Awww, too bad. Hope things go better for you in the future Shadow!
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Silvertail, as usual, acts as if she's in charge and the others are just advising her. "Good thoughts, both of you. We'll definitely want to gather all we can that our late masters left behind and sift through them to see what we can learn. Anything that might hint at what they were doing and where they were when... everything happened will be useful... as will anything we can use ourselves. We don't know what we'll be getting ourselves into, after all."
"There's certainly not enough of me on here..."
"Further proof of the universe's conspiracy against me."
"Find some way to strike back," Silvertail responds instantly, her voice and gaze hard. She looks over at Zizi. "Perhaps... but given the level of magic involved, we might have been just as surprised as our masters. We just don't know enough about what attacked them, in spite of what we've been able to piece together."
"I doubt they thought or even cared about us," Silvertail interjects, waving her tails slightly. "From what we saw through our masters' eyes, they would have brushed us aside without even noticing we were there. It is good luck, not bad, that we were not there, that we might bring this message." She looks straight at Mordenkainen. "Our masters' last wish..." she begins, then suddenly finds she cannot continue. For a moment her facade of strength breaks, and hot tears form in her eyes. The thought of her master, slain so easily, and now she was left alone with no clue of whether or not she would even remain herself... The moment passes quickly. Angrily she blinks the tears away. "...Their final request was that we warn you, Mordenkainen. They did not know what they faced, but Bigby feared that their foe was something beyond mortal." She looks at Jalucian and the man who is apparently named Ravel. "I hope you understand why word of this cannot leave this room."
"It's clearly because these 'boards' are jealous of my beauty."
"What they all mean to say," Silvertail says, stepping forward and waving her four tails, "Is that we have a message from the Circle of Eight to Mordenkainen. It was entrusted to us to deliver to him alone, and we cannot disobey this command." Uncertain of the man's position, she leaves him to interpret that as he wishes. "But as Zizi said, the message we were given may well explain this issue you speak of... and warn of troubles yet to come."
Ah, you're *finally* going to get back to my exploits? I don't know why you bother with the rest of those... 'people', my story is clearly the most interesting one you're involved in.
I think I can manage, Silvertail mentally replied, with an audible sniff. Now, I think it would be good to establish a signal for the future that I want to talk without being overheard by those around us. If I lay my silver-tipped tail over top of my other three, like this, she demonstrated, I'd like to talk. But for now, let's just keep the connection open and be on our way. I think both of us are skilled enough at avoiding notice to just slip through the shadows on the way there. With that, she stands and starts walking towards the exit.
No idea if Anaxian heard Silvertail there.
Wait, Anaxian, are you still listening? Silvertail thinks back to the pseudodragon. We should arrange a signal of some sort--a sign that I want to talk to you silently that won't tip others off. We may need to talk without others knowing we're speaking in the future.
"We should do our best not to attract attention while we travel. Pairs will do," Silvertail agrees with Fidget. "Anaxian, given we're both rather obviously not normal, perhaps it's best if the two of us travel together and attempt to remain unseen."
In other news, I got a lovely little sketch of Silvertail. :)
Nah, though our reception is going to be RPG/board game-themed. With games to play at the tables instead of dancing (neither of us is big on dancing). :)
It will be in a few days. :)
I'm getting married this Friday, so it's quite possible I'll be somewhat... distracted for the next while. So if I disappear for a bit feel free to have my character do all of the smart things I haven't thought of.
"You're right, of course... nothing is proven yet," Silvertail murmurs back as she turns back towards the door.
Ah, neat! I like that answer. So even more uncertainty for Silvertail to deal with. :)
I'm not sure exactly how familiars "normally" work when their masters die. The way witches familiars' can still teach other familiars spells for 24 hours suggest that they retain their unusual characteristics for about a day, but I don't know if that applies to wizards' familiars. I've written Silvertail's thoughts assuming this is the case, however. Obviously we're *not* going to lose our unusual intelligence and so forth, but I don't think we would necessarily know that at this point.
Silvertail notes Jalucian's fixation on Jallarzi. She doesn't recall seeing any signs it was ever reciprocated... still, best not to let him know just what had happened to her, at least not yet. Besides, once this was all over, this information might be useful... if Silvertail could remember it. She pushed that secret fear aside. She and the others were different from normal familiars. They weren't going to lose everything that made them more than mere animals just because their masters were dead. She hoped. Again she pushed the thought aside. No use thinking about it, she just had to move forward. "Thank you, Jalucian," she says aloud, "I can assure you that we're as dedicated to resolving this situation as you are, if not more. And we will, of course, hold this information in strict confidence--as I"m sure you'll be careful with what we've told you." "Now, if we must wait, I think I'll roam the halls for a bit," she continues with a slight toss of her head. "After everything that's happened tonight I don't think I'll be able to sleep for a while."
Silvertail sighs. While she herself hadn't picked up on what was going on, it seemed like Fidget had, and the raccoon had a good instinct for such things. Still, she wished he'd been more circumspect about it--it was better to hide just how well you were reading someone than give it all away. She just hoped what he was hiding wasn't that he was an ally to whoever'd attacked their masters. "Jalucian, I don't think you quite understand the urgency of this matter. If you need to memorize a spell before you can contact Mordenkainen, just tell us, but this needs to be done as soon as possible, not after debating with the entire Guild. Lives are at stake here." She pauses a moment, then adds, "Possibly even our masters'. Bigby, at least, was that concerned."
So I've gathered. I hope so too! :D
Silvertail trots over to the door, glad that Jalucian is being somewhat reasonable about being woken up in the middle of the night. "I wish we knew where our masters were," she says as she enters the room. "Unfortunately, they've left us with a task without much direction on how to accomplish it, and even less information on where they are. I think you know them well enough to realize just how urgent of a matter that means this is." "It is, however, also a matter which should not be heard by prying ears..." She gives the still-open door a significant glance. After everyone is in the room and the door is closed: Once the door is shut, Silvertail looks up at Jalucian again.
"Our task is twofold. First, to warn you: Someone has attacked some of our masters, and they're still at large. Without knowing their goals, we must assume any associates of the Circle might now be targeted. Second: We must deliver a message to Mordenkainen. I don't know why it has to be us--I would guess because we're not watched like our masters are. Unfortunately they were in too much of a hurry to tell us how to contact him, which is the second reason we came to you. Of everyone here, you're the most likely to know how we can reach Mordenkainen. Can you help us?"
Silvertail sighs, then shouts over to Anaxian, "Just knock. Or make noise some other way, if you prefer. He's not going to be happy no matter how we wake him."
Silvertail gives Anaxian an inquiring look. "Very well," she says, getting just far enough away to be unaffected if the symbol went off.
Let me know if Silvertail's snark gets to be too mean. I can dial it back some.
Silvertail rolls her eyes. "A simple "no, I can't" would have sufficed, Trakas," she retorts, acid dripping from her tone. "As Eirish said, a symbol like this would knock out anyone within 60 feet, but what he didn't say is that it would put whoever was in that radius out for up to three hours--in which case we almost might as well wait until morning. Not to mention that the symbol itself would remain active for hours, putting anyone else to sleep who got close. If he's even bothered to put an alarm on it to know when it gets set off, he'd probably just open the door, see us asleep in front of it, and throw us in a cage until morning. We can't risk tripping the symbol." She looks over at Eirish. "Thank you for giving an actually useful suggestion, Eirish. You can command it from a distance, correct? If we can get far enough away--or just around a corner--you could have your construct knock on the door until it gets a response, then lead Jalucian over to me. Then hopefully I can impress upon him just how important this is, and if we're lucky he'll know where Mordenkainen is."
"Don't read the door unless you want to take a nap," Silvertail comments. "Now then, if one of you has the skill to get rid of that symbol we can see about waking Jalucian up."
Silvertail narrows her eyes just slightly as Whisper charges ahead, but says nothing, instead following a good distance behind as they head out and up.
"Hmmm, I suppose that's a good idea," Silvertail admits, with a slight wave of one of her tails. "Now let's move out. Anaxian, since you did such an excellent job of scouting before, would you go in front and be our forward scout to make certain we don't run into anyone who shouldn't be up at this hour?"
"What happens to us now depends on what we decide to do," Silvertail replies to Whisper. "Looking for Jalucian does sound like a logical step, but we'll have to be careful--we don't want word getting around about what happened, so we should do our best to play it off as not being a big deal--which is going to be hard, with it being the middle of the night." She thinks for a moment. "We should do our best not to be seen all in one big group. We'll need stealthy scouts in front to warn us if we're about to run into someone, and then one of us to do the talking while the rest of us stay out of sight. There shouldn't be anyone up at this hour of the night... but none of this should have happened, so we'd best be careful." "That said, I think we've already agreed on who our stealthiest scouts are, and I think we can agree that I should do the talking. Now, anything else before we move?" She looks over the assembled familiars.
Silvertail perks up as the scouts return. "Well? Any signs of trouble?" she asks, clearly tense.
Take care of yourself! I don't think we'd inform everyone that the whole circle is dead, but if one of us just said that our master was in trouble and we needed to find Mordenkainen, I think that would be safe enough. But only if there's someone one of us would trust enough. So that might be a better question--is there anyone here we know our masters trusted? (Of course, they might have been betrayed, so not even that might be good enough...) I'm asking because I really don't feel like we have a direction to go right now, and I'm trying to think of ways we could at least get a hint as to where to go to find Mordenkainen.
Silvertail's not cranky. She's above such petty things as getting cranky. I'm going to just wait at this point until the next GM post, as it feels like we've talked an awful lot while waiting for a brief bit of scouting to be done.
Unfortunately Silvertail is the sort of character who never admits she's wrong. XD
I get the impression Silvertail is not as clear about her intentions as she thinks she is.
Silvertail sighs. "Apparently I need to be very clear speaking with you. First, no, I am not planning on leaving this room until the others get back. In fact, I didn't send three of us away. I suggested that one of us go take a quick look, and even volunteered myself. Anaxian pointed out he'd be better at it, so he went instead... and then Whisper and Zizi decided they wanted to go, too. So yes, we're in agreement on waiting for them to get back, as you would have found if you'd just asked what I meant instead of jumping straight to the accusations." "Second, I do plan on warning Mordenkainen. What I am saying is that we need to report something more than 'our masters are dead and said to warn you'. Between the eight of us, we might be able to put together some idea of just what he needs to prepare himself to face, which will be a lot more help to him." "Which leads me to my third point--your point on waiting for the others before trying to put this picture together is good." She glances down the hallway, her annoyed expression falling to something that almost looked like honest sorrow mingled with frustration. "I just hate waiting and wanted to do something useful, but saying it all once is bad enough without having to repeat it a second time when they get back."
"As you say, we will need coin... which means it doesn't matter much which one of us is carrying it, which was my point," Silvertail replies, with a dismissive flick of her eponymous tail. "And while I, too, doubt that whatever killed the circle would come for us, that doesn't mean they don't have servants who've been assigned to keep an eye out for our late masters' servants. You don't become that kind of powerful without servants and allies, which means we have to move carefully... and a squirrel, or a racoon, or a four-tailed fox with coin is sure to get tongues flapping. There will come a time for coin, as you say, but for the most part we'll be better off avoiding people when we can." "We will be much better off getting information in the ways we always have." She gives the group a slight smile. "Being small, being unnoticed, listening and looking when others think there's no one around to watch them. Which is why three of us are sneaking out into the halls right now." She waves a couple of tails in the direction Anaxian and Whisper had gone. "But there is something useful we could discuss now. If we just warn Mordenkainen with 'Oh, no, something killed our masters!' it's not going to help him very much. We need to pool all the information we can about what killed them. From the glimpse I got from his mind before he died, dear Bigby caught that their killer was speaking in a language so ancient even he didn't know it. His Hands seemed to be working on whatever it was until Nystul blasted him, after which the killer slipped his grasp and snapped his neck." She shudders slightly in disgust. "From this, we can conclude that their killer cast an enchantment powerful enough to turn one of the Eight against the others... while being crushed by one of Bigby's Hands, which is worrisome enough. But it also had the strength to slip free of said Hand and then snap Bigby's neck, which suggests it wasn't anything humanoid." She looks at the others. "Did any of you get anything more than that from your masters?"
We haven't interacted much with the other guild members, but do we know any of them well enough to know who would care that our masters are dead? Perhaps some of the other wizards who were friends with our masters and would therefore recognize us as their familiars and possibly be inclined to help us?
"Yes, we have rather more important things to worry about just now," Silvertail interjects haughtily, trying not to draw attention to the fact that she never took her ante off and put it in the pot. "For example, if it turns out we need to leave in an unexpected direction, how many of us could get out the window?"
"Thank you, Anaxian... and Whisper, and Zizi," Silvertail says airly, giving them all a bright smile as they sneak off.
"If you're volunteering, Anaxian, it would be a pleasant surprise," Silvertail says sweetly.
"Besides, if I were to kill several powerful wizards, the first thing I'd do after grabbing anything they had on them would be to raid their quarters for anything they might have left there," Silvertail points out. "We'd be far too likely to run into whatever killed our masters. Speaking of which, did any of the rest of you get a clear look at it? Bigby never really saw what it was." "What we need now is more information. For all we know, there's some horrible wizard-eating monster prowling the halls right now. So the sneakiest one of us needs to go take a peek and make sure we're not about to run face-first into something that's out to kill us." She looks over the assembled group again and sighs. "That's me, isn't it?"
Silvertail is, too. After all, he's the only one she suspects of being a better plotter than she is. :D EDIT: Whereabouts in the building are we? A disused storage room? The mess hall?
Hmmm... have we seen Mordenkainen recently? Also: Lots of bad things Ah-ha! You reveal your true form! :D
To our knowledge, does he live here in the Guild?
Did we know anything about our masters' current activities? Or about Mordenkainen's current whereabouts?
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