Through the Faerie Ring IC

[EdroGrimshell]

"An armory, most armories are on the ground floor or one level down, not counting dwarven strongholds," Victoria says.

Teresa has another concern, however, "keep away from the bodies if you can, the body below produced the mist, stands they'd do the same here, and there are more."

"Right, it's already stinging, we'll want to get clear of it. If it gets too thick going up, we may need to go down instead, I don't want to end up breathing this in, whatever it is."

[Nightraiderx]

"agreed. But I should just grab something here....." Alexander grabs one of the greatswords off the wall. This should help if we do end up meeting the thing that was making noise.

Spoiler: Ooc:

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Loot the room for all the goodies!

[whoiam]

"An interesting question that I wish I had an answer for. I doubt they were going after us specifically - there's too much iron in our world to be able to pick out specific people that way.

Honestly, I think they were targeting the place, not us in particular. There were... stones.. an arrangement of them. Massive ones. Like old pillars, with stones crossing over the top. All the way around the clearing where we slept. Back before the drink caught me, I remember thinking someone had erected those for a reason. Maybe it marked the site of one of the old gates? Just because a portal's closed, doesn't mean you can't try and open it again...

...and pull people from the other side into your world as a result. Whether this was the objective - or just a side effect - who knows? I doubt any but the... '13'?... could tell us their intentions."

[Illven]

Maybe the area we were in has a naturally weak planar boundary? Melinda suggests.

[DoctorGlock]

'Nay, not you then. You describe a gate, an old one by the sounds of things... and for the first time in an age one has opened...' Seeing the question on your face he scowls and tries to answer. 'I do not know what the thirteen are. That is but one of their titles, and they have had many across the ages. The Silent Watchers. The Nameless Ones. They are old things. Older than I, and likely very few know from whence they come. And they keep it that way. Four centuries past they rode often, striking like lightning from the blue and obliterating all knowledge of them the Daonine tried to gather at their library. They move with mysterious purposes and seldom leave survivors. And the knowledge that they can open a Gate? That is dangerous knowledge indeed.'

'Aye, a weak boundary is the very foundation of the Gates. Places where our worlds are close indeed, a mirror's distance from each other.' he says to Melinda. 'Even so, no gate but one has survived the ages.'

Spoiler: All

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Setting difference: there are no planes per say. Just Terra and Fae, and the boundary between the two is hard to place, with older texts showing that the two are close enough to cross into unknowing, and more recent texts dismissing the older texts as superstition and nonsense

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Spoiler: Alexander and Victoria

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Assume you now have access to all the starting gear you bought, fluff wise you loot it from the armory.

[Illven]

Okay. If something or someone were weakening the planar boundary. Who would benefit? Melinda mused outload.

[EdroGrimshell]

Victoria follows the wall to try and find a staircase.

[JKTrickster]

Keith nodded as everyone mused on about exactly what the motives or intent could have brought them into the fae world. To be honest, it was all a little overwhelming but he did his best to keep his head high as he followed the conversation. He was honestly glad his more talkative friends have come out of the forest to back him up - he was beginning to feel a little too stressed to talk or communicate effectively. Taking a deep breath, Keith mulled over the facts that they knew and tried to follow their speculation as best as he could. But he started to follow another thought pattern, and focused on something that he had saw before.

"Wait that is not the most pressing thing," he said as he pushed aside the thoughts of the Nameless Ones or the Thirteen or whatever they were called. "I think we should stay focused on trying to find a place back home. I think that Tower," Keith says as he points out into the distance. "It holds more than we might imagine. It is not empty - I saw signs of a blue flame not too long ago. It was why we were walking in this direction in the first place," he says as he contemplates what he saw. Looking between the members, he took a deep breath before continuing. "I think whoever made that signal might have some answers for us. We should go investigate it before we sit idly by and speculate any further."

[whoiam]

"...We could also die, but... while this may just be the hangover talking, I agree, we should go check it out.

I don't think there's going to be a 'safe' way back - considering that the only group that seems to have come up with a way to make the journey appear not to be the most friendly bunch... So I think it's going to come down to taking a few risks in the search of answers."

[DoctorGlock]

'Profit? Who can say? The queens and their schemes would always bear fruit on mortal soil. The Daonine markets would thrive once again, filed with real goods and not mirror-conjured mockeries. But of the Thirteen? Their motives are shadow.'

'Blue flame is one of their signs. Blue flame and rot and shadow. They are not known for leaving survivors.'

A high pitched buzzing fills the air as Gaelin catches up, panting. 'My tower?' he pipes. 'Are we going to liberate out ancestral home?'

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Victoria finds a staircase leading up again, once more into shadow, with Alexander not far behind. You can hear the echoing of footsteps on the stairs ahead.

[Nightraiderx]

Alexander follows behind Victoria, the silence getting a bit annoying.
"So, Victoria, where would you be from, dear? This prison seems to be quite strange after all. Nothing like the prisons in my lord's land..."

[DoctorGlock]

Your words bounce back to you, distorted and in different voices, echoing with whispers not your own.

[EdroGrimshell]

"Not really a time for niceties, something's coming, and the mist is thicker. We need to go down," Victoria replied, before Teresa chimed in, "She did introduce herself as Victoria of Olau, that's where we're from, the Fiefdom of Olau."

"Aim questions at Teresa, she doesn't have much to do other than answer them right now as it is, at least until we're out of here or whatever's coming here catches up," with that, she starts to head back the way they came.

[DoctorGlock]

As you make your way back down the stairs, for the briefest moment you think you caught the blur of motion out of the corner of your eyes, as if something stirred in the darkness. As you round the bottom of the stairs you note that you are not where you started. The landing opens above a balcony of crumbling stone, circling a gnarled tree, its roots sunk deep into the shattered flagstones. Waves of blackness lap at the roots of the tree, as high as a man's waist.

But light filters down here from stained glass windows, pale and wan moonlight lancing through shattered panes. Through the drifting shadows you can make out a circular table of enameled wood, multihued panels flickering in and out of sight. It appears to be set for some sort of feast, or was, as the bodies slumped over the table and scattered across the room attest to. Each one is that same breed of not-quite elvish, predatory looking humanoid, each clad in moonsilver mail. You note the shadows swirling around the moonbeams, as if loath to touch them, and even as you watch some goes up in smoke at the contact.

Suddenly you hear-- no feel, as the stones shudder and reverberate with it-- a massive scraping and a thump, and a sound like shattering masonry that seems to come from all around.

Spoiler

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The door you just came through opens onto a semicircular balcony about twenty feet above the table and tree roots. The trunk rises through the ceiling of this room, maybe another thirty feet. There once was a stairway up, but you can see collapse rubble at the end of the balcony. Still, massive vines traverse the wall from floor to ceiling, through and upwards into the unknown above. Under the opposite side of the balcony you can see a short hallway, dimly lit by the moonlight, end in a massive set of double doors.

________

Not stopping to listen to the four inch nuisance, the party begins to run in the direction of the tower. The Green Man's voice fills the wind at your backs. 'I cannot leave the bounds of the forest with you, but bear this warning: where The Thirteen ride, desolation pools in their wake. What was once a sacred place is now profane, and you will find nothing alive and certainly no answers there.'

But by then you are already racing over the gold and violet grasses into the chill shadow of the great tower-fortress. Rising perhaps two hundred feet from a hill at the edge of the forest path it is made of some sort of pale stone that reflect the twilight hues of the sky above. Thick vines wind their way across the surface of the tower, piercing the stone and vaulted windows in places. Seemingly symbiotic with the stonework, the trunk of an enormous tree can be seen winding in an out of the masonry, its branches crowning the crenelations and battlements far above. And yet no green blooms on that crown. You note the unhealthy color of the vines and a thick carpet of dead and blackened leaves that seems to shadow the tower.

The entrance is a vast double door of what seems to be long since tarnished copper, green all over and black in places It depicts two not quite humanoid figures in alien armor, palms outstretched in a warding gesture. The pose is echoes by twin statues of the same stone flanking the entrance, though one seems to have toppled and shattered ages past.

[Nightraiderx]

"Fair enough my dear, excuse my ill-mannerisms. It seems that the place has many a magical stairway and is impeding our way out of here, seems that we'll have to keep going down, since the stairs windows at least give us some indication of where we are height-wise."

Spoiler: Ooc:

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Detect magic on the stairs, the doors. everywhere.

[EdroGrimshell]

Victoria nods, "we can't really go back with whatever's back there, only real option is to get down from here and out that door, now..." she sighed, "this is going to hurt," she said before jumping down to the table below, hopefully it'd keep her out of the mist if it held.

Spoiler: OOC

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Tumble Check to Reduce Fall Damage: DC 15
(1d20+3)[18]

[DoctorGlock]

Victoria arcs through the air, making a jarring roll on the table's surface in a clatter of silver and upended goblets. You suspect you may have just squashed some grape in your hair. Beneath you the table lets out a dull creak as the rotted wood splits and cracks, ravaged supports disintegrating into ash under the blow, pitching you towards the hungry darkness...

Spoiler

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Reflex save?

Fall damage: (1d6)[1]

But you are faster, running along the surface of the collapsing table you leap, landing inches above the mists on the gnarled roots of the massive tree.

________

Outside the tower, you note that the massive, tarnished copper doors are slightly ajar. A cold wind seems to waft out, and the shadows flicker and dance before its cold breath.

[EdroGrimshell]

"There are three doors down here," Victoria called up, "we'll need to pick one, fast, if we're going to get out of here before that thing catches up to us."

[Nightraiderx]

"Quite a show you put on there miss Victoria, sadly my old bones are not as limber as you and as such, I shall take the slow way down."
Alexander reaches for the vines, climbing down and trying to avoid the mist the best he can. "Three doors hm?" Alexander scans each door with detect magic, if he can he'll reach for a few small objects, "I say we open all three and throw an object as far down as we can, at least we may be able to see if there are any traps, I'm scanning them now, if they prove to be magical we shall be careeful to open either of them."