Previously...
Bujilli and Leeja have gone through a mirror into a strange in-between realm and now they must decide which way to go...
The mirror behind them went black with a soft hiss. An empty rectangular stain in the dark. A smoldering red light seeped into place around the edges of the thing. Hedrard's ward to prevent anything on this side from barging through into Idvard's Keep after they left this spot. Or maybe it was to stop them from changing their minds?
The ground beneath them was soft, pliable, more like cold lard with a thin skin over it than soil or rock. It was cold and resembled a greasy type of near-liquid moonstone or milky quartz. Strange shapes rose and fell all around them, like debris floating on a dozen overlapping unseen seas, all riding waves or tides moving with different rhythms. A thin haze of slowly condensing vapor hung over the stuff, right at the verge of becoming honest fog but not quite. It was saturating his boots, his trousers, his hair.
It wasn't quiet, not exactly. There was a dull throb of some sort vibrating through the 'ground,' and a gently ululating susurrus that shifted position at random intervals and seemed to be circling them at a distance. Or not. The sounds echoed on top of themselves in a peculiar way that made it difficult to tell how far away anything might be, or in what direction.
Bujilli breathed deep in the gathering gloom then reached out his hand. The dimness played games with depth perception, but he grew up crawling through damp and dismal spaces deep beneath the sun-touched mountains of his mother's folk; he wasn't afraid of the dark. He also wasn't going to take unnecessary chances, so he cast
Gloomlight and set the glyph to float ahead of him just within reach of his hand-axe. Just in case.
"A dreary place." Leeja smiled. She was quite familiar with dreary places, having grown up in Aman Utal, an underground realm where things walked as men or talked like women but were by no means human.
"Murky. Definitely murky. But we've both seen worse. It appears that we have our choice of direction to go..."
"Hmmm. It feels odd, doesn't it; being able to choose our way and not being chased along or hunting after something?"
"It's a good feeling." He looked out past the bulgy knoll they were on. Some sort of dense object loomed out of the dismalness ahead of them. It tapered toward the top, like an obelisk, but leaned to the side as though mired in too soft soil to support its weight. It moved up and down only slightly and seemed a fairly reliable landmark. Off to the right the
Gloomlight shimmered as it played off of a series of swirling eddies in the fog. A Dogfish-like shape lunged up from the murk only to dissipate before it fell back into the murk. The disturbance revealed a copse of trees, dark and dripping with moisture. There might be some sort of a forest over in that direction...but what would they have to cross to get there he wondered.
Behind them, past the red-edged space where the mirror no longer was accessible, the fog grew darker, damper and seemed to billow upwards from a series of irregularly shaped lumps and bumps that reminded Bujilli of weed-clumps in a marsh. He was already wet enough and didn't relish slogging through some brackish swamp with no clear idea of where they were heading.
Off to the left things seemed to be drier, the air was cleaner and fewer random shapes protruded from the fog-draped ground. He thought he saw a series of dunes or smallish hillocks, maybe mounds, but then they wavered and sank only to rise again in a regular rhythm, like waves.
All around them slippery things slithered and skittered and slunk about the place, going about their business. Most seemed to ignore the two intruders.
"I don't like the looks of things over that way," Leeja pointed toward the forest and what lie in-between to their right; "And that thing, that obelisk-thing in front of us feels wrong somehow. I'm not sure what it is about it, but i definitely don't like it."
"Behind us seems to be a swamp of some sort. It just gets darker and wetter and less appealing the farther back it goes, at least as best as I can see in this murk. I'd just as soon avoid wading about in a cold, dark slough with no clear destination or any idea if there is anything worth the trouble over that way."
"That leaves those dunes or waves or whatever they are..."
"Yeah. Some of them seem fairly large, so maybe we can ride them or at least get a more elevated viewpoint from atop one of them. It's worth taking a look."
That's when Bujilli looked up into the darkness overhead.
"Scheiss."
Something extremely large wallowed, rolled them sloughed huffing and wheezing away from them both towards the swampy region behind them. In the brief glimpse he had it appeared to be some sort of gristly blob that combined the bulk of a whale with the snout of a pig and the skin of a zucchini.
"It's leaving. whatever it is." Leeja had her short sword out.
"Look up."
Meanwhile...
Old Man Putney cackled as he set the clamps into place. The Kommandant wanted answers at any cost, so he meant to extract everything he could from the Nosferatu. For all he knew, this lot might be the last ones of their kind he'd get to destroy. That made him wistful and nostalgic, which was a big mistake. These things and their betters had cost him a great deal. He flipped the switch on the galvanic apparatus before asking his first question. It worked just as he'd been told. He tried it again. Again. again. Finally the creature began to volunteer all manner of secrets and information in between its sobs, curses and recriminations...
Islands. A host of islands swam overhead like the bottoms of massive ships. Some trailed roots and vines, others were desolate hulks of broken stone and decaying pillars. A few shone with nebulous aurora-like glimmerings and at least two if not three were wreathed in the lambent glow of ponderous censers or tall trellis-like braziers; like the one drifting past them almost directly overhead.
"What are they?"
"The fog, the 'ground' reminds me of ectoplasm at the threshold of manifestation. It is something like ectoplasm or oneiroplasm, some sort of mirrorplasm or whatever you want to call it. I think that this place not only connects with a host of other places, but it has gotten polluted a little each time as bits and pieces flowed into it across the threshold of whatever mirror or other aperture opened into it. Every time someone came here, they brought along something of their previous environment. Over time this has grown, developed into its own ecology. I suspect that is has grown taken on some sort of resonance with certain oneiric realms or regions of dream..."
"It's so dark overhead...like an abyss."
"Exactly. I think that we'd best get moving before we are spotted by someone on one of those drifting landmasses...or something lurking farther up there in the higher darkness." Bujilli directed the
Gloomlight glyph to proceed ahead of them in order to reveal any lurking predators, ambushers or hazards as they made their way towards the dune-wave-things.
Bujilli accessed his Counsel. It detected life of myriad and various types and sorts all about them, but nothing immediately threatening. Their surroundings defied analysis; whatever made-up this place, it was something unknown to the databases of the ancient civilization that had created the Counsel as a gift to all their machines recognized as human as their legacy. It knew a great deal and had many wonderful abilities, but in this place it was as much an observer as its host.
A chorus of grotesquely leering masks fluttered up from the forest making a grievously mordant racket as they screeched and muttered their way off into the distance.
Bujilli glanced at the dark mass looming overhead as he followed the glyph through the murk. It seemed to be keeping on its course as though oblivious to their presence down below.
Three war penguins lurched out of the swampy area by the red-limned mirror-shape. One succumbed to its wounds and fell bleeding before the others who set to devouring their fellow. The largest one, a great bull of a bird let loose with a disturbing warble of a bellow before pushing the other survivor away so it could gobble up the guts spilling out of the still-warm carcass.
Leeja nudged him and they broke into a trot. Neither of them were keen on a confrontation with those dirty birds.
A swarm of jewel-eyes snails slid away through the murk at close to eye-level to quickly disappear into the distance.
A small red icon blinked in Bujilli's field of vision. a warning from his Counsel. He slowed down as they reached the crest of the nearest dune-wave-thing only to have it rear upwards with a great gronking moan of protest...
What should they do next? Which way should they go?
You Decide!
Synchronocitor Status: Fully Recharged.
Roll for Initiative!
Someone please roll 1d6 for 1) Bujilli, 2) Leeja, 3) That gronking dune-thing.
Attack, Flee, or Try to Learn More?
They've reached the dune-wave-things and this one appears to be some sort of organism. should they attack it? Cast a spell? Get off of the thing's back? Try to learn more?
Counsel: This entity appears to be some sort of colony-organism that is feeding on a second sort of organism that forms a crust of wrinkled nodules along this region. It does not appear to be in reaction to being walked upon but is instead responding to some sort of signal, perhaps a call of some sort.
Roll for Possible Observation.
Please roll 1d6 and let me know the result. If you get a 1, there is a bonus Random Encounter brought about by the ruckus raised by the gronking-thing. If you get a 6, then someone or something up above has noticed them.
Optional Spot Mirror Roll. (1d30)
We'll also need another d30 roll to determine if Bujilli or Leeja spot another mirror in the distance. A result of 10 means maybe/it isn't clear, a result of 20 means that there seems to be a mirror in a random direction, but it looks closed/shuttered; and a result of 30 means that they spot a mirror in the distance that might be open and accessible...or at least whatever they are seeing appears that way from a distance. A result of 1 means something else mirror-related happens--I'm working on a special table just for that sort of thing and will post it in time for use for the next episode if we need it.
Which Way To Go? What Should They Do Next?
Taking advantage of the sudden elevation Counsel has spotted something in the distance. I will be posting a table either tomorrow or Monday that you can roll on to determine what has been seen or that has seen them...
What do you think Bujilli & Leeja ought to do next?
You Decide!
