You bite your lip, appraising the garment--blood is soaked deep into the silk of this sash, but of all the clothing that's come in all season it's the most valuable if it could only be salvaged. You start thinking of ways to cut free the irreparably tainted and tattered elements, turning it into a short scarf or bandanna. It's no use, however; you push your hands down into the soapy bucket again and again, but this blood is more persistent than usual.
Sighing, your gaze turns up from where you sit at the wash basket to the loot room at large. There were no more corpses left, they'd all been taken to the reagent room. Now it was just you and the possessions of these unlucky travelers. The clinking of heavy feet alert you, and you pretend to be busy as a a skeleton pushes open a heavy oaken door and walks into the stony, ill-lit room.
Its sockets meet your eyes, and with a gesticulation is summons you forth. She must have some other chore to occupy your time with the common undead proved too inept to handle. As he steps out of the room, you give a a final fleeting glance at the personal effects of the newly dead. What if you nicked something on your way out. It'll all be moved by the time you're back here most like...
Three things catch your eye.
>a small purple gemstone set in a copper necklace
>Blade snapped nearly to the hilt, the iron pommel of a sword with an intricate cross-guard
>some musty tome your instructor didn't feel worth filching herself; its bound sturdily in brown leather, nothing written on the outside.
You've only got time to snag one and keep moving. You've learned not to keep your instructor waiting--failed apprentices wind up reagents.
>>44287957
>>some musty tome your instructor didn't feel worth filching herself; its bound sturdily in brown leather, nothing written on the outside.
>>44287957
>>some musty tome your instructor didn't feel worth filching herself; its bound sturdily in brown leather, nothing written on the outside.
>The Blade
>>44287957
>a small purple gemstone set in a copper necklace
This your first quest OP?
>>44287957
>some musty tome your instructor didn't feel worth filching herself; its bound sturdily in brown leather, nothing written on the outside.
>>44288051
No friend, I'm just a failure of a QM. Sorry, here's the twitter: https://twitter.com/PharzuphT
>>44288006
>>44288008
>>44288228
>tome selected, writing
You heft the tome, getting a feel for its weight--not so heavy as the spellbooks, but not so light as a common journal either--and slide it into your satchel along with a handful of other possessions. Herbs and reagents you may be called upon to fetch at a moment's notice, mostly--you're allowed any of the take there's no evident use for.
The skeleton is at the door to the loot room. He closes it behind you, and bids you on your way as he attends to some other housekeeping in the opposite direction, clinking and clattering down the cobbled floor.
Thick slabs of stone line the hallway, damp stillness reminding you how far beneath the hilltop you are. Scurrying under cobwebs and avoiding the less hospitable moss growing up between the heavy old pavers, you make for the central staircase.
Familiar stone spirals await you, going up and up, huffing a bit as your knees grow weaker. You've never had the luxury of enough food to get fat, but after so many times up and down this slog it's never less tiring when you need to hoof it.
You pass three stories before reaching the zenith of the tower. Here you find the woman you are apprenticed to, Nanak the Necromancer. She's dressed in her customary webbed black robes with a newly acquired dress underneath.
Nanak tends a frothing cauldron and, bidding you stay put at the edge of the staircase a moment longer, teases a fresh femur into the mixture before dropping it with a splash and a cackle as a large plume of green smoke surges upwards with a ghastly smell.
Windows all around remind you this is the top level of the tower. Mountains behind you and forest splayed out behind your instructor create a strange vista as you nervously watch the green smoke edge ever downward.
"Come, come childe, so much to do, so little time!" You obey, as always, and approach the cauldron. Something swirls into view, and noticing you peeking, she smiles and bids you turn your eyes to the vision appearing below.
(Con't'd)
(Con't) >>44288492
It's a view from not quite a man's eyes. Everything is inflected with red and rimmed in the liquid's green, but you get the sense you're seeing from the eyes of some animal in a village. It swings its head and trots to a trough to take a drink and in a blink you realize it's the towne of Bradenberry, a village on the far edge of the forest. Out of the corner of the animal's eye a brown hair'd girl ties flowers into her hair as she sits along the pen's fence, green eyes shimmering in the sunlight. The animal laps up the liquid happily, wriggles its nose--and keels over.
You fall to the ground, so taken in by the experience you mimic the motion of its body.
"Jumping into what you don't understand," your instructor chided. It was another 'lesson' of hers. They usually end poorly. For you. "Never stare to closely into the eyes of the dead, boy--some experiences are too vivid to know fully without becoming part of the play yourself."
"Now then," Nanak chucks a wooden walking stick at you as you attempt to stand, and you catch it by the haft. Sitting up, stick in hand, you are left looking at her, bewildered.
"You're going with Skeevy and some skeletons to that village. I want you to bring someone back for me. A girl, named Yehva. Long brown hair, from the memory?" She taps the rim of the cauldron as a reminder.
"Now then, shoo!"
>W-what about her family? Won't they miss her?
>Yes m'am
>Leave silently
>>>Other
>>44288651
>May I ask what you need her for?
Tentatively opining that our master doesn't seem too bad.
>>44288651
>Yes m'am
>>44288651
>>W-what about her family? Won't they miss her?
>>44288710
Seconding
>>44288710
Assuming no unexpected upsets going to occur since there's max 5 people seeing this'n voting.
>writing
"Ah, silly childe; for you, of course!" She laughs. "I can't expect you to spend the entire time I'm gone on errands alone with the skeletons and ratlings. Skeevy can be dreadful company, as I'm sure you've come to know."
"She's a vital part of your education, to be sure, but for now, just think of her as a friend--someone else, here and alive because I want her to be. Savvy?" Nanak gave her trademark wink that was short for 'say yes and get the fuck out,' so you give a sharp nod and proceed back down the staircase. Your heart is pounding as you descend the stairs, and not just because
Bradenberry was a reminder of your old life, before you were given over to Nanak for apprenticeship. You'd ridden by it once on a cart on the way to market, and remembered well the red tile roofed three-story-inn that was the center and hallmark of the town. What would going there be like? It'd been a year since you'd seen anyone who wasn't a dead body or Nanak.
Lost in thought you trot down the stairs, around the corner, and straight into Skeevy. His snout presses into your belly and you give a little start and jump back.
"Going to towne, going to towne," she wheezed and chattered. Skeevy was the foremost of Nanak's ratlings, and the one she trusted most--in large part due to his simplicity. A crude falchion you'd seen acquit himself brutally with before hung at the side of his little brown friar's cloak. "Ready to walk, ready to walk? Skee, skee." He was ansting to leave, clearly, and with a sigh you make for the hidden exit in the hill's base.
Other raltings slide away the grass-covered wooden lattice and you make for a nearby stream. You follow an animal path to the main road, where three skeletons stand. One has a mace and shield, the other two crude flails.
"We're going on a trip. Follow us." The skeletons look at chatter at you. It just looks like smashing teeth to you, but you've come to recognize it as a cackle. Hmph. No respect.
(con't)
"Nanak says, Nanak says," Skeevy chatters with a little foot-to-foot scuffle he does, jumping a bit on one side and then the other. The ratling stands at half your height, stooped as he is, but thrice again your width snout to back, a long and deceptively powerful tail wrapped near his feet.
"Going to towne, going to towne."
The skeletons look at each other, shrug, and step into line expectantly. Sadly it's facing the wrong way so after opening and closing your mouth awkwardly you nudge around the road behind them and start walking the right way. All three heel turn and start marching after you a moment later.
It's strange, at first, but you get used to it--and as they keep a constant pace it keeps you working your feet. It's a quarter day's walk, you wager, to town. The sun has just risen a few hours ago. Skeevy scuttles just off the road between some brush, never far out of sight and letting you see him every now and again, looking you in the eye for some reason.
How will you spend the walk?
>Try to read-walk, flipping through the booke
>Attempt a chat with Skeevy
>Wrack your memory for details about Bradenberry
>>44289172
>>Try to read-walk, flipping through the booke
>>44289172
>Wrack your memory for details about Bradenberry
>>44289172
>Try to read-walk, flipping through the book
Might be an interesting book to pass the time with, and Skeevy doesn't seem like an enticing conversation partner.
>>44289172
>Try to read-walk, flipping through the booke
>"The Hedarcht River and its Tributaries"
The book is a self-proclaimed "Naturist" Danielairy Thourne's travelogue of going up and down the Hedarcht river, which you always knew as "Big River." It snakes through the forest and most of the rivers nearby feed into it.
You've only seen it once personally, but huge boats with many men pushing them on with oars floated across them like houses on water, or giant carts.
The memory is bittersweet. You were being taken to apprentice with a wizard in the city, but he wouldn't have you.
The book deals meanderingly with the women of the towns and the dicing partners he had on the larger boats. You don't know much about nature, but this guy strikes you as a quack. He does notice, in a written-to-titilate segment, that the 'queer folk of the region' practice a system of wife lending he proceeds to misrepresent.
You know what he's talking about. Women are sent between villages as hostages, and they have to be married to be eligible, but what he goes on to insinuate would repulse anyone from the town you grew up in.
You close the book and look up to see Bradenberry bridge ahead of you, a small affair only fifteen yards across at most. After seeing the city it seems that way, rather--there was a time the structure would've been huge to you.
You look behind you, and the skeletons seem nowhere in sight. Skeevy waves to you from behind a bush with a wink, and you get the sense he'll be watching things.
You turn back to face the bridge. There's Yehva! She's leaning on that pen fence from earlier, head down, looking at something in her hands. A half dozen other people mill about, and some heads turn at the sight of a stranger.
A fat man with a heavy pouch tied to the end of a stick struts up to the far side of the bridge and holds out a hand.
"Halt, strangah," he says. "Whott's your business in Bradenberry?"
>give Skeevy the nod
>"Just passing through sir."
>"Why, the inn, of course." Gesticulate.
>>44289667
>"Why, the inn, of course." Gesticulate.
>>44289667
>"Why, the inn, of course." Gesticulate.
>>44289667
>"Just passing through sir."
I think unloading our fake life story on people will tend to make them suspicious.
>>44289693
>>44289707
>>Writing
The man's face turns more favourable, and he nods.
"Aaah of course, f'give em traveler--the way is clear to you." Satisfied the portly man wheels about and returns to his porch, where he produces and stuffs a pipe.
Making your way through the simple dirt street lined with largely thatched, one roof housing you glance towards Yehva. She's holding something in her hands--a frog, you notice--which she looks down at forlornly.
You don't see it as you're already past and hoping not to break your story, but you hear her sigh and kneel to put down the animal. Then, footsteps in the dirt behind you as you pull open the door to the inn and look behind you.
Yehva meekly smiles, nods, and enters the door. It's a simple affair with a common room and stage where no-one is putting on a show. An old man looks up from his cups and empty plate, but otherwise it's barren save the girl and a bartender. You take a seat, and begin to bullshit about your journey when he interrupts you.
"Not from round here, are you stranger?" he asks. You shake your head, no, you're from a ways down river.
"Ah, good then," he says, flicking his eyes to Yehva and then back to you. "Haven't been in these parts long?"
"Well, no," you try, hoping this probe isn't about what it clearly is. They're touchy about Yehva. Why?
"There's customs here what tend to put off outsiders. S'fice to say, less reputable folks than yourself are," he lowers his voice but maintains an obvious line of sight. Yehva, looking out the window, probably gets the gist of what's going on, "try'na nag the girl. Her husband went back on a deal and she's been left here as assurances he'd do his part.
"Sometimes when things go like this thugs get hired to drag a dame out of a place. Folks get strange round travelers at such time." He polishes the table awhile. "Anyway, what can I get you 'fore you're back on ya way?"
You order some bread and mead, and satisfied the bartend makes for the kitchen.
(Con't)
"Who paid you, stranger." You turn around. It's Yehva, her voice graceful in accusation. You look round and see the old man is passed out face-first on the table. The barman's in the kitchen and you hear him pouring your mead into the jug. He'll be back out in a minute, and you tell Yehva...
>I'm a Necromancer, I've come to claim you for my master!
>Your husband hired me to get you out of here.
>Nobody, I've come of my own accord
>>Other
>>44292205
>Other
You have been claimed and I am their messenger.
>>44292205
You have been claimed and I am their messenger
>>44292257
>>44292352
>>writing
"You have been claimed and I am their messenger." Her eyes pop wide open.
"You're d-definitely not someone my husband would hire. So..." she looks around, lowering her voice, "when do we leave?" The sound of the barkeep tripping and the splash of mead in the back room punctuated with swear words answered the question.
You slide out the door and break for the bridge. It's not exactly discrete, but you have what you came for. The portly man from before stands as if to shout, but his face goes a pale white as his eyes come upon a mace-wielding skeleton who strategically shows himself right as you cross the bridge.
Then, a moment later, a blood curdling screech.
You grip Yehva's hand and sprint down the forest path for a few dozen yards before you're path huffing and puffing in the forest. Leaning against a tree, her chest heaves with laboured breathing and she wipes sweat from her brow.
"Really, now," she asks, "who are? Why did you come for me?"
"Nanak said, Nanak said!" Skeevy helpfully interjects, hopping out of the brush from behind her. Her eyes went wide and you try to calm her, afraid she's going to shriek, but she just shakes her head and rubs her eyes.
"It's that--you're the thing from my dreams." She turns to look at you. "And you, I remember you. Last night. I felt so deathly ill, and there was all that screaming..." her eyes shine as a beam of sun cuts the forest canopy above, and birds chirp crisply in the silence.
"What was that dream? Who are you? If you're the messenger, what's the sodding message?"
"No questions, no questions, no time to explain!" Skeevy wrinkles his nostrils at her and gestures down the road. "Come to tower, come to tower." That phrase opens her eyes.
"Gods no, not th--the Necromancer's..." she turns and looks at you. "What are you going to do to me?" As if on queue, the skeletons all march out of the underbrush, weapons at their sides, eye-holes straight ahead. Two of them flank you on either side,
and the third side on the far end of Yehva from Skeevy.
>Reply comfortingly, "..."
>Reply coldly, "..."
>Reply honestly, "..."
>Say, continue on. Gesticulate.
>>44293153
>Reply comfortingly. Apparently my boss want's you to be my companion.
>>44293153
>Reply comfortingly. Apparently my boss want's you to be my companion.
>Reply honestly, "I don't know what's in store for you ultimately, but you'd best comply for your own sake."
>>44293257
>>44293264
>>44293369
Honesty, like always, does not win the day.
>>Writing
>>44293778
How far along in learning how to do necromancy are we?
>>44293901
You understand some related alchemy but you haven't been permitted to reanimate any dead or observe Nanak during the process yet.
>"Apparently my boss want's you to be my companion."
"Doesn't everyone?" Yehva shudders with a little laugh, hugs her arms, and darts her gaze across the skeletons and Skeevy, then back to you. "Well, then, I-I guess we shouldn't keep your boss waiting any longer than should I?"
It doesn't seem like the right time for small talk, but things are a might too tense to flip through the book either. You return to the hillside and Skeevy stomps on the grass, being hefted along with the wooden lattice under it as his fellow ratlings shifted open the entrance.
Yehva let out a little gasp in spite of herself. The skeletons all turn back, but you, her, and Skeevy enter the musty tunnels.
"Nanak gone? Nanak gone?" Skeevy asks in disbelief. His fellow ratlings click and natter with him a bit. After conferring with them for a moment, he turns to you.
"Nanak taken trip to city, Nanak said to make girl at home in closed room. Skeevy show way."
You look at Yehva, who by now is less phased by the ratlings but stares nonetheless at their rotting cloth and matted fur, and she slowly looks back to you. She gives you a curt smile. Together you follow Skeevy down the hallway.
"Here is, here is!" Skeevy says, knocking on a stone door you'd taken for an indent in the wall. He presses a diamond shaped rock pressed into an otherwise smooth wall and a rumbling sends dust shooting across the room.
Behind it, there is a stone slab with some grass hastily thrown across it in the shape of a bed. It is worse than your own accommodations, but just barely. That is expected.
What is less expected is that after ushering you and Yehva into the room, Skeevy presses another rock into the wall--and the door snaps upwards, shutting immediately.
There are small holes near the top, so you don't think you'll suffocate. Or at least, you hope.
"Skeevy! What's the meaning of this!" You pound the stone ineffectually. It is utterly smooth on this side.
"Get trapped by your own pet rat did you?" Yehva chuckles, and walks around the room, taking in the cobbled walls and dank moss. There's not much other than the slab, formerly a tomb's top, the related opened tomb, and the aforementioned grass.
"So who are you really? That rat thing is running the show, just like in my dream. What are we doing here? Who's this necromancer? What is she--" Yehva leans back against a protruding stone and suddenly a click is heard. The opened tomb retracts, and a rich orange glow of light pours into the room.
"What's down there?" Yehva asks you. You don't know, but from the acidic smells wafting up, you can make an educated gasp.
Nanak's Animatory. Where she carries out everything you're not allowed to see.
If Nanak's gone to the city in truth, it'll take at least a week. You look at Yehva and she looks at you, expectantly.
>Tell her to stay here, descend
>Take her with you, descend
>Search room for other exit(s)
>Sit tight.
>>44294191
>Take her with you, descend
>>44294191
>Tell her to stay here, descend
>>44294191
>>Take her with you, descend
Like hell our master didn't put it here on purpose.
>>44294191
>Tell her to stay here, descend
>>44294218
>>44294310
>>44294511
>>44294515
Dat 50/50 split yo.
>>44294532
>>44294532
flip a coin maybe?
I'll change my vote to take her with if it'll get things moving
>>44294191
>>Tell her to stay here, descend
>Skeevy
>Initially read it a Sheev
Why did Palp's name have to be so memey, why?
>>44294570
I probably would've flipped a coin after a wait.
Regardless, now
>>writing
>>44294588
"Wait here," you tell Yehva, and apprehensively she does so. You slowly descend hand raised, guarding against the bright orange glow as you make your way down etched, narrow steps...
You arrive in the Animatory to find things both amazing and horrid. A gigantic outcropping of orange gemstones radiates the light that fills the room. The walls of a natural cavern have been carved into rows of shelves and set with rolling ladders to allow for maximum storage. Jars full of organs and bones line the wall in various viscious liquids.
Musk fills the room, your nostrils overpowered by it save for the acidic smell of two open cauldrons. Neither is boiling, but both are filled with liquid--one green, the other a murky brown. A skull floats in the latter.
Arrestingly, a deer has been pierced down every bone with thin rods and hung from the ceiling, but its hooves, ears, and eyes still twitch as an odd blue light crackles across the rods.
You find books open and spread across broad slabs obviously meant for operating, and a huge purple diamond attached to a long metal rod hovering over one of the tables. Only one of the books makes any sense to you.
The book seems to be a treatise on a single subject: segmental essence transmutation. When performed correctly, it indicates, any element of one person may be freely moved to the next.
>Call down Yehva
>Study the book
>Both
>Further explore the cavern
>>44294780
>Study the book
>>44294780
>Further explore the cavern
>>44294868
>>44294883
Not seeing any reason this can't be combined.
Any other takers?
>>44294914
Sounds like a plan to me
>Study the book while exploring the cavern
>>44294868
>>44294883
>>44294991
>>writing
You flip through the pages, entranced. You recognize the reagents and how to mix them properly, including what incantations aught to be made. What is outlined in the book is a very precise methodology with a glossary and tables for any particular bit of someone that was meant to be swapped--colouration of eye or hair or skin, pigment behind nails, or in more extreme circumstance limbs. These procedures change "essences" rather than physical bodies, so no cutting or other surgery is required--although if done incorrectly the results could be irreparably grotesque.
After familiarizing yourself with the general forms, though you'd still need the book to perform any given essence transmutation.
The cavern itself gives way to smaller tunnels. You stop yourself just short of exploring when you see skeletons on guard, dutifully looking straight ahead as usually they do not spot you and you're able to retreat without detection. Those tunnels which are available to you have even more reagents, and one notable object on a shelf.
A heavy Athame set with rubies sporting a cruel obsidian blade, it seems to have been polished recently and yet is set loosely between a few bottles. You elect to take the blade with you. Things are hot, strange orange and green moss very prevalent in the cavern that strikes you very much like the inside of a grotesque pumpkin in the orange light. Pulling at your collar, you hear gentle footfalls from the stairs to above.
"Hey," Yehva's voice calls. "Skeevy is asking for you, he seems irate. I've told him you nodded off. Get up here." With that she steps back up the stairs and out of sight.
>Hurry upstairs
>Coax her into descending
>Try to find a way to re-close the staircase
>>44295208
>Hurry upstairs
>>44295208
>Hurry upstairs, Athame in hand.
>>44295208
>>Hurry upstairs
>>44295208
>>Hurry upstairs
>>writing
Rolled 5 (1d6)
New athame clutched in hand, you turn your eyes upwards. It is a dim descent into what you now realize was a rather dark room my conparison. The burning orange light at your back makes it hard to grope for footing on the hewn-from-the-rock, narrow steps of the staircase. The acidic stench of a necromancer's alchemy reeks behind you.
Carefully, you make you way up into the room, one hand cupped over your brow as you strain your eyes to see into the darkness. Then...
Something clatter heavily to the ground near you and you jump. A huge dislodged stone smashes into the rock near your head and you peer up from the staircase to see Yehva, hands open and eyes fixed on the dagger.
"W-what are you doing," Yehva asks tentatively, hands flexing now, her knuckles pale white in the darkness, brown hair framing her cold face. "This wasn't in the dream at all. Are you... what are you doing with that big knife?"
You enter the room and, hearing the scratching of rating feet just beyond the door, punch push in on the stone Yehva had to open the descent. The tomb slides shut over the Animatory. As if on queue the main door to the room slides open again.
"Apprentice come, apprentice come!" Sleepy squacks. He's flanked by two ratings at either side, one of whom scuttles in with a plate of cheese and pitcher of water they lay by Yehva's bed with a little bed before turning and scuttling back out.
It's hard to tell in the darkness if Skeevy notices you tucking the athame into your cloths and pulling cloth over it before stepping forward.
"Why did you close the door on us Skeevy?" you ask accusingly.
"Nanak no say button close door, Skeevy never been here before," Skeevy offers, seeming genuinely upset as he wrinkles his whiskers up at you.
"Come quick, new corpses, come quick, new corpses!" Skeevy nods quickly to affirm his own statement and then waves for you to follow him.
Yehva just silently watches you go. The door isn't shut behind you, but two ratings do stand guard, heavy daggers at their side, and their claws vicious and tails strong besides.
You're lead back out the grass covered door and brought along the stream. You stand a few yards above the water, rock and mud, roots jutting out into the muddy stream bed, like spectators leaning over to view the gruesome display. Three people lie here dead, and one more, you note, is yet dying.
A skeleton's shattered remains are strewn across the muddy bed, his two comrades (cont)
(Cont) trying and failing to stick him back together, disembodied skull chattering at them in their strange, cruel breathless laughter.
Two of the dead are men, one a woman. They had heavy traveler's cloaks and satchels, the woman bore a shield. Their skin is of dark complexion and their hair thick and black--you have never seen folk like these. Light curved blades lay near their hands, their skulls seeping blood where they've been bashed, arms and legs mangled where they'd been bludgeoned.
"Coward," the dying woman propped up against the roots on the far end of the creek bed spits at you. " Her left arm has been broken in at least three different places, and her right hand nearly pupled. Still it twitches towards her sword, the warrior's spirit unwilling to yield, wishing to heft her blade one final time. It's no use; if she weren't worthless in a fight, the skeletons would've stoved her head in.
Awkwardly you look to Skeevy.
"Not a corpse not a corpse, I know I know," Skeevy natters. "But Skeevy wonders. Stranger folk, and come down river. Why?"
"Must know we're here, must know we're here. Why? Why?" He motions towards the living woman.
>interogate the woman, offer swift death
>interogate the woman, offer mercy
>slit her throat with the athame
>>>other?
>>44298520
>interogate the woman, offer swift death
CURVED. SWORDS
>>44298548
Yes, would you like to pick one up when you're done or/And for the administration of said swift death?
>>44298573
Gesture at a skelly to do it with a bash to the head.
>>44298573
If there's three curved swords, we should take one for ourself. General rummaging through the bags and stuff is a given, but maybe we could try to find a present in there for our new companion.
Lots of posts one vote.
I assume y'all want to interrogate\swift death, then?
>>44299572
Don't see anything else that's viable.
>>44299639
Alrighty.
>>writing
"Reveal your purpose in coming her," you demand, "and I shall make your passage to death swift."
"Vile Necromancer, be gone with you," the woman spits as you pick up one of the curved blades, hefting it awkwardly by the strange hilt and fumbling it into the sheathe you pick from one of the woman's dead companions.
"Know too that we are servants of Ishtar. Our goddess shall smite you for this, mark my--" she's cut short by your indication that the skeleton should finish her shpiel prematurely. A dumb face overcomes her eyes and her tongue sticks out as the mace slams into the top left of her skull with a brutal crack, blood and bone ships flying up, tangles of her hair descending into her skull as well.
"Ishtar no good, Ishtar no good!" Skeevy says, fumbling at his clothes, uncharacteristically purturbed. "Coming for ratlings they is, coming for ratlings like when we lived in desert before Nanak come and take us home to tower!" Several ratlings come from the tower to drag away the corpses, picking over the rest of the loot and pocketing some things before dragging it all back to the loot room.
You walk back to the tower with Skeevy hopping foot-to-foot at your side. You realize you've got essentially free reign of the tower now. You rest one hand on the pommel of the curved blade. You quite like it, but it's not a very straight forward, ease-of-use weapon. Doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to hack something with though.
>Visit the loot room
>Visit the tower's library
>Visit Yehva
>>??? (Other locations include the Orery and Ratling Warren)
>>44299782
>Visit the tower's library
Look for background information on the goddess and her followers. References to their weapons and clothes as well.
>>44299782
>Visit Yehva
Ask about dream
>>44299782
Visit Yehva, ask about dream
>>44300312
>>44300609
>>writing
>>44301023
Just kidding.
Now
>>writing
You go to Yehva's room. Two ratlings stand at something like attendance, chewing moss and curled up by the doorway, little tufts of matted hair molting across the stone pavers.
Inside the room there is now a burning lantern that someone has brought, and Yehva sits on the bed, not looking up as you enter. You decide to sit on the edge of the tomb, as she doesn't seem like she wants you much closer than that.
"So I am to be your prisoner as well then?" she sighs. "At least in Bradenberry they let me outdoors."
Their mistake, you reflect, but say nothing. It's damp and oppressive, and you realize sweat has begun to coat your skin as you brush your brow with the back of your hand. The curved blade at your side pulls down at you unevenly encumbering your gait. Even your clothing feels more itchy than usual in this room, musky as it is.
"You keep mentioning a dream," you say, dodging the accusation. "What was it about?"
"That rat thing, Skeevy and his friends, showed up. They brought me away from captivity and towards a volcano. Inside there was a tower. Some other stuff happened, but that's basically it--then, I woke up."
"Anyway, I think I recognize you. You're from round here, aren't you? That big village with the pit in the middle that has the festival with the may poles?" Your heart sinks as she brings you back to memories of your old life and the pleasant village you were so often denied the simple joys of. You choke back your feelings and just nod at her.
"That's strange. Why are you in a place like this then, the Necromancer's Tower? What'll happen once she gets back, do you really not know?" She sighs. You look over your shoulder; Skeevy is intently digging between pavers trying to pull out some particularly dank moss.
>Offer her free reign of the tower
>Try to close the door again and descend to the Animatory
>Give empty reassurances about freedom, safety
>Custom
>>44302207
>>Try to close the door again and descend to the Animatory
>>44302207
>Try to close the door again and descend to the Animatory
>>44302207
>Offer her free reign of the tower
>>44302207
>Go study in the library
There has to be something we're learning.
Also hoping OP comes back.
>>44302207
Give empty reassurances about freedom, safety
But in comfortingly
>>44302207
>Try to close the door again and descend to the Animatory
More 'splorin
Seems like op is dead well this is disappointing
