RP (non-canon): D&D Mission 1: Getting "Acquainted"

"Hey, like I said. I'm not touching anything that's glowing on its own. Seemed like a bad idea to me from the start." Denkou stood up nonetheless, moving closer to it. "I am starting to wonder how we're supposed to break this thing though."

Sorri glances around the room as Ghira's status levels out and he becomes in less danger of eminent death. She notices the staff next to him and remembers what he had done and what he had said before doing it.

"This guy said that the gem corrupts whatever touches it, right?" she remarks, noting the sword still next to Aurelus. "I don't really think we should try, but what if the item is thrown? Would it hit or would the...thingy be able to stop it?" She backed up from Ghira and stood, looking from the wizard to the warrior to the mage, trying to determine who she would be able to bring back to a conscious state the fastest.

Denkou shrugged and stepped forward towards the orb, looking at it closely, attempting to tell if it's glow had decreased by any useful amount. Deciding that it didn't matter anyway, she shrugged again and turned back, looking around. She stepped daintily over Aurelus's unconscious body, and picked up his sword, weighing it lightly in her hands before turning and throwing it at the orb, careful not to remain too close to the orb.

Denkou's examination of the orb concluded that the glow had decreased almost entirely. As the sword that was thrown at the orb hit, the remaining light in the orb surrounded the sword, and then shot down the path that the sword had come and struck Denkou in the chest. In the now pitch black room a thud could be heard as Denkou's unconscious body hit the floor, and a second thud as the pearl dropped from the air.

"Wait!"

Too late, again. However, the room fell into darkness; Sorri wondered if that was a good sign. There were two thumps though, after the light went out: the first sounded like a person, and given where the last of that glow had headed, Sorri had a bad feeling about Denkou's state.

"...Hello?"

No answer. Looking around the room, Sorri saw a faint line of orange parallel to the floor. Oh yeah! Her lamp was still on the staircase, where she had put it when she patched Aurelus up after the trap there. Sorri felt her way over to the door, then opened it and rushed down the stairs to grab the lantern before rushing back to the room. Once she got back, the quarterling quickly found Denkou and immediately tried to bring the magic-shocked thief back to a stable condition.

She was running out of supplies and she still had no idea what exactly the gem had done to everyone (except Talarin, who had mercifully been exempt from that particular affliction source). All Sorri had been able to figure out is that the light flashes had thrown their bodies into a shock that, if left alone, would have caused some very bad things to happen.
With the fourth member of their group now unconscious (but alive) and laying on the floor, Sorri rocked back on her heels and sat down hard. She frowned. Their hearts were beating normally and the other symptoms had been dealt with, so for now they were out of danger...

"But now what?" One answer would be to nurse them all back to health, but that could take days. To make things worse, Sorri had no idea whether the curse was taken care of simply because the light was gone from the pearl-shaped gem, so they could still have a limited time before the worse symptoms of the affliction took hold. Maybe she could go for help?

Oh yeah. She was also stuck up here because the way out was trapped to the point of excess. Sorri got up and checked on the others, staying clear of the gem. None of them showed any improvement, but they also weren't getting any worse. "What would Da do?" she murmured. In her mind, her father had always known what to do in any situation he ran into. He would tell us to stay calm. Then... She closed her eyes. Then, he would pray.

So she did.

---

Praying calmed her. Whether it was that the one she prayed to was giving her peace or if it was merely a placebo effect due to releasing her anxiety over what was happening, it didn't really matter. Sorri was able to think more clearly than she had been since this mansion mess started.

She needed at least Denkou capable of moving around and one of the magic-users awake. Denkou was the only one who knew how to disable traps, and either Ghira or Talarin could tell Sorri what had happened to the gem; maybe even what the light flashes had done to the others. "It'll have to be Talarin, then," she said quietly to herself. "I know what's wrong with him, at least." Retrieving her kit, she went over to the sorcerer and got to work.

Sorri's work was enough to revive Talarin, bringing him back to full capacity. As it was now turning to very early morning, the two lay themselves down in their bedrolls and went to sleep, deciding they would be better able to tend to the wounded in the morning. With some luck, no creatures or enemies found their way up the tower. When morning came, the two of them awoke to sunlight coming through the window. To their surprise, the other three party members were all up and moving about, even if the movement was very restricted.

Talarin groaned as he woke up. He stretched and flexed his muscles hoping to work out the kinks. "Well, I'm glad we all are still walking amongst the living Eh?" he said as he gathered up his bedroll, his voice almost annoyingly chipper. Joanna popped out of the her pocket.

Sorri was sound asleep. She had stayed up most of the night after patching Talarin up, keeping tabs on the others in case they got worse. That lasted for a while, but she ended up falling asleep a few hours before Talarin woke, curled up in a corner furthest from any of the creature corpses and the presumed-inactive gem wrapped up in her cloak.

Ghira was awake and against a wall, an open book in his lap. He turned the pages over and over again, apparently deep in thought about something or another. A more knowlegeable person would realize that he was preparing spells recorded in his book. He didn't notice Talarin's awakening.

Denkou shrugged, standing back up from where Sorri had left her. "More or less intact, at least. How're you guys feeling?" That said, she started wandering over to the corpses, checking them each in turn, though she doubted she'd find much aside from their weapons.

"Eh, that's what matters though." Talarin said as he walked over to Denkou and started to help search the bodies. "As long as we can keep movin, we can find treasure." he grinned as he stuck his hand into a pocket and jiggled the smaller treasures he had placed in there.

"'I'm feelin' trampled!" Aurelus shouted from his spot on the floor, not moving an inch. After a while, he turned his head while on the floor, and looked up at the floating crystal.

"Gods damn it... tha' thing's still shinin', eh? Wizerds're pissin' me off." Both of his hands lifted up and put their palms against the floor, and Aurelus sat up and then slowly stood up, his right hand going to his torso. "Ugh... my whole body's hurtin' a hell o' a lot." He looked around, and found his sword was missing. He figured the axe must've ended up getting teleported along with the necromancer as well, because he didn't see it anywhere.

"Where's me sword? I'm gonna strike that thin' till even the wizerds feel my wrath."

As part of the group was searching the bodies, Denkou noticed a loose stone in the wall. If removed, she would then find three small obsidian stones in a spell component pouch.

Denkou chuckled to herself, turning the stones over in her hand before putting them back in the bag. "Got another coupla' pretties over here. You guys find anything else? Otherwise I think we might want to get moving soon. We need some serious healin' if anything else comes this way, and we'd be better off in town for that."

Wincing at the pain he still felt, Aurelus grabbed took out his sling and loaded an iron ball on it from the pouch. "Hold on 'ere, Denkou; me an th' wizerds still have a score ta settle! Methinks strikin' it from afar is our best bet! I ain' dead yet! This thing's gonna rigret not havin' killed 'is here soldier!"

Aurelus started swinging the sling while holding the bandaged area of his torso with his left hand, winding the shot with the right.

Sorri woke up to the chatter of everyone and Aurelus calling for his sword. She stretched and blinked, then quickly became fully awake when she saw what the fighter was getting ready to do.

"NO! Don't!" she shouted, jumping up and starting toward him. "It reacts to thrown things too!"

The now normal pearl lay on the ground below where it had been floating. It no longer glowed, but appeared as an ordinary pearl. It seems as though there was no magic left in it.

The sling let go off it's load as Aurelus pulled back on it, letting the iron ball fly towards the non-glowing crystal.

MissingNo said:

"NO! Don't!" she shouted, jumping up and starting toward him. "It reacts to thrown things too!"

Click to expand...

"Ey!?" Aurelus' eyes grew and he threw himself down on the floor, trying to get out of the way of the crystal's presumed retaliation.

The iron ball flew towards the pearl and just barley got the side of it. The ball created a long scratch along the pearl and then hit the ground behind it. Nothing else happened.

"Oh, great." Denkou rolled her eyes and walked over, picking up the now-defunct magic pearl. "Honestly? It's not glowing anymore, I think we can safely assume it's no longer a threat." She ran her hand over the scratch, frowning. "And you probably just killed any potential value this thing had on the market too. Damn it."