Name: Drip
Description: Drip has memories of being water. Surely that's not a thing, but he insists it is. Water.
Nature: Anagramist
Status: Adoorable
HP: 6
Inventory: Purple Eye Robe, White Eye Gloves, Needle Spear, Dangerous-looking Bone "Key"
Fate Points: 4
Drip is a door now!
Someone should go through!
Poke the dead mage guy to see how dead he is.
You walk over to the body and give it a poke on the back of the head. Cold. Yep, Dead.
“What happened here? Have you seen Alex? We were sent by the Magi to check up on him.”, The Speaker asks the corpse as he peers at it through the eye of his needle.
Name: The Speaker.
Description: a small man with black hair that is speckled with gray and a small gray goatee.
Nature: All-Tounge.
Status: Have you seen Alex, by any chance?
HP: 7
Inventory: A purple robe with a large red eye embroidered on the back, a pair of white gloves with a similar eye on the palm, and what appears to be a 4 foot long sewing needle made of black iron. The needle’s sides are blunt but its tip is deadly sharp, and the “eye” has knurling around it so that it can be used as a handle.
Fate Points: 7
I'm going to assume you mean to speak magically with it.
[1][+1 fate]
The corpse doesn't respond. But the silence is something beyond simply not talking. It is the sound of death itself. You stagger backwards and fall over, your body numb and the feeling that you're dead filling your mind. You know that you are alive, but you FEEL that you are dead. You struggle to move, but feel like you can't. You're dead after all.
(So that's what it means by elementals producing their own element. Seems fittingly morbid. On a similar note, how does the slow healing by exposure work for elementals? Does Bob just need to wear belts, or does he need to eat them? Or does he just absorb them into his body or something?)
"No pain, no gain." Bob says as he admires his new belt. He sets it over his shoulder as he goes to investigate the area near the wheel. Hand holds don't break off by themselves. Well, maybe they did. It was a Mage's tower.
Go investigate the area around the wheel for anything of interest by looking through the eye of the Needle. Bob hopes the missing hand hold is a clue and not just lodged in the chest of the body on the floor.
Name: Bob
Description: An average-sized human-looking male homunculus with a beard of belts.
Nature: Elemental (Belts)
Status: Bruised and sandy in uncomfortable places, but mostly ok
HP: 7
Inventory:
Robe
Gloves
Needle covered in wriggling belts
Wolf Titan belt
Adipose Belt (100% real Bob, made by Bob for Bob)
Fate Points: 4
[5]
(You'd need to have a lot of belts on or around. Anime protagonist level belts. Or a belt bath tub)
You go check on the wheel and the area around it. The first thing you notice is that both the wheel and the the ground around it are bloody. Not huge pools of blood or anything, but there's some spray on the wheel itself and droplets on the ground. The blood spray seems to be most clustered around the broken section of the wheel. The inner edges of the break aren't bloody though, indicating that the blood sprayed onto the wheel and THEN the piece was broken off. It looks like it was twisted off actually.
You check through the eye of the needle and find that the wheel is suffused with the same twisting root magic as all the animated objects around here.
((You probably shouldn't know about the tomb and that anyone is buried there. Only one of us has gone there and hasn't had a chance to report about it.))
Once the others have done their bit, if no concrete information is gotten about the cause of death, gently roll the corpse onto it's back and inspect for wounds and weapons.
Name: Genesis
Description: Classic 80s action hero looks, kinda quiet. think Kurt Russel from the movie Soldier (only probably less mute)
Nature: Pureblood
Status: Newly decanted
HP: 10
Inventory: Robe, gloves, walking needle (glowing oil-slick rainbow style with charged magical energy.
Fate Points: 4
You carefully roll the corpse onto its back. Elias was an old man, at least in his 70s, maybe older. Your first impression is that he's extraordinary bird-like: huge curving nose, gaunt face, half bald with long unruly black hair in the back, thin hands, long finger nails. He looks like a vulture or maybe an ibis in human form. His eyes, though cloudy, have an inhuman yellow-orange color to them. He looks...well...completely wrong for this place. He looks like an evil vizier or scheming villain, not the kind of man who would construct all this. Even his clothing, a sort of long robe of glimmering iridescent feathers, seems wrong. You don't know what you were expecting the master of this place to look like...but in your head he was much softer and kinder looking than this severe avian caricature.
You check him over but the cause of death is pretty obvious: there's a hole in his chest. The feather robe has been jammed straight into the hole by the force of whatever made it and blood has poured out and welled up into the feathers. Its not fresh, but still a bit damp. Fits with the timeline of having happened sometime in the last day or so. How large the hole is or what made it isn't clear, but it seems like whatever did it might still be in there: you can see a bit of something poking out.
"Hey Elizabeth come here and lets look at this stuff rather than what everyone else is."
Get Elizabeth to follow me over to the swords and axes, also grab the nicest looking sword take while I'm there.
Name: Debby
Description: Looks like a regular human woman but with the head of a deer.
Nature: All-Tounges
Status: No longer flopping around a freaking out.
HP: 9
Inventory:
purple robe
white gloves
big ass needle
Fate Points: 2
[4] Before Elizabeth can get a good look at what's happening you pick her up- she's only a foot tall or so- and carry her over to inspect the weapons. [3] There are a lot of weapons here and you honestly can't really tell them apart. They all look like...sharp metal things. You pick one at random and hold it out in front of you, swinging it a few times to test it. Its...a sword alright.
”Interesting bedroom.”
Grey goes through Elias’s desk and end table and grabs anything interesting.
He also Maintains an air of awareness to see if anything happens.
Name:Grey
Description: A hairless pink colored man with lacking facial features, little more than a pair of eyes, two holes for a nose, and a line for a mouth.
Nature: Verbomancer (Maintain)
Status: Looking for clues. And treasure.
HP: 10
Inventory: Purple robe, white gloves, giant needle, magic feather shaped saber
Fate Points: 1
An air of awareness would mean you appear to be aware. Perhaps simply maintain your awareness? Though...if that goes wrong you might just lose all awareness and go comatose. Sounds like a fun game.
[4]
You go to the little bedroom area and start rifling through the drawers and papers to see if anything interesting shows up. There's no nice diary filled with all his inner most thoughts, sadly. Most of the papers appear to be correspondences with various people. You read through a few. Village leader thanking him for helping dig a well...a request to help clear a road...request to book passage on the tower for traveling across the desert...thanks for work on the construction of a wall. They all seem to be requests for help or thanks for it. You don't recognize any names or any locations mentioned, but it seems he's been a lot of places and helped with a lot of things. Seems well liked by the locals.
Aside from that there are three other things of note. The first is an old pendant. Silver, though tarnished with age. It resembles a warhammer with a twisting design on its ends. The second is a letter in a language you don't understand. Its written on velum, with harsh, angular symbols. Third, is a cloth doll. Its visibly quite old and simple, but apparently well taken care of. It was in the drawer in the end table, all by itself. The patterns on its dress do not match the patterns on the hammer or the throne or indeed anything in this castle. They're more swirly.
after closing the door behind us, look at the body through the needle's eye, then at the weaponry to see if the wound matches any of them. Then look for a suicide note.
Name: Master of the Lambent Flame
Description: A messy-haired albino with a desert kepi as an extension of their lifeforce. Keeps an aloof expression when not having a delusional outburst.
Nature: Pureblood
Status: dispassionate
HP: 10
Inventory:
Purple Robe
White Gloves
Needle
Makeshift eyepatch
Pocket ash
Fate Points: 0
[5]
The wound is a puncture, but not by something sharp. The way the robe is bunched and pushed into the wound implies it wasn't pierced, it was dragged in when whatever bludgeoned its way into Elias's chest did so. Nothing on the shelves around here seems to fit that purpose. A quick check shows no suicide note. None near his body, none on the desk, bed or end table.
Youare offers the respect due to a being mourned by a mage, kneeling and placing his needle in front of him before bending forwards and pressing his forehead to the ground. He gets up, backs away, and speaks quietly to one of the candles:
"I'm a homunculus, here on covenant business. May I ask you a few questions?"
If the answer is positive, he enquires as to the last time Elias visited the tomb, and who is actually buried there.
Name: Youare A. Homunculus
Description: a wiry man, elderly but still trim and strong, long grey hair tied back in a ponytail.
Nature: Functionary
Status: robed, clean
HP: 7
Inventory: one robe enchanted to PROTECT ("like a big chainmail dress in terms of weight and flexibility: heavy and awkward but not impossible to move in"), one pair of gloves, and one big ass needle
Fate Points: 0
You offer your respects before turning to the mourners. You ask them your question but they don't appear to be able to speak. Their heads are just fire, after all. But one does point, slowly, towards the wall across from the tree. A portrait is hanging there. It's hanging on the wall holding the first elevator and was hidden behind the boughs of the tree from the other side; its only here that you finally see it. It is a large...actually huge if it can be so clearly seen from here, image of a man and a girl. The man is rather ugly and bird-like, in his 30s or maybe 40's, while the girl is probably around 10. Its not a sort of stuffy royal portrait, rather its of the two of them standing next to a tree in a field of flowers. The girl is closer, red brown hair flying as she runs through the flowers with the thoughtless happiness of a child. The man is further back, under the shade of the tree, quietly smiling. Despite first appearances, his smile is surprisingly warm and gentle. His affection and care can be felt even through a still image.
The brass toads, who had been slowly following along ever since the first level, finally hop over and reach Elias' body. They gather near it but don't move or interact with it in any way. They seem, to all the world, like normal toads. But as they sit and stare with amphibian aloofness a shudder runs through the entire tower. The tower, which until now had been slowly advancing across the sands, stops moving. A sound like a colossal bell rings out. It takes a moment to realize what it is: The giant toad is crying.
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Topic: Magnum Opus: Welcome Home. (Read 124168 times)