Silly Plots 2: Electric Boogaloo

[Rebonack]

[Road to Elephant Rock]

Oh, Lucas is ready alright.

How ready, you ask?

Well, his cargo pants are laden with trinkets, his backpack is full of supplies, his sturdy hiking boots are oiled, and his sun-hat is warding off sunburns. And most importantly?

He has a stick.

It's a nice stick.

With a small branch with a single leaf on one side.

One might question how important Lucas' stick is for an adventure, but that's just because they don't get the reference.

"Y-yep! I'm ready! I've got food and water and flashlights and extra batteries and rope and lots of things," he reports. "I think I've g-got everything we'll need." The fetch tightens his grip on his stick a bit.

[Deathkeeper]

Road To Elephant Rock

Isaac's a little impressed. He brought stuff, but not nearly that much.
"Well, let's go, then. Assuming this map is accurate it should be about three miles out. And I figure if you're going to leave magic notes you can predict changing Nexus geography. Keep your ears open and all that." he says, and they head out.

It'll be up to Lucas to find a way to pass the time on the approaching-an-hour walk!

[Rebonack]

[Road to Elephant Rock]

"O-oh, definitely. You never know what kinds of things might b-be out here. Like bandits. Or monsters. Or monster bandits."

Monster bandits are the worst.

It takes an especially vile sort of person to rob someone of their monsters in broad daylight.

"I think class h-has been going really good. I've learned a whole lot about using magic to fight. I don't think I ever w-would have done something like this before if the Sandman wasn't calling the shots directly," Lucas muses.

That must be kind of weird, huh?

Having someone who can just sort of...

Step into your skin like that?

[Deathkeeper]

Road to Elephant Rock

"Yeah, I think you really need to get out some more. You'll never be my wacky animal sidekick if you stay at level one forever." Isaac says with a shrug as he steps ahead of Lucas.

And that's right when-
Hang on, just a second. Zebes, did you take my- right, there they are. Thanks. (clatter)
Ah, and there we are.

An emaciated hand bursts up from the dirt of the road, attempting to grab Lucas by the ankle!

[Rebonack]

[To Elephant Rock]

"Ah!" Lucas shouts as the creepy zombie hand (maybe not a zombie hand, we'll see) gropes at his ankle! Rather awkwardly, he aims to swat the limb with his stick!

Normally this probably wouldn't do very much to a zombie hand.

But, you see, Lucas has been working on that stick for quite a while now. Ever since he found out that he's been assigned to help Isaac on his hero's journey! Transforming one's self is sort of the claim for fame among hedlykows. And the trickiest ones are even able to use their own wool to craft fantastical objects fueled by the purest potential of dreaming. That is, after all, how Maph creates most of the Random Encounter loot. It takes a few physical components as well, of course. Nothing beats true alchemical components.

So.

The stick.

Lucas had, quite on his own initiative, ventured into the Astral Wilds to find it. In his true form, of course. The wildlings were pretty scary, and there were a few close calls, but he claimed his prize. A branch cut from from a world tree, the dead wood hollowed out and replaced with his own wool. Judging from the holes along its length, it probably doubles as a flute when it isn't being used to club zombie hands. The little rod absolutely crackles with the potential of life and dreams alike, and getting wholloped with such a weapon may not be kind to undead.

[Deathkeeper]

To Elephant rock

The limb breaks clean off, and the rest of the creature emerges from the loose soil. A rotted corpse, only half clothed in dead flesh. Its remaining arm carries a rusted steel sword, which is swung wildly at Lucas.

In front of him three more have appeared, and are attempting to hack at Isaac's hastily thrown barrier.

[Rebonack]

[Road to Elephant Rock]

"G-gross, zombies!" Lucas stammers. He really hates zombies. He shares Maph's general feelings about the concept of death, and zombies more or less take the concept of death and mange to somehow make it even worse. He shifts his grip on the stick and suddenly it's a shield!

Okay, well, actually it isn't. It's still a stick. He's just holding it by that little branch sticking off the side as if it were a shield. But when he swings his arm to intercept the corpse's clumsy attack, despite the fact that the stick never actually touches the weapon, the sword should be repelled as if stuck by a mighty shield! There will even be a clang of metal on metal!

That's the power of hopes and dreams.

And imagination.

The stick is just about whatever Lucas needs it to be. It's whatever he can reasonably imagine the stick as.

The ultimate weapon of a child.

Hopefully now that the skeleton's guard has been thrown wide, Lucas quickly grabs the end of his stick makes a broad sweeping stroke with it. No long is the stick a shield, oh no. Now it's a heavy club shod in bronze!

Despite still being a stick.

"Are you o-okay, Isaac?" he calls out to his friend.

[Deathkeeper]

To Elephant Rock

The zombie bandit's rib cage crumbles to dust under Lucas's blow, and the rest quickly follows.

Isaac is using his rudimentary combat knowledge to dodge some attacks, but he's mostly relying on his barrier. It takes him far longer than any normal fighter to find an opening and punch his middle opponent in the collarbone with a force-enhanced punch.
"Ko!"
A real fighter would also point out that the punch was sloppy, left him vulnerable if not for the shield, and was clearly inspired too much by a late night watching Nexflix, but it crumples the monster just fine.
"Fine! Could you get this left one off of me?" he says before going back to hiding behind his quickly cracking shield.

[Rebonack]

[To Elephant Rock]

"Okay! I can do that!" Lucas replies, once again shifting his grip on the stick, now with one hand on the side branch and the other along the main portion.

Why, clearly that must be a gun!

"Pschu!" Lucas yells, tossing up the end of the stick to mimic recoil. Some distance behind the skeleton a large hole is blasted through a tree. "Whoops... I, uh.... missed. I'll try again!" Lucas does a better job of lining up his shot this time and-! "Pschu!"

This time around he's dead-on!

There's a pretty good chance the skeleton will explosively vaporize as if it had just been blasted by a potent particle weapon!

What?

Of course Lucas has to make the ray-gun blaster noises. How else would he imagine using a stick as a gun?

[Deathkeeper]

To Elephant Rock

The skeleton vaporizes instantly and its bones are swiftly dust.
Isaac lowers himself and sweeps the last one's legs. It works, though not as he expects, as the legs shatter under his quite normal teenage body's attack, and is left flailing on the ground. Isaac finishes it off with a basic flare.

Isaac and Lucas gain 8 exp points!
Among the piles of dust is 17 silver coins, a pewter die, and a single card displaying a white sound-wave. It says, "Sound blast: hold this aloft and speak its name to unleash a sonic attack to deafen opponents."

[Rebonack]

[To Elephant Rock]

"That worked out p-pretty good!" Lucas says, doing his best to smile bravely. He doesn't want to show any cowardice in front of his friend after all. With the undead dispatched, the glint of metal catches his eyes. He leans down and picks up the dye. "Oh, this is n-neat. I wonder if I could use it for anything?"

Silver is, of course, always handy.

Good for crafting trinkets with a purifying nature.

If they run into more undead, he might be able to make something disruptive with it!

Certainly not blessed, though.

'Blessings' are the territory of the Empyreans.

And they don't exactly get along well with fae.

[Deathkeeper]

To Elephant Rock

Isaac picks up the card and hands it to Lucas.
"I can already blast magically. Take this to back me up. It's probably a bit harder to miss than a gun. Just uh, try to avoid hitting me. It doesn't specify friendly fire." he says, a little bothered at the prospect of Lucas accidentally deafening him from behind. But still, he thinks it'll be more useful to the faerie.

[Rebonack]

[To Elephant Rock]

"Oh... umm... well, okay. I won't let you down, Isaac," Lucas replies somewhat uneasily as he slips the card into one of his pockets. Once all the loot is gathered up, he'll begin heading down the trail again! Though now he has his stick tucked into a loop on his pack. He pulls out a bolt of wool and one of the silver coins, working the metal between his fingers. As he twists, the silver begins to stretch into fine silver wire. With wool string in one hand and silver in the other, he begins weaving them together.

It looks rather pretty!

That stark, snowy white wrapped with glittering silver.

Wonder what he'll be fashioning it into?

"Having some charms against undead might be good," Lucas says as he works. "J-just in case we meet any more, I mean."

Undead are pretty common foes on adventures after all.

[Deathkeeper]

To Elephant Rock

Isaac nods. Lucas's crafting abilities are quite impressive. It's not surprising given his fae-'father' but it's still not a blanket skill for hedleykows, from what he knows of them.

Eventually, they arrive at the Rock. It's a large granite boulder, very roughly in the shape of an elephant's head. Perhaps once it had a better resemblance, but today it's worn down by centuries of wind, rain, and tourists.
"So uh, here we are. The note said to search below it? Let's look for a secret door or a hole or something." the teen suggests.

[Rebonack]

[Elephant Rock]

Several hours is plenty of time to finish a pair of charms.

Nothing more than a little bracelet made of yarn wrapped in silver. Or, at least that's what it was before Lucas clapped them both between his hands. When he opens them again, he's holding pair of little rings as white as snow, yet with a silver sheen that crawls across them like shimmering water. He offers one to Isaac.

"They're they best I could do," Lucas says. "They'll e-enhance any attack! So they'll act like a silver bane against undead. That w-will be handy, I hope. I d-didn't have enough time to make a protective charm, though... I hope that's okay."

Don't worry, Lucas.

That'll totally be okay.

He can always work on purifying charms later.

"Oh... um... a trap door? Well... maybe..." he mutters as he pulls out his Stick and grasps it in both hands, one of the main shaft and the other on the branch. Then? He begins waving it around like a dowsing rod. Pretty sure dowsing rods aren't supposed to find trap doors, just water and precious metals and 'energy'. But worth a shot, right?

[Deathkeeper]

Elephant Rock

Isaac slips the ring on his pinky before looking around. "It's fine, Lucas; they're great. You should really try selling stuff sometime. You'd make a pretty hefty penny." he tells his friend.

Lucas's dowsing reveals a small metal plate with an indentation. Upon inspection, Isaac bends down and sticks the little while figurine into it, and with a crack it slides out, revealing a spiral staircase.
"Do you want to go first, or should I?" Isaac asks with a wide grin.

[Rebonack]

[Elephant Rock]

"But then making them would be work..." Lucas replies. "I like just making them for f-fun. N-not that you're idea is bad or anything! It's a good idea. I just don't know if I would l-like doing it."

Lucas gazes down into the darkness below as the stairs reveal themselves.

"Umm... maybe you should go first?" he suggests. "If something bad jumps us on the s-stairs then a force barrier would keep it away better than my stick."

Would Isaac be able to move with the barrier?

Just shove any giant rats down the stairs with it?

That would be pretty handy.

Immobile barriers have some pretty major downsides.

[Deathkeeper]

Elephant Rock

Down the stairs they go! Isaac conjures a little light, and they might need it. The stairs are very large, and go down, and down, and down, at least four stories, though it's impossible to really tell without a reference of the outside.

When they finally do arrive at the bottom, they are greeted by a pleasantly lit room. The light doesn't seem to be coming from anywhere in particular. On the walls hang tapestries depicting the heroic deeds of men and gods of all kinds. And on the far side of the room is a heavy iron door and a plaque.

We welcome you, Chosen and guard, and humbly invite thee,
to what we hope won't be too hard, our sacred Trials three

[Rebonack]

[Below Elephant Rock]

"Oh... rhyming trials?" Lucas mutters as he inspects the plaque. "Those are usually r-really good or really bad."

Which one will they be today?

Stay tuned to find out!

Lucas begins inspecting the rest of the room, specifically the images of triumph that decorate the room.

Anyone they learned about in history?

Man.

History classes in the Nexus must be weird.

Which world's history do you learn about?

[Deathkeeper]

Below Elephant Rock

Some have pretty iconic looks. There aren't many elephant-headed deities even in the Nexus. But there are plenty that shoot lightning. That one with the eye-patch might be Odin? Or maybe he's just a very competent pirate.

"Hey Lucas, a little help with this door? I don't want to use magic on this one." calls Isaac, struggling with the weight of the door.

[Rebonack]

[Below Elephant Rock]

Lucas really doesn't know much about gods. His family wasn't ever really into that sort of thing and fae in general tend to find deities a bit distasteful.

Regardless!

"Oh, okay!" he replies before hurrying over to aid his friend with the door. All that working out has no doubt improved their physical strength, but they're still nerds, not 18 Str strongmen.

[Deathkeeper]

Below Elephant Rock

With a heavy creak and a sigh the door is coaxed into opening, at least enough to let the scrawny boys through.
Beyond it is a sprawling room, with ceilings over forty feet high. All made of stone, the ceiling is crowned with circular patterns, growing larger and larger as they fan out beyond the apex. Running down the walls are a series of odd little geometric patterns, mostly squares. As before, it is lit from no visible source, and from somewhere a faint breeze can be heard.
But the most obvious features of the room are a large ring, like one for sparring, with a gong to the side, overlooked by an enormous statue of an elephant-headed man, sitting in lotus position and holding up one palm. He seems more wise than imposing; less a judge and more of a referee, perhaps?

"You'd really think that someone would have fallen through the floor at some point and found this. Do you think we actually went down this far?" Isaac muses.

[Rebonack]

[Under Elephant Rock]

Descending into the depths.

Lucas is really hoping that they aren't going to be forced to fight a monster.

Or even worse, forced to fight each other.

But something about the stage strikes him as deeply foreboding.

"I d-don't think so," the youth replies, glancing up at the ceiling. "Volume is weird in the Nexus. A lot of the time things are bigger on the inside."

No doubt if the Doctor showed up no one would be particularly astounded by the TARDIS.

'Oh, you have a non-dimensional space? Cool my wallet does that, too.'

With some trepidation, Lucas approaches the statue to see if there are any clues, though he gives the stage plenty of space.

[Deathkeeper]

Below Elephant Rock

Don't be so scared, Lucas. Giant, mildly pudgy pachyderm statues can't hurt you.
At the base of the statue is another plaque, and a wooden stick with a cushioned head.

Our first Chosen oversees
Judges, checks, and referees.
The gong shall be your opponents' hail:
Overpower them all. Do not fail.

[Rebonack]

[Below Elephant Rock]

Pfft.

Lucas has seen statues come to life and attack people before.

This is a world were things like stone and iron golems are very real things.

He'll keep an eye on that statue alright.

And now he's searching for a gong, too.

"Umm, Isaac?" he calls out. "I have the sinking feeling we're going to have to fight a bad-guy pretty soon."

Bad-guys are just the worst.

Lucas clutches his trusty stick a little tighter.

[Deathkeeper]

Below Elephant Rock

Isaac has been examining the far wall and the statue from the center of the ring.
"Well I mean, they did basically say I'd need to pass a trial of strength. But uh, what does the sign say? Is something coming? Or do we just wait here until it does?" he asks, not seeing the striker nearby.

[Rebonack]

[Under Elephant Rock]

"It s-sounds like you have to ring the gong and then fight something to prove yourself... umm... worthy?" Lucas replies uncertainly.

This certainly appears to be a pretty bog standard trial for a hero to overcome.

Right?

"So... are you going to do it? I think you have to beat the champion to keep going."

[Deathkeeper]

Under Elephant Rock

Hey. Elephants aren't usually complicated. Their trials are simple but to the point.

Isaac shrugs.
"I don't think they would have invited me if they didn't think I was capable of winning." he says in response. He's a little bit pumped up, actually. He isn't really sure why, he just wants to get this done. Maybe he wants to use what he spent his whole summer learning in summer school. Without much ceremony, he picks up the striker and walks over to the gong, ringing it thrice. The loud tones of the instrument reverberate throughout the temple for a few seconds before dying down. For a moment, all is quiet.

And then?

Trumpets?
One moment the kids are standing alone in the trial hall with the statue and the next, well...
They're here. And there. Pink elephants everywhere! Look out!

Well, not everywhere. But at least six, all ever so slightly transluscent and dressed in marching band uniforms, seemingly paying no attention to our heroes, but Isaac just happens to have to dive to the side to avoid being trampled, right as Lucas is in danger of being caught between crashing cymbals.

[Rebonack]

[Below Elephant Rock]

Lucas leaps into the air, springs off the incoming elephant, and lands daintily atop the giant statue balanced on a single hoof. He's leering down at the parade with those big black eyes of his, tail lashing back and forth with the beat of the music. There wasn't any transition to speak of between human and hedleykow, simply one thing one moment and another thing the next. His pack is still strapped to him, and the wool on his legs seems to have woven itself into pockets. Somehow. The end of his tail is wrapped around the Stick despite the fact that his tail doesn't look particularly prehensile. Which he probably doesn't care too much about. "Oh, hehehe!" Lucas bleats. "What fun! It's a parade and song! Shall I dance?"

Whether or not dancing is appropriate right now, he taps out a little jig atop the statue, his hooves clacking musically on the stone.

"Am I allowed to help? Or is this the hero's task? Teehahaaaw! What do you think, Isaac? Maybe you should venture up on the stage and show them what for! What's the point of having a stage if it isn't used for the show! Hurry, hurry! Hurry and hurrah! Come on, come on! Don't leave the audience waiting!"

Boy.

His personality sure does a one eighty when he goes faerie, doesn't it?

[Deathkeeper]

Below Elephant Rock

"The plaque addressed you as 'Guard' so I assume that's the role you're supposed to be playing. So guarding would be nice."

Isaac sends a downward wave of force onto the smallest specter, flattening it into a legged pancake. He gives it a kick, and it bounces off the wall as a pink ball at Lucas, exploding into pink sparks as soon as it hits anything.

The rest simply prance about, going up and down invisible stairs, though the largest splits into two half-sized elephants.