“There's just one problem.”
The thin old man lets the specifics of the singular problem accumulate mystery while he lights a long wooden pipe, its crooked stem and deep bowl glazed sticky with resin. In the forest's perpetual twilight, the bowl flares a bright orange. The man closes his eyes, puffing thoughtfully and letting the air and tension between you thicken. The two of you are seated cross-legged on a massive tree stump, its sharp corners long ago worn to smooth wood.
You rub your forehead with your fingers and bite your tongue. You know Shafir is just trying to get you to say something impatient, something he can use to worm his way out of giving you what he owes. You cough gently when the first of his large puffs reaches you, the cloying sweetness of the smoke clinging to the inside of your nostrils. Finally, you cave to his stubborn silence.
“What's the problem?” you ask as politely as you can manage.
“The problem is that I never agreed to deal with you,” Shafir says, pointing at you with the stem of his long pipe.
Where Shafir's once-strong face has become a study in the struggle between skin and time, yours has yet to fully mature, leaving you with a youthful androgyny that you have had plenty of time to get sick of. He smirks at you, the majority of his face immediately vanishing into the chasms of his wrinkled flesh. You frown back, your pale brow barely furrowing.
On your lap, the cat blinks at Shafir with its huge moonlike eyes. Moments before, it had been purring softly as it observed the proceedings, no doubt pleased at your impatience. To call it “your” cat would be inaccurate. Close to the opposite of the truth, in fact.
“I agreed to deal with him,” Shafir says, gesturing towards the cat with the pipestem.
“What is this garbage?” the cat, Escher, scoffs.
“No garbage,” Shafir says, pausing to take at least three lungfuls of smoke off the pipe. “I agreed to deal with you, Escher. I owe you a favor, not this child.”
You can feel your ears redden at the word “child”. You stand up angrily, and Escher has to use his claws to clamber up the thick fur and leather of your clothes to perch on your shoulders, where he flattens his ears.
“I vouch for the...child,” the cat sniffs. “Shouldn't that be good enough?”
“Perhaps if this was just some kid,” Shafir begins.
“I'm standing right here,” you mutter.
“-but this one's got the stink of the waking world all over him. Don't you know, Escher? It's dangerous to throw your lot in with Dreamers. Even more dangerous to do business. Never know when they're going to disappear.” He snaps his fingers, to illustrate your theoretical disappearance, and begins tapping out and refilling his pipe. As he does so, two much younger men enter the forest clearing. Your eyes dart to the scimitars tucked into their waists.
“Dangerous,” Shafir says, grinning to show his tar-stained teeth, “but valuable.”
He's not wrong. As a native of the waking world, being in the Dreamlands has its perks. The clothes you're wearing were never sewn or sold to you. The food you ate this morning was never grown or plucked or pickled. You simply dreamed it into being. Though you are not nearly as powerful as some, being a Dreamer definitely makes you dangerous.
“What do we do now?” You ask Escher, as one of the younger toughs frees his sword.
“Use your imagination,” Escher hisses.
>How will you dream you way out of this?
>Though your dreaming abilities will no doubt grow with time, currently you are only able to make relatively small objects of inert matter (that is, living matter is fine if it is fruits and vegetables, or a cubic foot of raw beef, but not so fine if it is supposed to be alive or moving). Complex machines are currently beyond your abilities.
>If you attempt to dream something into being, or to engage in combat, please roll a d100
>>44431828
>Dream of a rope binding Shafir's hands and feet together
>Dream of a knife to hold against his throat
We've got too little info about the situation to go on, OP. Why are they doing this if dealing with us is dangerous? Would asking what their price is be a legit option? What did we ask of him?
This is the most I could come up with right now.
Rolled 91 (1d100)
>>44432043
>>44432043
Coming here was Escher's idea. He and Shafir have a history of doing business with one another in their chosen profession, which is information trading, although Escher considers himself to be "retired."
For the last several years, you have been staying in the town of Ulthar, trading the considerable talents that dreaming provides for room and board at a local inn. When the innkeeper went missing, his daughter came to you for help, and naturally, you went to Escher, to his considerable annoyance.
Shafir no doubt hopes to club you into unconsciousness and sell you to one of the nastier...entities that roam the Dreamlands. Maybe that's what happened to the innkeeper. Buying him off is a possibility, but he would be unlikely to trust any money you offered him, even if it were real, because he would assume that you had simply dreamed it up.
>>44432198
>91
Reaching out with one hand, you concentrate on the picture in your mind. You've found that physically acting to manifest something makes it easier than simply trying to conjure it while remaining still. A length of cord snaps into being with a satisfying pop, constricting Shafir's wrists, followed by another around his ankles. You hold out your other hand, and a nasty-looking dagger falls gently into your hand.
"Oooh, looks like you made him angry," Escher says, vibrating on your shoulders as he purrs loudly. The man with his sword drawn takes a step towards you, but you gesture towards Shafir with the knife and the old man hisses something in some dialect or cant, and the thug steps back, hefting the sword nervously and looking between you and his master.
"My friend," Shafir says slowly, trying to shrug with his hands bound. "Certainly we underestimated you. You seem like a man of strength and character, eheh, surely we can do business. I apologize for my insulting words."
>>44432529
So, dreamed up money is worse because...?
>>44432606
>An object dreamed into existence is impermanent, and without the continued concentration of the dreamer, it will eventually fade away. Most merchants have a simple device that will test the reality of currency, and some claim to be able to taste the difference.
>>44432529
Speak quick before I reconsider my evaluation of whether your life's worth your information or not.
Have catbuddy keep an eye on the thugs.
>>44432529
"You say dealing with a Dreamer is dangerous, because our continued presence is unreliable. This is simply a reminder of your own fragility.
First he calls us a child, now we are a man. Be constant, and do as your role demands: trade your information for specified services."
Something as chuuni as this will hopefully get him to deal with us properly and fairly.
>>44433265
oh whoops left the "we" and "us" that was meant to be out of quotes out and now the MC speaks with the royal we
"Speak quick before I reconsider my evaluation of whether your life's worth your information or not."
Shafir swallows hard, his eyes almost crossing to stare at the knifepoint.
"You say dealing with a Dreamer is dangerous, because our continued presence is unreliable. This is simply a reminder of your own fragility." You smirk for emphasis.
Escher crawls gracefully down your arm to look the old man in the face.
"Shafir, Shafir, why do you do this to me?" Escher says, tossing his head. "We were old friends, we were old partners, now you have to be the man that betrayed me that time. You're going to have to be that man forever now."
"Not you, not you, Escher, my friend!" Shafir stammers, pointing over the cat's shoulder at you. "The boy..."
"I vouched for the boy to you, yes? I vouched for you to the boy. Now I know you are a snake, now he knows I am a fallible creature. This has been a bad day, Shafir, because of your choices." his tail flicks light a tiny fuzzy whip, an involuntary tic of displeasure.
"The innkeeper, Thyen," you say. "He's gone missing. Escher seems to think you might know where. You're going to let him be right about -something- today, aren't you?" -thwap- goes the tail on your arm.
"Thyen? The Sinking Moonship?" Thyen runs one of the more well-known taverns and inns in Ulthar. You nod. "I didn't know he had gone."
"A week ago," Escher growls.
"I may have heard something," Shafir says. "But it's the kind of news they shoot messengers over."
"Good thing you've put us in such good humor," you say.
"Ooruthani pirates, slavers," Shafir says. "One of the forest cats told me that he saw them at anchor on the north coast, said they sent a skiff ashore. Perhaps they seized a merchant's crew, perhaps Thyen was with them."
"Who told you this?" Escher said.
"Kyasch," Shafir says. Escher hisses out loud, but the hiss dies away into a dry chuckle.
"Khaaaahaha, that old mousetrap? Getting too slow in his old age, he's got to earn his meals selling gossip?"
>Escher has mentioned Kyasch to you before. He is a tom of some high regard among the cats of the northern forest Thran Kled. Kyasch might have more information about what he saw, or what the pirates have done since coming ashore. But the northern woods are more dangerous than the perpetual dusk of these enchanted trees.
>You could also go back to Ulthar. The innkeeper's daughter Janan has been worried sick about her father, and maybe bad news is better than no news?
>You could also check around with Escher's contacts in Ulthar to see if you've heard anything about anyone putting a price on Dreamers that would make it worth Shafir's while to try something this stupid.
>Or, the man himself is right here. You may have other questions for him.
>>44433868
>I'm sure you aren't stupid enough to try to catch a dreamer without having someone to sell it to lined up, so keep talking, is there a bounty up?
"Don't get me wrong," you say. "This was pretty stupid. But I'm sure you aren't stupid enough to try to catch a Dreamer without having someone to sell it to lined up, so keep talking. Is there a bounty up?"
"Not in so many words, no," Shafir says, carefully. His eyes can't stop darting back to the knifepoint every few seconds. Shafir seems like this exchange is well outside his comfort zone. He nervously shakes some pipe ashes out of his gray beard. "But there's someone in Ulthar writing blank checks for Dreamers, any way they can get them."
"Someone," says Escher.
"Yes," Shafir says, nodding helpfully. Escher stares at him blankly and he winces.
"Rax. It's Rax. If it helps you any, though, I don't think he's looking to do anything with them himself. Seems like he's trying to make a sale of his own, though I have no idea to whom."
You spit, gritting your teeth and trying to think. Rax controls the opium trade through Ulthar, as shrewd a man as can be found and as pitiless. You've done some work for him before, mostly security work on trade caravans. He's aware that you are a Dreamer, and as far as you know, you're the only Dreamer currently in town. You think of the Sinking Moonship, where Janan is tending bar by herself. She can take care of herself in a rowdy bar...but if someone comes looking for you?
>You could go back to Ulthar. Janan and her family have been kind to you, if that means anything to you. You've known Janan since you were both 14. Now she's 20, and you remain 14.
>You could get the hell out of Dodge, either by going to the Thran Kled forest or elsewhere.
>You could continue to question Shafir, or kill him, or let him go.
>Or something else?
Hopeful bump!
>>44434485
Send a message to the Sinking Moonship explaining that we have a lead but might draw danger for being a Dreamer, then go to the Thran Kled forest.
Sorry it's so empty, QM, I was here a few hours ago but had to do something. I think this is pretty cool.
>>44437422
>How would you send such a message? You could ask Escher to deliver it, but then he would not be able to accompany you to Thran Kled. You can speak the language of cats, so you could go meet with Kyasch alone, but he might be more willing to give up valuable information if Escher is there.
>>44437422
>And thanks. I guess i didn't consider how hard it can be to get into something that's starting so much in the middle of things. If people have questions about what's going on or the character I can definitely answer them, I just didn't want to get bogged down with so much setup at the beginning.
