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Hekla gets out her own silver handmirror and tries to shine light back at them.
times.
Hekla fails to help in any meaningful capacity. She drapes one of the guards' jackets over her shoulders like a cloak and then smears a little bit of mud on everyone's face. "We're all far too attractive to pass as these guards, this'll help"
Dot!
Hekla trudges over the snow up to the weasel, letting Dawrbrun's song drive her. How dangerous could an overgrown rat be? She would finish this quickly. Hefting her axe, she swings away!
Hekla throws her axe back over her shoulder and kneels down in front of Barnaby. "Little Kingfisher, do you have any dry clothing? You're like to freeze as bad as he did if you stay in those wet things."
Hekla moves into the space that Barnaby was dragged out of and brings her axe to bear!
Unfortunately, there are no bears nearby to accept it.
Hekla looks at the newcomer with a mix of awe and suspicion. "By the gods, what manner of beauty are you? Don't mind the gnome, a lot of noise comes out before he actually says anything." She shoots Barnaby a friendly grin.
Hekla introduces herself to the rest of the group before they head out. Over the course of their travel, she mostly jokes around.
Hekla surveys the scene with a very serious expression. "I have determined the problem. Their crops are frozen."
It's funny. The tall, striking, amiable girl who looks like she came from the far north shows up in the podunk southern town with a snow problem, and for some reason everyone seems to want to talk to her.
Dotting! I've got a basic concept put together and I'll work to flesh out the details. A character concept: briefly explain who they are and what they bring to the party. The character will a wide-eyed kid looking for adventure and discovery and maybe occasionally fighting those weird teenage urges like forming a coven or cooking and eating the rest of the party. She'll be a melee-focused Occultist, starting with a relatively small toolbox which grows significantly larger over time, which may eventually expand to bringing in expendable mooks and such. Backstory: A brief overview of your character's history, showing what motivates them. Hekla doesn't have much of a story so far. She grew up in a comfortable estate just outside of Oppara, daughter of one of Stavian's retired Ulfen Guard. What she doesn't know is that her father had originally retired back to the Land of the Linnorm Kings, where he barely survived an amorous encounter with what he found out soon afterward was a Winter Hag. When he heard that a child appeared 9 months later on a doorstep in a neighboring town in the middle of a blizzard, he claimed her and made his way back to Taldor to shield his daughter from her mother's influence. She has spent her years loved, going to good schools, studying history and magic, and generally being doted upon by her father. Why Heldren: Why is your character in the small town of Heldren in southern Taldor? Over the past few months she's been overcome by wanderlust. She has taken up her father's axe and struck out for adventure, seeking glory in Qadira. Heldren is a great stopover point as she continues her journey. A little crunch:
"It's mostly gonna be talking to my fellow Doomies and sneaking around where they probably don't want me. Those don't seem like your kind of thing, Nik."
Rinika accepts a few sprigs of the fescue and absentmindedly chews on it. As soon as her drinks arrive, she downs the whiskey in two gulps and then frowns quizzically at the cider before shrugging and taking an exploratory sip. She grimaces but continues to sip. "Ew, too sweet. Okay. So you wanna know about the Box. Well, I can't really tell you the why, or the how, but I can tell you the what." She takes a drink and sighs, but doesn't continue until she scans the bar for any Doomguard agents. Then she begins her story in a conspirationally low voice. "When I was still pretty small, I was abducted from the village I lived in. I barely remember it now. And when I woke up, I was in a box. It wasn't much bigger than a coffin. Pitch black inside. And every now and then, it was filled with..pain. Hurt. That same feeling that we all felt, or at least I felt, in that temple in the negative energy plane. It started slow, and short, but eventually it would last days, maybe weeks. It was really hard to tell. I had no way of keeping track of time, but I'm sure I was in there for years. Eventually I found that I was able to see in there, not that there was much to see. The weird negative field stopped hurting so much. And this," She motioned to her Spot, which she concentrated for a moment to keep on her cheek, "appeared after what must have been the longest, strongest exposure to the field yet. It started small, but it grew." "I didn't have any company while I was in there, but I could hear what was going on outside. Lots of magical research, most of it was far beyond my understanding but I started to pick things up. While there were a number of different voices over the years, one was almost omnipresent. The others referred to him as Schrodinger. I never did see him but I would recognize the voice anywhere." "I went through a lot in there. Fearing for my life, lamenting my old life, raging against the injustice of it all, accepting my fate. Eventually, after I found myself able to see, after everything that I'd learned about planar magic, negative energy, and the mystical bonds that linked them, I started to push the limits of the Box. After months of working, I managed to get a panel open. It didn't give me a way out, but it got me to some of the mechanisms that bombarded me. I started tinkering. I thought I'd figured out how they worked. Eventually I was able to supercharge one of the emitters, which I thought would..." She gulps down more cider and scowls. "Well, it surprised me. The next time the field fired up, something resonated and it tore open a gate. I popped out into Sigil, and had...a lot to learn. I met Jek not long after." She shoots Jek a tight smile, and looks around for any reactions or questions.
Rinika stares at the Migrus locker for a moment, and its not quite clear if she heard the conversation. A shiver cascades across her fur and she looks to between Nik and Baraxx. "Lets grab some food and find a place to sit and drink. Where all of us can sit and drink. And I'll...I'll tell you about the Box." She'll steer everyone to a place far, far outside of Doomer territory for this conversation.
Rinika is quite impressed watching the display of carnage, but she turns her nose up again at the mention of eating the results. "If you must have streetmeat, there's a decent stand about 3 blocks over. These are too...gooey." She walks over to Jek and holds his shield up to him as she continues to list other nearby streetmeat vendors along with speculation about what their meats might actually be. She absent-mindedly pokes Jek with the edge of the shield until he eventually gets better and takes it.
Rinika leans against a wall, idly picking at her teeth with a claw and trying not to brood over the possibilities of a mysterious box discarded in a Sigil trash heap. As one of Baraxx's tail-propelled pebbles whizzes by her, her own tail darts out and whacks it back in Baraxx's direction. The motion startles her, and she looks down to see that her spot has taken residence in the tail and returned the pebble on its own accord. She chuckles nervously, but curiosity gets the better of her and she lets the game continue, watching out of the corner of her eye as it goes on.
"Yeah, I have some errands to run and things to catch up on too. I think it's this way? And uh...Nik, can't you find something already dead for that?"
Rinika looks off wistfully. "Damn right he is."
Rinika looks on a bit bleakly as her eyes refocus on the present. "I think it's...it's done. Whatever it was, it was trying to get to us, like some enormous version of those undead that nearly took over Crux. But as soon as the relics were gone, it turned to stone and then just...dust." She looks around a bit then cracks a smile. "Which is just the way of things, I suppose."
Rinika eyes Baraxx, considers how much she trusts him with unimaginable power, and walks over to grab the staff herself, but she stops short. "Maybe let's check for traps first."
Rinika glares at the enemy caster with his chanting and his fruit tarts and tries to play a joke on him of her own design. As she raises her claws up with paws outspread, from the shadows on the floors and furniture between them arise strands of shadowstuff, loose at first but quickly growing taut between her claws and the limbs of the spellcaster. She whispers, "Dance" as the strands pull taut and she begins to waggle her fingers like she's controlling a marionette. After a short dance, she throws her arms to the left to pull him off balance, and it becomes clear that the strands are attached not to the man but to the spooky skeleton hiding inside of him. As Rinika gestures, the skeleton violently attempts to remove itself from his body.
Rinika shakes her head. "In these caverns, there's no way we'd find our way back to this circus, and this is our ticket to where we need to go." She turns to Antha. "I can get you to the Outlands. I might be able to get you close to Fortitude but I can't promise anything. Thanks for the chant. I'll send you as soon as you're ready." Rinika nudges Jek in the ribs and waggles her eyebrows at him as she nods toward the Bariaur.
Rinika brings up her shadow armor and wings, turns invisible, and floats off after Antha to make sure she gets an opportunity to slink off.
"I.." Rinika looks mildly annoyed at the interruption, but shrugs after scraping at the bottom of the popcorn barrel. "Yeah I can go ask around." She casts Enhance Diplomacy and starts asking around about how to get to other layers of pandemonium, or at least how to get to cjvilation, starting with the security.
Rinika takes advantage of the Escape Route to move away from the enormous doggie, then she attempts to strip the beast of its defensive spell...
...but again, she just ends up howling into the wind.
Suzuka whispers "Obscurity." She asks the two men, "How and why are you here? How did you learn all of this?"
When Kid Artemis starts moving out, Suzuka grabs the icy shield off of her back in one hand and draws the long 2-handed glass sword in her other hand to prepare for trouble. She holds the shield in a guard position and shouts (!) The shield glows briefly with a blue inner light and a cool mist wafts from its surface.
I may have to re-learn this character. I don’t even know how many arrows she can shoot. I'm in the same boat. Luckily mid-level Occultists are pretty simple to get the hang of, right?
Rinika pats herself down, which takes a minute or two of confirmation due to her coat of many pockets. Afterwards, she lets out a loud stream of colorful invectives that a person who has only been in impolite society for a year or two probably shouldn't be so familiar with. "...and then I'll twist it until it pops. Rotten...Let's go find this dead man walking."
Rinika watches Nik's minion crumble to dust and takes in the caster's far-from-confident demand, and she cries out in her best approximation of fear, "No, friends, they are too powerful!" Turning to the spellcaster, she calls out "You win, allow us to leave in peace!"
Rinika's ears and tail shoot straight out as she hears the ever-so familiar voice. Seeing an opportunity, she loudly addresses the antsy doomguard who have found themselves wrapped up in Xaositect shenanigans. "DOOMGUARD. Listen up meow. Let them do whatever they think they're going to do with their garlands and wreaths. It won't stand up to the razorvine. What good are flowers? Their job is to look beautiful for a fleeting moment, and then they decay. So too will this prank. And as these plants hang, dessicated and rotting, against the walls of this edifice, they will serve as an inescapable reminder to all, that all will turn to dust in the end."
Rinika will sidle up to a single or small group of guards. in Tir (githyanki): "How is it working for this household? Do they pay well? Any good bonuses? Must be good to bring all of you here."
Rinika gives Nik an incredulous and exasperated half-glare. "Maybe try being more careful with your wording next time, o-great-smart-one?" Her glare turns into a Cheshire cat grin as she turns to skellington. "Skellington, smack Nik upside his dumb head, lightly, once please."
Rinika watches the gnome try to heal her dead friend and something clicks. She rummaged around and pulls out his scroll of Restoration, and she'll cast it on him. "Um, all better?"
Perhaps next time, we don't all start yelling at them in a dozen different incomprehensible languages.
why is it Nik suddenly starts knowing things when we're in hell/Lolth-world? XD
Rinika looks at the big spider fortress, looks to Nik and mimics a chicken walking with her paws, and then strokes her chin thoughtfully, ambitiously setting goals for later.
Rinika watches the exchange with interest, she casts Enhanced Diplomacy and eventually clears her throat. "Sirs, Boss, this is a fine arrangement and I commend your negotiation of it. Might I remind you though, Boss, that this is the first of several trips and we will still have a ways to go after departing the Abyss. Any loss of guards here is going to mean significantly increased risk of loss later. I'm sure Lolth would not be pleased at those who might bear responsibility for such a loss, and no one here wants to be in that boat. However, that is not to say that we aren't sympathetic to your cause, Sirs. In addition to traveling together, and instead of offering the almost worthless lives of such sniveling and lowly grunts as ourselves, who might otherwise guard this caravan, we instead offer a valuable gift: an investment in the future, a finely crafted set of armor suitable for your favorite lieutenant. Acid resistant armor that will withstand being worn by even a babau!"
Rinika stretches awake and takes in the scene. She looks up at the massive beastie, blinking lazily at him. "Good morning Sirs. What brings you to our little Caravan?"
At some point, the tail almost seems to reach over and cradle her face, then pat her shoulder. Rinika's eyes widen in surprise and quickly shift to supreme annoyance. She bats the tail away and then grabs it firmly in a paw. In a low growl rattling with fury, she addresses her own tail. "No. You don't get to do that. Whoever the $*&% you are. I didn't ask you to jump into my spot. That's on you. And I'm damn sure that this is better living for you than that soup. Well, no more free ride. We're laying down some ground rules. You have been an awful annoyance. Getting even with Shadowknave...none of that from now on. And what happened with..." Her eyes well up a bit and she blushes furiously through her fur. "What happened with Conor is NEVER going to happen again, you hear me? You RUINED what should have been something special. You embarrassed me. And now I'm never going to get that back. So listen up. Until I can get rid of you, there's going to be no more of that. You can help me, or you can stay out of the way. Because I can control where you go, and I will make your existence incredibly unpleasant if you don't shape up. She glares intensely at the spot in her tail for a few long moments. "Do I make myself clear?" The tail, for its part, doesn't seem to react. Eventually she drifts off into an angry and frustrated sleep as the dead spot resumes its roaming.
Rinika is sitting with her knees to her chest on the back of the carriage, moping. She spends most of her time glaring forlornly at the dead spot at the end of her tail. She glances up briefly at the newcomer and mumbles, "Hi Borax. 'm Rin'ka." Then she goes back to glaring at her tail.
When Rinika looks back up, she looks a little different. Where her dead spot had previously been about the size of her hand, it now stretches across her whole face. The spot flits off to go do what it does. She nods at Nik, still scowling. She picks over the body briefly for anything of value, then heads over to where Conor fell. She kneels down next to his body. "You...you s..you sa...you didn't have to do that. And now you've gone and got yourself killed. Idiot. You...." Laying her arms and head down over Conor's armored chest, she sobs quietly for a while.
Rinika floats down from her vantage and walks up to Lunk looming over Green Marvent. She reaches out and pats Lunk on the shoulder, and when he meets her eyes he finds that they're ice cold. Wet streaks of tears mat the fur on her cheeks, but there aren't any tears coming out right now. The streaks disappear as she strains with effort to move the dead spot to cover her eyes,, hiding that there were ever any tears to begin with. She firmly and insistently pushes Lunk back a few steps with the hand on his shoulder. Reaching behind her, she pulls the Vampire's combat umbrella from one of the sheaths on her back. Very methodically, she places the tip under the unconscious wizard's ribcage, pointing up towards his vitals. With some effort, she pushes. She pushes until she thinks her dirty work is done. Then, with a scowl, she pops open the umbrella.
Rinika looks down at where she swore the lightning just killed her and pats her chest. The lightning draws her gaze to Conor, and her eyes meet his as the light fades from them. She screams. Unexpected tears well up in her eyes as they turn back to the smoking tavern, searching for whoever is responsible...
Rinika tries some more acrobatics to fly out without provoking and ending her movement 10 ft in the air, and once she gets out, she tries to dispel the tentacles.
Rinika gives the man who swung at her an evil grin, holding up her paw with sharp, gleaming claws. The claws seem to sharpen even further as the flesh on the paw begins to dissicate, rot, and split, and her grin grows wider as her eye glints with inner fire. Her head turns to look at the Shadowknave bound at her feet, the man who started her adventuring career by knocking out her party and shoving them unceremoniously into the plane of fire. With great gusto, she brings her claws down at his throat-and she yelps in surprise as they gouge furrows in the floor next to the man's head, narrowly missing his soft jugular. She stares for a moment at her dead hand, and her brows furrow in fury as one finger waggles at her as if to say "no." She screams out a loud and backs up toward Conor, leaving the Shadowknave safe with his companions.
Rinika floats over Lunk and plops down next to SK, who she proceeds to wrap up with her reinforced scarf. "Mr. Knave, it brings me great pleasure to accept your surrender."
Rinika chose the FTFY
Rinika gives up her searching for the moment and floats out into the hallway. Seeing the Shadowknave surrounded by her new friends, she grins a predatory grin. She casts a spell, causing two things to appear in midair: herself, no longer invisible, and a ghostly umbrella, which proceeds to poke violently at Rinika's ancient foe.
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