortsighted. Are you one of those who would champion the burning of a village's healer for a witch, ignoring that the village itself slowly falls sick and dies without her presence? Because it is a similar scenario. The things we could learn could change the world for the BETTER. Medicine of the future that can cure any ill! Magic primal from the deepest depths of the past which can perform miracles man can barely dream of today! And those are just barest dusting of sand atop the dune of the potential for good from this device." "And you wish to throw it all away, as I said, out of fear?" "If so, perhaps this is not the band of heroes I thought it was."
Habiba stares aghast at Lucius. "Destroy it? Out of sheer irrational fear? The lost opportunities, for all of humanity, the scholarship POTENTIAL, gone because you fear enlightenment? I can't even..." she trails off, unable to articulate the abject revulsion she has at the idea.
"As much as the opportunity to see Atlantis before its fall excites me, that should be saved until we are more prepared. The jealous gods have ever feared mortals who may learn their secrets and challenge their throne, none more so than the new Christian deity. We will need to be able to hide ourselves from their view before we begin using the Pyramid to its full potential. For now, somewhere on dry land is well enough." she says, and nods at Alexei.
Having gazes at the megalodons in faint fear, noting how easily they're tearing through her allies. She throws a more powerful version of the attack she, fittingly, used on the smaller sharks, assaulting one of the megalodon's mind and frying its brain.
Having awakened from her trance, Habiba excitedly relays what she was able to glean from the Akashic Record. "A solution presents itself, and endless opportunities! At the center of the city, in the palace's highest tower, a vessel of unmatched potential awaits! If we can but slay what guardians it has, the Pyramid of Kronos can not only free us from these watery depths, but convey us any place we wish...and more interestingly any TIME we could desire. The possibilities astound! With the combined powers of the Pyramid and the Mirror, we could see all there is to observe in the world, and uncover the greatest secrets of the past! Perhaps even the future!"
Habiba poses a question to her companions. "It is risky, but I could cats my consciousness into the repository of all knowledge and hopefully come up with answers to our predicament. The casting of this spell is lengthy, however: 10 minutes, with an additional time constraint on finding my information. Would this risk be acceptable?"
Habiba feels her companions have this well in hand, and isn't much use against crowds of weak undead (or enemies of any sort, really). She feels especially stymied by the underwater climate; if only she could find a dry pocket, and something to write with that isn't soaked to the core. She could perhaps find some answers that would make their current search faster.
"T'is not so strange. The legend is ten millennia old, and the Olympians clearly did not want mortals to know or find this after it was shattered by Zeus. That the fragment in Ireland was kept secret for so long is by design, not coincidence." Having stops, momentarily puzzled, and furrows her brow. "Apologies. Memories of my old lives come in fits and starts since my spirit was disrupted. This is new information to me, in a sense. Yes, Irish Monks should still have been keeping one of the other fragments safe all these years after my re-entering the Cycle. Though I know not how long ago that was."
Habiba's eyes widen, covetously. [b"]The Mirror of the Multiverse, a scrying artifact of the gods. I thought it was merely legend, but if we could but find the other 4 pieces..."[/b] she trails of, mind whirling at the implications. "We could assuredly learn almost ANYTHING, and travel anywhere we desire with but a whim. A great and terrible power indeed."
Habiba struggles to move with the others, but her mermaid spell was short lived indeed, and now she flounders in the water, unable to recall the magic that would let her swim again.
Habiba unleashes a cone of mental energy, inducing an extreme sense of the futile nature of this combat in their enemies!
Habiba aims to conserve her more powerful magic for the foes that require it (and is not much of a combatant in any case). She experimentally sends a weak mental probe at one of the Sahuagin to test their mental defenses.
Habiba shakes herself out of her reverie and notes her predicament. She's never been a strong swimmer (not in this life, anyway, to her admittedly spotty recollection having no need to have ever done so), and is at a loss for how to navigate. She searches her memories, hoping for some hint out of the infinite cycle of reincarnation that might get her out of this jam...
A flash of inspiration shoots through her mind, one of her past lives as an aquatic creature surfacing, fusing her legs together into an elegant cyan tail, and opening small gill slits on the side of her neck. She experimentally flicks the tail and shoots through the water with ease. Nodding her head in satisfaction, she turns to the others. "We should move, quickly. This magic will sadly only last a few minutes, and I would like to find somewhere a more permanent solution can be thought of so we can make the most of this glorious opportunity."
While Habiba gets her sea legs quickly (the quick flash of a past life as a merchant sailor helped ease her suffering), she is still somewhat uncomfortable aboard the vessel. This increases as the weather worsens. As the ship is eventually cast to the depths below, she can't help but wonder at fate. "I'm with this group less than a week, and already we shipwreck in parts unknown. Is this where my journey ends, already?" As they slam into the ocean floor, Habiba is thrown from her feet, though once recovered is quick to gaze about her in surprise and wonder. "This architecture is...fascinating." she breathes, mostly to herself, forgetting for amoment she is underwater. The presence of orichalcum alone is enough to set her mind spinning, as rare as the mineral is, but Greek architecture at the floor of the ocean, in an unmarked spot...that was more intriguing by far.
Habiba bides her time once the strangers arrive and slay the Emir. Habiba has been here for nearly a fortnight, having used her mental abilities to pawn herself off as a simple serving maid, and avoiding direct contact with the Emir at all costs. This was not the original plan: she had meant to infiltrate the Emir's estate and raid whatever stores of knowledge (magical and otherwise) he had amassed, in an effort to learn her true identity. A chance glimpse of the Emir's true form as a Rakshasa required a swift change of plans, and a longer game to play. The risks were higher, but the rewards also likely greater, with such a powerful magical being in charge of the estate... The arrival of the strangers was at first an annoyance; she had nearly finished mapping out the palace's every nook and cranny, and had subtly manipulated herself to be on duty in areas where secrets might be overheard and guards avoided much of the time. That the work was now potentially wasted (or at least set back) was discouraging. In the time since, however, the Emir's killers had proved to be an honorable bunch, and their talk of the dangers facing the world was intriguing. If nothing else, traveling in a group might afford better protection, and a greater chance at stumbling across the knowledge she needed. And so, she reveals herself. The next morning at breakfast, Habiba dons the clothes and gear she arrived in (carefully hidden somewhere they would not be found) and stands before the Desert Jackals in her normal form, without the appearance masking magic that made her seem as a normal human. Some may recognize her, if they'd bothered to pay attention to the servant slaves. "After taking some time to observe, I am finally assured you are no abusers, like the former Emir. I wish to introduce myself, I am Habiba Al-Sahim, a mentalist of some talent. I have been in disguise here for two weeks, in the hopes of cracking the Emir's vault of hidden knowledge and treasure." she says, and shakes her head ruefully. "Your arrival threw off my plans, to say the least. Nevertheless, you seem to have a nobler goal than i, as vanquishers of injustice. If you would forgive my deception, and allow me to join you in your adventures, I would be both honored and grateful. Otherwise, I shall move on my own."
I made one minor change; Hadid is now Habiba. There were no good blue male portraits, but a plethora of female ones. Should I dot into discussion and gameplay? |
