Anthr4xus

Arriving at the Plaza del Torio, Ehnola was greeted at the door by the butler/manservant that had carried Marygay from her townhouse. He escorted her into a foyer where Grazia was waiting for her. The old woman's steely gaze bore into Ehnola's eyes for a long moment and she said, "We will speak in the morning. Your rash actions may have turned up something useful after all." Gaeloraxus only hissed suspiciously in her mind. The next morning was pleasant, waking up next to Marygay. They even had a few quiet moments to enjoy each other before a loud knock on the door broke the mood. The butler called through the door, "The mistress awaits you both at breakfast." Marygay's eyes went wide and she said, "We shouldn't keep her waiting."

The group begins to spread back out into the nearest buildings. Falken examines the ground of the courtyard and the exiting dirt lanes. There has been an unbelievable amount of traffic through here over time, but nothing in at least a couple of days. There were several mounted riders that came through here at least three days ago, based on how much the rain had worn them away. Falken could tell that there were at least four riders, maybe more, that had rode in and rode back out again. There have been more recent foot traffic, although not much. Karlov, Harin and Kain were able to determine that all of the nearest buildings had at one point been shops or merchant stalls, but they have been abandoned for weeks. Kain specifically finds some tell-tale marks of a combat only a couple of days ago in one shop, between what he would guess was one living combatant and a couple of zombies. There were some scraps of decayed flesh, but no significant signs of bodies or blood. That hints at a possible hopeful outcome of the fight for the living. As Kain emerges back into the courtyard with the rest, he can feel eyes watching the group from hiding, although the specific location of the watchers was not immediately evident. Really it was just a raising of the hair on the back of his neck that set his well trained instincts on edge. Haakon finishes his spell, although it reveals nothing of note in the immediate area.

Almost every DM I know has done that one an Investigation, Perception or Insight roll at least once :) I know of at least one campaign that derailed as the Bard that made the roll was able to convince the rest of the group that there was a shadowy giant cabal that was working against the group and suddenly became the new big bad.

Akkit nods along with Sophic's story, looking at the few pieces of scrap that the Jawa were able to extract from the hold. He agrees with Sophic's conclusion. Meager profit with no real risk was basically free money, and no amount of free money should be disregarded. The hold also played the important and unspoken need to prove the story that bought you access to the sandcrawler in the first place. With higher hopes Akkit direct the sandcrawler on to the canyon you all pointed out as the crash site of the rest of the ship. It will take a little more than a day for the sandcrawler to draw close enough to dispatch a team. The three of you and Heshiman grab some food and find spots to relax for a bit. Show this Not sure if there is anything you all want to do while you are in the crawler or not, so providing a window.

Oh yes. If a Talon or conscript or innocent is struck down, the honorable or respected funeral treatment is a pyre. If you are poor or a casualty of a large battle or something, it is commonly a mass pyre, but the rich or powerful will have individual services. The corpse-field around Lekar is only so big because staking is the only punishment for any crime, and it is a sad and desperate times, so small crimes are frequent even with that risk, especially in the cramped city that is the last bastion.

The spiked corpses are, as Falken mentioned, just like the corpse field around Lekar, only significantly smaller in scope. If a corpse is properly spiked the end of the spike is in the corpse's brain, which means that even if the mists reanimate it, it effectively gets killed again immediately. It is also a very effective terror tactic in keeping the peasantry in line.

Garrison nodded in agreement, "Yeah, I think that is the only motive we really have to look at. You were doing the sponsor calls for people that were at the event, did any of them jump out at you as odd?"

As the group gathers and catches up in the open courtyard, they keep eyes on the seemingly abandoned and partially boarded up buildings nearby. Nothing moves nearby and the only sound other than your conversation is the creak of the bodies on poles outside the wall and occasional shifting of poorly secured boards covering nearby windows. Kain slowly approaches the dog, holding out a bit of rations. Even though the dog is obviously bone thin, surprisingly it gave Kain a look and then walked away around the corner of a partially burned building, disappearing from sight.

The three women catch up with the trio of Jawas fairly easily, their longer legs easily eating up the sandy distance. Each of the Jawas had some electronic scrap they were carrying. All three of you could guess that there was certainly nothing left of value in the wreckage. One can only hope it is the last time they have to revisit their former prison. It only takes a few minutes of determined walking to get back to the sandcrawler. The massive machine had just started to clear the canyon entrance. The rear entrance opens up, welcoming the expedition back inside. Heshiman and Akkit are waiting for you along with half a dozen other Jawas. The disappointment in the obvious low quantity of the scarp is evident pretty much immediately. Everyone waits to hear your report, even your Jawa retinue seem to be waiting to hear one of the three of you tell the story.

"The very quote!" he said with a nod. Nepungan leaned forward slightly and said, "I'm sure you recall the pentacle that Alcide showed you back at the start of your apprenticeship?" She murmured something and spun up something very similar, although in shimmering blue light instead of gold. "The space between each of the Realms represents the Abyss. It is the darkness of void and entropic loss." Baba Qiyamət nodded in agreement. He said, "The Abyss stands as a lingering remembrance of the Celestial Ladder through which the Exarchs were able to ascend during the First Wizard’s War. When the Ivory Tower of Atlantis was sundered, something went horribly wrong. A tear in the Tapesty cut off the homeland of the Mages from the Realms Supernal, and the city of Atlantis disappeared. What replaced it was the Lie, which made all but a few oblivious to the truths of magic. The effect of this event is known as quiescence and is one of the main reasons Awakenings are so rare these days. It is, in effect, a multiverse utterly devoid of Supernal truth; in layman's terms, things that cannot, and should not, be." He continued, "The Abyss is incomprehensible for the mortal mind (logic, after all, is an element of Supernal truth) and the main enforcer of the Lie. Only the Watchtowers pierce through it and bring forth some of the lost knowledge of Atlantis. All other efforts to break through the Abyss have been proven futile. Every time a mage uses the forces from the Realms Supernal, his magic runs the risk of ushering a bit of the Abyss into the Fallen World, creating what mages call Paradox. Some scholars of the Guardians of the Veil have theorized that the Abyss grows whenever a mage unleashes Paradox. It should be noted that the Abyss does not cause Paradox, it is Paradox. There is even a rare, but tragic, disease brought on by contact with the Abyss that manifests as a growing intuitive knowledge of the Abyss pair with a loss of the ability to communicate. This are the kinds of risks that one runs when experimenting with these kind of forces."

The police showed up with better-than-average response time, but still well after Ehnola had finished taking pictures as requested by her insurance company. As she was surveying the damage, which was pretty extensive even before she broke all the windows. At Gaeloraxus' suggestion she swept the house with her Sight as well. Other than the patina of disrespect, anger and bitterness that was splattered like a layer of emotional graffiti over all the damage she couldn't see anything, but Gaeloraxus hmmed and hawed in her mind. Eventually she teased out that he thought he saw signs that someone had been using magic to scan her space, obviously looking for something. The police took their report and the insurance company said an adjuster would be out tomorrow afternoon for their version. During her call with Margay, she was invited to come spend the night at the Plaza. Marygay speculated that Rhodes, or his organization, could be looking for her as well. Both Gaeloraxus and Marygay oddly echoed each other in saying, "Maybe it's a good thing that you didn't keep the stone."

I'm fine with that

Lucas stood, his chair shooting out behind him, completely unnoticed. He heard Lisa, a freelance UI Designer that had been one of the first other renters of the shared space he had met, call out in alarm, but her words were lost by the sound of the storm that seemed to swirl and twist not only the air around him, but the very ground and walls themselves. His arm raised and his mind open, his surroundings seemed to wash away in the rush of the storm. A resonant chorus of divine power swelled behind the sound of endless rolling thunder and crackling lightning. Lucas did not feel the floor fall away with the rest, but suddenly he was alone, suspended in endless void. The storm was still there, but invisible. He could feel the crackle of power still swirling about him, but something in the void seemed to sap at it, pulling it further from him. While Lucas could see nothing in the void around him, he could feel things, terrible and unfathomable, moving there. Or was he moving and they were still? In the nothing he turned and twisted with each motion, and just as suddenly as he noticed that there was something else there in the void with him. And as soon as he realized that, it seemed to sunder the void and fill it with a cataclysm of elemental forces. The storm that drew him into whatever this is was nothing, nothing compared the power that surged around him. A grand fiery landscape expanded around him in all directions, rent with lightning and force and motion. Nothing was still. Everything was chaos. Power, raw and ethereal, yet somehow more real that anything he had ever experienced wove connections through the tumult. Strands of it shot around and through him as he continued to plunge on and on through incomprehensible forces. A voice that spoke not in words for his ears, but a thrumming surge of understanding deep within his soul. The very essence of the divine spoke to Lucas, taking on forms of his own religious and philosophical understanding. What he somehow knew was the very fundamental units of power fell like rain through the chaos around him and Lucas felt more alive and enervated than he ever, ever had. Suddenly there was something else of Substance here with him. A great tower, shining with a golden holy and divine radiance of it's own emerged from the fire and stir, its solid existence the most fundamentally Real thing he had ever seen. More real than New York, more real than his work, more real even than he himself perhaps. Lucas reached out and he could feel pure creative power and energy coalesce around his hands. Impossibly given the scale, yet evidently real, he saw a small keyhole in the grand edifice of the tower. It beckoned to Lucas and to the power that gathered around him, practically calling to be unlocked. Lucas knew with the same sure reality as the Watchtower itself that his name belonged within. OOC Sorry for the delay on this post. I got severely blocked on it and it took me a little bit to work around. Hope you like. You have approached the Watchtower, what do you do?

Okay. I've started a new thread for everyone getting to Silbervas. Everyone can go ahead and set their XP to 600 total and advance to level 2. The scene continues from there. Everyone can also consider having had a full long rest as well, so everyone is fully reset as far as spell slots and abilities go.

The road to Silbervas was long and difficult for both groups. By the time they spotted the shake shingle roofs of the town over the low wall, a sigh of relief escaped the lungs of all the travelers into the grey late morning light. The road here from awakening in mist-shrouded meadows had been hard and dangerous. Especially the last stretch approaching the small town. Every night was punctuated by periodic and seemingly random raids by packs of undead, and the day was tedious walking (and occasionally hiding from Talon patrols for the group coming from Lekar). But what weighed most heavily was that it seemed that the Mists were intent on leaving each group as tattered as the flesh of the undead monstrosities that stalked the surrounding wilderness. Ardir, Scarby, Rhortigern, Ilian, and Tysh had all been reclaimed by the Mists. At least that was the assumption that everyone had slowly settled on, as the thought that they may have simply run off on their own seemed like the very stuff of madness. Yet this was simply more bad news on the confusing and seemingly endless pile of bad news that had been their lives since the Wightwatcher had left them behind. The town itself was quiet in the grey light. Carrion birds and crows drifted overhead, ill omens taken wing. No one worked outside the walls, and like at Lekar, but far less gruesome, a narrow ring of spiked corpses form a terrible warning outside the twelve-foot-high stone wall around the town. The massive gates that once sealed the town wall were gone, remnants of their hinges and mechanisms still mounted to the walls. Smaller stone barricades and low wooden walls had been erected in the courtyard just beyond the open gateway, obviously configured to provide cover and shelter for defenders trying to guard the gateway. The streets of the town, visible from the courtyard were deserted other than a single bone-thin feral-seeming dog sniffing something pile of something at the far end of the street. The buildings were in various stages of collapse and decay. Several nearby lacked roofs, their stone walls blackened by some fire that appeared to have been left to burn itself out, judging from the lack of cleanup or repair efforts the ashen remains of the ruined contents of what were once apparent shoppes and storefronts. It is no small surprise that the first living persons each of the groups finds are familiar faces from only a few days prior. The travelers, however the worse for wear, immediately recognize each other as perhaps the Dark Powers of Ravenloft themselves seem to have conspired for both groups to arrive in the main entry courtyard of Silbervas within mere minutes of each other.