From Out of a Dream [Quest]

[L'het'esh]

North, and pay respects to One Thousand Horses. A little rest will make the anima banner /caste mark light go away.

Then go South. Lets get the doodad, maybe it can be done without fighting these guardians, but it pays to be rested up.

[Zelbinnean]

>North. Anything called a "pool of serenity" has GOT to involve a large amount of booze on some level.

[wonderandawe]

>North. Anything called a "pool of serenity" has GOT to involve a large amount of booze on some level.

I'll amend my vote with "Drink from the Pool of Serenity before pissing in it."

[semicasual]

You decide to try your luck at the pools.

As you walk north, the air becomes noticeably damper and you can hear the sound of running water. When you turn a corner, you find yourself in an enormous circular chamber - easily two hundred feet across. The dominant feature of the room is a great elliptical lake that spans the room from end to end, filling nearly all of it. The lake is bordered by little white steps that lead down into the water and a broad copper band set into the floor. Softly glowing yellow-white stones are set into the band every four or five feet, giving a soft ambient light to the outer edges of the room. In the center of the room is a tall, fancy-looking decorative fountain – naked women* holding urns and pouring water into the lake. More glowing rocks surround their feet. The water seems to be clear, but it gets too deep to see the bottom a short distance away from the steps, and the water is dark everywhere except in the middle and around border.

Looking closer, you see that the copper band has been engraved with sorcerous signs. You don’t know any magic, but you’ve seen sigils like these often enough to guess that this band is meant to bind something into the lake… or maybe it’s a spell to keep the water clean.

There are a few couple smaller pools on your side of the room, deep enough to splash in but not wide enough to lie down under the water. Stone washing bowls are set into the wall by each one, and there’s a pile of rubbish on the floor that you think might be the ancient remains of a towel rack. The only thing left that you can definitely identify is some pumice stones.

On the far side of the room you can see a doorway, but to reach it you’ll need to get over this lake. It’s a little bit too far for you to jump the whole way even if you don’t smash into the ceiling. What to do?...

• Swim across. Don’t overthink this. Swimming with your armor and all your weapons on is difficult and slow, but you can do it. You’re already soaked with at least two different liquids. What could a little more hurt?
• Grapple across. You’ve got some tools in your satchel for just this sort of problem – a hook, pitons, a hammer, and rope. You can hammer a spike into the wall on this side, tie a rope to it, launch the hook and the rope at the fountain, and then climb hand over hand to the middle of the room without touching the water. After that, maybe you can kick off the fountain to leap the rest of the way or improvise something.
• Indulge yourself. You don’t remember the last time you had a bath. It’s not that you don’t like bathing, but it’s hard to stay clean in your line of work. Might as well take this opportunity.
• Study the water some more. You can’t read the runes, but maybe if you start tossing things into the water you’ll be able to guess what kind of magic is on it.
• Leave and try going south. You’re in no mood for this. Let’s try the Alchemy hall instead.
• Something else?

*

You like naiads as much as anyone, but they just don’t look as good when they’re made of marble. And why are they always holding urns? You’ve never seen a real naiad carrying water around – why would they?

[wonderandawe]

Study the water by throwing stuff (not piss) into it. Never pee on an electric fence...I mean, in a magical pool.

If it seems safe, Grapple Across.

[L'het'esh]

• Indulge yourself. You don’t remember the last time you had a bath. It’s not that you don’t like bathing, but it’s hard to stay clean in your line of work. Might as well take this opportunity.
• Study the water some more. You can’t read the runes, but maybe if you start tossing things into the water you’ll be able to guess what kind of magic is on it.

Indulge first, then study. No time limit, is there?

[Ferryman]

Study the water some more. The inscription warned against "defiling" any part of this place, and I am currently covered in blood. Taking a bath is probably not a good idea. Better to find out what kind of magic is at work here, if we can. If that doesn't work, then just grapple across instead.

[Caladon]

Indulge yourself. Those little pools look like they are meant for washing anyway. Might as well take the chance to get all the blood off ourselves and properly clean our weapons. Its going to start getting crusty soon and then its going to itch and that's just annoying.

Then

Grapple across. If the magic runes really are to bind something in. We probably shouldn't go swimming, especially in the dark parts where we can't see whats in the water.

[Zelbinnean]

>Indulge first, then study.

[semicasual]

You look at the small pool on the right for a bit, and figure “Why not?”

You unbuckle all of your weapon belts and sheaths, shuck off your boots, brigandine, shirt, pants, and underclothes, and stand there for a moment to feel the air on your skin. You stick a foot in the water - it is cold, but not painfully so. You walk into the middle of the pool and kneel there with the water up to your waist, taking time to let yourself adjust to the temperature. Bending over, you push your head into the water, sloughing off your scalp, then sit up, pushing your hair and the water away from your face and down your braids. You repeat the process several times until you don’t feel itchy at the roots of your hair anymore.

You step out of the water for a bit and fish around in your satchel until you dig out a bone nit comb. The comb scrapes through your beard and over the top of your skull, digging out bits of grit and who-knows-what-else out of your hair. When you’re satisfied with the state of your head, you grab a pumice stone and step back into the water. You gently scour yourself with the rock, reddening your skin a little, then splash more water over yourself to rinse everything off and climb out of the pool. While you wait to dry off in the air a little, you give your weapons a quick rinse and a rub-down as well.

When you’re finished, you’re still damp but it hardly matters – your clothes are just as wet as you are. You slide everything back on, reflecting on how you should probably take the lot to a washer when you’re back in Eight Roads.

Now that you’re feeling more relaxed, you get back to work. First you try the obvious, pitching a pumice stone somewhere in the middle of the lake. After you see it splash into the water, you look down at the ring to see if anything changed. There is no visible effect, either on the ring or on the lake, besides the ripples. You tug on your beard as you consider the problem, then walk back to the lower level entrance. A short time later, you return with more supplies – the net and a length of rope from the pulley, a wooden shaft that once belonged to a pickaxe, and the boss’ severed head.

You chuck the shaft in first, wanting to see what happens to things that float. The shaft flies end over end into the water midway between you and the fountain, sinks out of sight, and then bobs to the surface a second later. You watch it for a while as it drifts slowly on top of the lake. Just when you’re about to give it up as a lost cause, the shaft suddenly sinks beneath the water again and doesn’t come back up. A short time later you hear a gurgling noise behind you. A drain pops open at the bottom of the small pool on your left, which starts bubbling on the surface. An instant later the wooden shaft launches out of the water, hits the ceiling, and splashes down in the pool’s center. The pumice stone follows shortly after, although it doesn’t rocket out of the water. Interesting, but you have another experiment you want to try.

You tie the rope around the dead man’s head, looping it from his scalp to his jaw and from under his nose to behind his ears. You pull the loop tight and jiggle the head-on-a-rope around a little to make sure it doesn’t come loose. When you’re satisfied that the rope is tight and the head won’t slip out, you walk up to the steps, swing the head in a circle above you a few times and fling it into the lake, keeping a firm grip on one end of the rope. The head disappears into the dark water, and the rope begins to grow taut as its length gets pulled under. Several seconds pass and you begin to think you should have brought more rope, but then the pulling stops. Assuming that means the head hit bottom, you’d guess that means the pool is about thirty feet deep where it landed. There is no change in the ring.

While you’re looking at the net and thinking about your next step, the rope suddenly goes slack. There is a rumbling sound that suddenly becomes a rushing noise as lake recedes down the steps and a huge arm-like appendage made of water rises out of it. The head and the other end of your rope is in its “hand”, which swings in your direction, throwing it at you. You let go of the rope and sidestep the projectile, letting it splatter onto the floor some distance away from where you were standing. Your hand reflexively goes to Cleaver’s hilt.

The great arm sinks back down into the lake, and then a proportionately sized human head rises from the water in the same spot. It looks like a bald woman’s head, given shape by eddies and currents that flow around and inside it unnaturally. It opens its mouth to speak, and its voice sounds like someone shouting from the bottom of a well, echoing loudly in this watery, open chamber.

“MU SHUE, SHASHA PAK AL!” ‘she’ says. “YAN MOT JOOR ORDU Y TAN MA! JU SEE IDIS UN FAN DO KA! HEN WO MOT?!”

…That sounded like a question in the gods’ tongue*. How will you answer it?

• Attack. You can see where this is going. You’ve never fought a monster made out of water before, but you know a couple tricks that you can use to hurt spirits.
• Try to talk to ‘her’. You don’t know gods’ tongue, but maybe the creature knows other languages or would recognize human gestures.
• Don’t do anything, wait for ‘her’ to make the first move. When you’re faced with something you don’t understand, usually the first thing you do is watch and see what it does.
• Continue throwing things into the water. You’re not going to let this thing deter you from filling the net with corpses, bundling them up, and tossing the whole thing into the lake. Initially, you planned to do this only if you could prove there was a maneating beast in the lake and needed to bait it, but now you feel like doing it for spite. You will have to drag the bodies here one at a time though, and right after you cleaned up…
• Something else?

*

Not for the first time, you wonder why you didn’t follow your mother’s path and become a shaman. Then you remember that she told you being a shaman didn’t mean beating spirits into submission and you lost interest.

[Zelbinnean]

>Try to talk to her. I mean you did just throw a severed head basically into her...house? Habitat? You'd be pretty pissed if a severed head got dropped on you while you were sleeping in the cart, after all.

[wonderandawe]

Try to talk to ‘her’.

If that doesn't work, try to make nonthreatening gestures and see what the goddess does.

[L'het'esh]

"MU SHUE" ? I had Chinese leftovers for breakfast, but haven't had moo shoo in a long time....

Try talking to the Guardian. Maybe it will will tell you where the doodad is just to get rid of you. Besides, things made out of water don't cut well.

[semicasual]

(I'm waiting on another vote or three before I write the next post, but in the meantime I have more artwork from KB! This will be added to Post #3: Preparing for Battle)

(Nergüi, in the flesh)

[Caladon]

try talking alternating between any languages we know. maybe she will understand something we say. What languages do we even know?

also make our caste mark glow if it has stopped. it might intimidate her into cooperating, and its not like she is going to go anywhere or tell anyone about us