Open the grate then. Other people here may prove essential for the task, so using them as a tool may not be too conservative.
You notice a handy little pile of inscribed bricks set up next to you, and stand atop it to get some good reach. You still need to rise on the tips of your toes to get a good handle on the grate, but you just about manage it.
You pull, but the grate refuses to budge. So you push - the grate rises a bit, but only a slight amount, then moves no more. You pull it back, then push it up, but neither configuration appears to provide you with a handily escapable opening. Quite the dilemma, you find. A true test of your might and intellect.
As you think, however, Mr. Codeburn comes along and lifts you up to a slightly better position, then rotates you around roughly two and a half times, at which point the ceiling grate comes loose. Mr. Codeburn then puts you down next to the pile of bricks and proceeds to effortlessly climb up the chain, his gold-laden, sack-covered form disappearing from sight within moments, leaving you standing there with ceiling grate in hand.
Stick weird water brick in sack. Leave, damnit.
You grab the inscribed brick and place it in your sack tunic, then turn your gaze upon the shenanigans in the center of the room, where Mr. Erikson is trying and failing to open the ceiling grate. From the thoughtful look in his eye you quickly decipher that if you leave the matter to him, you can expect to leave this room next week at the earliest. So you step over and place your arms around his hips, producing a light squelch as the skirt conforms to his body. You then lift him off the pile of bricks as he hangs on to the grate and start to ponderously step around him in a circle.
The grate, currently pushed upward, twists readily along with the rotation of Mr. Erikson, and comes free after two and a half full revolutions. At this point you put down Mr. Erikson and give him an unimpressed look before standing up on the pile of bricks yourself and jumping to grab the chain, ascending through the power of your hands alone as the rest of the room looks on in confusion.The climb concludes uneventfully as you reach the surface, where you see that the chain seems to have been tied around a stone pillar. This being established, you take in the rest of the surroundings.
You now appear to be standing in a dusty courtyard, not a blade of grass to be seen in the thoroughly stomped dirt all about. There is a lot of clearance between you and the unmarked wooden buildings hugging the tall, forbidding stone walls as well as the large, intimidating stone structure at one end of the yard you would presume to be the keep. Quite a few people are walking about, and in their faces you can see many different shades of utmost displeasure. Well, except the ones that glance in your direction - those simply look a bit confused at who this man wearing a sack might possibly be.
"And just who the hell are you supposed to be?" a small man mostly hidden from examination by an unfavorable combination of sandy-colored hat, unkempt black beard and at least two different, mismatched cloaks asks from behind you. "You're not one of the minders," he adds, but more in a tone of idle curiosity than outright suspicion.
Find an empty sack, put a few handfuls of gold in it, then tie off the end. It should look like a crude flail now, with the gold retained in the end of it.
You search among the sacks of gold, but find none that are empty - the improbability of such a thing strikes you as overwhelming. How are there no empty sacks here?
Clearly they must be somewhere nearby, you reason soundly as you root through the webbed-up pots lining the walls. Surely they could not have left no sacks empty at all. Perhaps among the drapes, you start to intellectually reach as your hands go through the moth-eaten fabrics piled up in another corner. You regard the inscribed door, but figure that sacks are of insufficient importance to bother telling anyone to be staying in away of them.
In the end you stand there completely mystified. There is something you are missing here. Of this you are absolutely certain.
Get up and try again to fasion some sort of garment out of a sack. Stay as far away from the big violent shouty guy as possible.
Now that you have taken a breather, you let the big violent shouty man have his field day with the ceiling grate and try once more to build yourself a sack garment, keeping in mind the lessons you learned in observing Mr. Codeburn. You sit down next to the other sack he had and begin to nibble on its rough burlap, producing a small tear within a minute or so. You carefully insert your hands into it, then begin to rip open a hole... has to be large enough to fit you. You carefully rip, then tear for a bit longer, then for just a little bit more... and then a little more, then you let the ends meet, just like your mother taught you, and voila! You now have two more useless halves of a burlap sack!
Hmm... it's like sugar? I take a bite of the broken stick.
You wouldn't go so far as to say it's
like sugar. There are similarities, of course, like the way it seems to be some form of crystalline substance forced into a familiar geometric shape by unknown sorcery, and the way aggregates of both tend to crumble if subject to minute amounts of physical stress. Flavor-wise, though, this stick tastes like spreading numbness in your mouth combined with possibly temporary loss of the ability to taste. Combination with saliva appears to produce considerable thickening. Complete loss of any sensation in mouth shortly follows, leaving a completely dark spot in your overall perception.
With all this in mind, you thoughtfully elect not to swallow.
((Also are our rolls hidden or are we just taking actions that don't warrant a roll?))
They are hidden. I could show the physical rolls of each character if the players want me to. I mostly exclude them for aesthetic reasons. Perception and knowledge rolls would remain hidden, however, as would background rolls.
Eric Codeburn, COMPUTISTICS SPECIALIST
- Wounds: 1
- 6514 gp (non-sequential)
- Gold-Backed Burlap Torso Garment
- Inscribed Brick
Benny Calverly, Barber
- Naked
- Burlap Potato Sack, the Original Diptych
- Burlap Potato Sack, a Tragedy in Two Parts
Leif Erikson, Miner
- Traces of Gore: Bits On One's Bits
- Reappropriated Skirt
- 1 gp
Robert Johnson, MLG
- Naked
- A Word: WATER
- Traces of Mischief: Blackened Fingers
- Traces of Mischief: A Choking Odor
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- Naked
- Sticks: 0.95 (total)
- Rat Pantheon: Disliked
- Traces of Mischief: Mouthful of Blackness
Author
Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 244119 times)