The Voice From Beyond's page

Mako's claw locks down on to one of the crates with an unnatural whirr, his servos barely straining. Stone grabs another two, while Reggie's bobs along behind him.

Deymish offers a satisfied grunt. "Right then. Let's get these to the clave's tower shall we."

Redstone is surprisingly empty as far as you can tell. The few villagers you can see on the street either appear to be napping, or have the sunken, dark eyes of the sleepless. Your boots stir up a thick red dust as you make your way towards the tower.

Mako, you know this to be quite unusual. The markets and tavern should be bustling with post-lunch activity.

The clave's tower is surrounded by a solid, circular wall. The wall is 3 metres high, half a metre thick, and made of redstone. A locked gate of iron bars blocks the entrance. Beyond the gate you can make out a lush, well maintained garden and lawn.

Before the gate stands a tall woman with pale brown skin and short hair. She wears brigandine armor and a helmet, and carries a long spear (she has a small sword as well). The woman eyes you suspiciously.

"Hold! Can I help you, strangers?"

Iron gate (level 6)
Lock (level 3)
Wall (level 4)

It looks like at your current tier it only affects you, but sounds cool. ALLOWED!

You won't need to roll, you'll just need to spend a point of intellect to activate it, it'll last 10 minutes as well.

Deymish has been watching the exchange with bemusement. "Come now, leave... ah... it?... alone. I've never had any trouble on these trips with Stone around." Deymish gives Stone a friendly pat as he makes his way over to Mako.

"Come, Mako, I'll need your arm shortly, we're here."

Redstone has a population of about 300 people, most of whom work in the quarry. The aldeia is built into the side of the 50-foot (15 m) escarpment at the water's edge, so the whole village is a sort of ramp from riverbank to the level of the surrounding desert. Most of the buildings, not surprisingly, are made of bricks quarried from the area.

Generally speaking, the nicer, larger homes are near the top of the village, and the roughest, smallest are near the water. The tower of the Aeon Priest clave is at the very top, taller than any other building in the community. Beyond it, into the desert, lies the massive pit of the quarry.

Redstone is best known for the strange bricks quarried from the earth near the village. The stone is strong and resilient. Its real appeal is its appearance. Not only is it bright red, but the material has a lattice of thin black lines running through it. No matter how the stone is cut, these lines always run perfectly perpendicular or parallel to each other, and all angles are right angles.

The patterns are intricate and unnatural, but have no obvious meaning.

It's just after midday as the skiff pulls easily into the dock. There's very little activity, none in fact. Several humans are dozing in the shade of one of the nearby buildings.

"Right then. Time to earn your passage, everyone. We need to get these four crates of medicine up to the clave's tower."

Claves: Small cloistered groups of Aeon Priests in the Beyond around which many communities grow.

Links to maps have been added at the top of the thread.

Each of you has been hired on as a guard to watch over the river craft piloted by a man named Deymish, on his way to Redstone to deliver medicine. Deymish doesn't know any details about the illness there, just that he's to deliver his shipment to the clave there, and that it is extremely urgent.

You are to be paid 3 shins per day, but only once Deymish has been paid for the shipment.

Deymish is a broad-shouldered, bearded man, about 40 years of age. He has a broad nose and bright eyes. A good-natured fellow, he tells jokes and shares in any labor he asks of another. His boat is a 5.5m wooden trow with a synth sail that—even fully loaded—glides along a river seemingly effortlessly.

Seshar is well-known to Deymish, with its strange, winding waterways. He knows the risks, but makes his living on his boat anyway, frequently employing a few strong arms to help with would-be raiders as well as large cargoes—or in some cases both.

Feel free to introduce yourselves or engage in conversation as the river craft approaches Redstone. Some of you may already know each other.

The land of Seshar is a dry desert crisscrossed with artificial waterways created in days long past. The village of Redstone lies upon one of these waterways, flourishing due to its brisk trade in stone quarried nearby and its extremely capable clave of three Aeon Priests.

And then, one night, everything changed.

A young quarry worker awoke from a dream so horrifically disturbing that he could no longer sleep. He soon discovered that something similar had happened to his brother, and his mother. The next morning, he learned that everyone in Redstone had had a disturbing dream. Even stranger, it seemed that it had been the same dream. That night, the exhausted villagefolk settled in to catch up on their lost sleep, but found that it held only the same nightmarish visions as the previous night.

As days and nights passed, their fears were continually confirmed—whenever someone in Redstone tried to sleep, they experienced the same awful dream. The Aeon Priests worked to find a cure for what seemed to be some kind of mental disease, but found none.

They sent away to other towns and villages for aid. Weeks passed, and the sleep-deprived villagers began to lose the ability to function. Fatigue and depression set in. Some people fled Redstone for good. A few committed suicide.

Two days ago, the Aeon Priests thought that they had discovered a possible solution. Without telling anyone (so as to avoid a panic that they, too, were fleeing Redstone) they trekked off into the open desert, leaving behind their guard, Hataniah, to keep people out of the tower while they worked.

They have not returned.

Discussion is open!

Hello everyone, the gameplay thread is open for dotting!

There have been eight previous worlds. Each world stretched across vast millennia. Each saw civilizations flourish before dying, scattering, or transcending. Those that ruled these worlds spoke to the stars, reengineered their bodies, and mastered form and essence.

But now they are gone. The people of the new world—the Ninth World—live among the ruined majesty of an unimaginable past. Are you brave enough to seek adventure, fortune, and discovery in the remnants of the prior worlds? Treasures of unmatched wonder await—but in those ruins also sleep dangers and terrors of bygone eras.