Ah, cool. Okay, updated the plan to have Sirim possess Kori long enough to use the spell scrolls. Mina or Pepper can manipulate the necessary components, depending on which skills are needed most.
By now you suspect more than a few of Cassomir's wizards have figured out that someone is planning a major working, though not that it might be or where it might be located. There is little other reason to buy scrolls to ward a place against eavesdropping mundane and magical, though Sirim had taken care to acquire them from different wizards.
In contrast, with that care in handling his fellow dealers in the arcane, Sirim doesn't bother with a complex array of seals and wards to bind your new visitors. The cruel calculus of magic, of Nethys he would say, makes it so each of you can only work so much magic before your power to reach out with any but the simplest of magics is exhausted and nine planar spirits means distinct seals. On the other hand, Mina can easily lul any number of beings to slumber and 'an angel in a jar can just as easily serve as an arcane focus.'
Anippe giggles and you give your shadowy friend a considering look. Far be it for Sirim of the Pale Sun to specifically choose his words just to amuse a worried child. He'd deny it in an instant, and those who hadn't seem him lie as often and as skillfully as you, Mina, Gorok, and Cob would no doubt believe him too.
It makes a strange hearing, the shadow mage casting in the tongue of Heaven for an angel to appear, though as your mind wonders that way you cannot help but ponder how came the heavens to agree that their soldiers could be called by any wizard with the right spell. Had it been a grand bargain at the dawn of time to keep cosmic balance, or had the hand of practicality moved them once fiends had started making their way into the services of ambitious sorcerer-shamans?
A flash cuts the air and your thoughts at once, and flying above the rotted deck is a creature of gold and soft feathers. It should look mismatched, your brain insists, even as your eyes inform you that wings look somehow more fitting to this helm than to any 'bird' you'd ever seen.
"Thine words are fair, but not for me, oh lady of the worlds far-sighted," the words ring out in tones of gold between the bars of the ancient helm which recall in distant seeming your dreams of Azlant's militia before its fall.
"Waste of magic," Sirim sighs without breath only in your mind. "Shall I send it to sleep, or do you think you can better spare the magic?"
What do you reply?
[] You'll do it
[] Let him do it
[] Maybe you can negotiate. After all your intentions are noble... mostly
[] Write in
OOC: So there was about a 50% chance that over the course of nine summoning one of them would make their will save and I said to myself 'sure if a quasit or something flies around the room flinging insults,' and then the literal first summoning made its save. So kind of a short update, but it is a funny result of Sirim's magical cost cutting. Worth a vote I'd say.
Probably not. It's way above our paygrade to assume what Upstairs are thinking, since we aren't doing anything to upset the balance of the planes or whatever it is that they care about.
I'd probably be more worried about Downstairs because we messed with several of their deities and/or allies-pawns-subordinates already, but I don't think we are very prominent on their list either.
In fact, I am mildly curious what comes out of it if our actions do get reported. Ask it for cooperation, I say.
[x] Maybe you can negotiate. After all your intentions are noble... mostly
We are going to loot everything that is not nailed down and/or heavily guarded. Comes with being an adventurer. Justifications might differ, but on its own it's hardly going to surprise anyone.
I mean, if we were gonna fail I'm glad we did it with an angel. As said, I am sure it wouldn't be against helping with a goal of reuniting with a child with their mother.
[X] Maybe you can negotiate. After all your intentions are noble... mostly
I mean, if we were gonna fail I'm glad we did it with an angel. As said, I am sure it wouldn't be against helping with a goal of reuniting with a child with their mother.
[X] Maybe you can negotiate. After all your intentions are noble... mostly
What if it decides to help? Maybe even tag along with the party for a little while.
Sure, we sometimes get up to various shenanigans an Angel probably wouldn't be happy with, but in the short to medium-term, we're rescuing a little girl's mother, helping a tribe of Iruxi settle down in their new homes after evacuating them from Devil-aligned Cheliax, breaking an ancient curse enslaving powerful Mummies in the swamps outside Cassomir, and after that we're planning to help Urgor with the cleansing of Jernashal. That's premium Angel brownie point fodder, right?
I'm now picturing Pepper wearing an Angel helmet. Because a talking, winged cat doesn't stand out enough in some situations... 😼
The inside of the Cassisian helmet is filled with heavenly light, he would need magic to... see through it, but otherwise it would fit on his winged form.
The inside of the Cassisian helmet is filled with heavenly light, he would need magic to... see through it, but otherwise it would fit on his winged form.
Maybe Cob could convince it to let Shoffe wear it as a helmet? His pet rock doesn't perceive its surrounding through regular visual means.
Has the side benefit of people who don't know about Shoffe and can't see it inside the Cassisian possibly coming to the conclusion that Cob has an Angel Familiar.
Desna has azata not angels, other side of the order-chaos divide, so while she may think angels are doing their best she's a little weirded out by all this discipline and following of orders
The inside of the Cassisian helmet is filled with heavenly light, he would need magic to... see through it, but otherwise it would fit on his winged form.
Do we think Pepper is an azata? Are we being reported on already, inasmuch as a chaotic deity of dreams is willing to accept reports? They can just look inside our dreams to know what we are up to, can't they?
I'd like to see some more involvement with/from the deities that aren't south-aligned, but I guess we don't have the right classes for it.
I wonder if the dreams we get from our memories as we level up have some kind of purpose behind them, other than to maintain our interest in the Azlanti plotline. The last one was almost a puzzle encouraging us to look for the source of our powers.
Desna has azata not angels, other side of the order-chaos divide, so while she may think angels are doing their best she's a little weirded out by all this discipline and following of orders
Do we think Pepper is an azata? Are we being reported on already, inasmuch as a chaotic deity of dreams is willing to accept reports? They can just look inside our dreams to know what we are up to, can't they?
"I think we should talk," you send back after a moment.
"Why?" your friend asks sharply, not so much in denial as surprise.
"We are hardly doing anything he would object to, and being what he is I think we can trust his word to stay put." Even as you 'speak' it's clear he remains doubtful. So, deciding to appeal to the calculating preparedness that never quite lets go of his heart, you add: "If someone climbs down into this hold while we are away, better that they found an unbound angel than a cacophony of petty spirits."
"Hardly best practices..." he sends, then again to the angel aloud, as much as he is able, "Hardly best practices to let you loose given what we have in mind, but where we are going we will have need of all our strength. If you will consent to linger to the ritual's end, we have no objection to set you free to act as your essence demands."
"R...ritual?" It's clear the being before you had never found itself in quite this circumstance.
"To save my mother," Anippe pipes in. "She sent me with these fair-sworn blades, but it's her who was trapped by vicious foes and in the place she had so long sought besides."
The angel, Oriel, seems to be put even more off-balance by a wizard child than all the rest of your motley crew. He had been prepared to be summoned by a kindly mage to serve as a familiar or by a wicked sorcerer for purposes more foul, but being asked to stand in for a planar focusing lens was altogether stranger. More from force of habit and a desire to make the meeting make sense, he quizzes Sirim on what you are planning to do with the treasures you might find.
With some hedging, Sirim nonetheless admits: "I know not what we will find, but it will likely be of use."
Inside the helm the light pulses as Oriel looks over your gathered company, stopping, gaze snagging for a moment on Avarice, before he moves on. "As long as you bind no other celestials."
From the way Sirim undulates you guess his unshared thought be to something like 'make my job easier why don't you'. "Done."
"And do trap all three fiends to be delivered to a cleric of a goodly god at your nearest convenience."
"Three fer one!" Cob claps, getting a hesitant nod in response. And that is that.
Two more scrolls are burned of their magics and from the ether is called first a kind of cat with eyes of starry twilight that gives Pepper a befuddled feline look, and then what might have been confused for a kind of fey were it not for the soft light of her wings that reveals and does not befuddle. Then again, the Fair Folk claim to be the first creations of the divine, dwelling within the original canvas of the gods. Perhaps not all of them had abandoned the gods, or been abandoned by them. The legends are as strange as they are contradictory.
Before you know it the time has come again for Mina to sing for the third scroll produces, it seems from the dust of its disintegrating script, a sphere of brass set with a single glass eye, a pair of wings far too small to hold it aloft, and a pair of stubby arms, a dagger in one. Alas, it seems no more willing to give in to slumber than Oriel had.
"Suboptimal summoner, what do you seek?"
In response the shadows lurch around it, until it falls with a whistling snore.
"No," is all Sirim says before turning back to the next scroll.
Sirim Caster Check: 1d20+7 = 18 (Success) Arbiter Inevitable Will Save vs Sleep: 1d20+3 = 22 (Success)
Arbiter Inevitable Will Save vs Shadow Enchantment: 1d20+3 = 21(Failure)
"S...sorry," Mina trips over herself to say.
Sirim sends a brief wave of answering reassurance as he carried on with his casting this particular working, ending with what one can only describe as a wage of empathic nausea as whirling shards of crystal and polished gemstones whirl from empty air... before falling onto the floor with a thump.
"Shouldn't we help them? Ask them if they want to go free too?" you hear Oriel whisper poorly, not very secretly at all.
"What for? So they can confuse the mortals more?" the Lyrakien scoffs. "The spheres could do with less 'balance' between giving someone toasted candy apples and kicking them face-first into the fire. Oh look, he's doing a protean next. At least if those kick you into the fire they'll do it in a funny way."
"Evil can't be funny!" the angel proclaims primly.
"The twisties aren't evil, they're just kind of madcap."
Yet the result of Sirim's next conjuration definitely has no cap, though you can see why one might call it a 'twisty' as well as a protean. The whole thing seems to be nothing but strings of airy colors stretched out without substance through the air, fanning iridescent colors, at least until Mina's song sends it to sleep as a pile of matter that seems to somehow partake of the nature of silk, paper, and fine chains all at once.
As soon as that is done the cassisian seems to feel he should be calling something from the side too. So, more with dutifulness than with elan he calls. "Get a bucket! To... er... stick the demons in!"
Alas, the next denizen of the outer planes Sirim calls into the ever more crowded hold is an imp and it too manages to resist the call of slumber. It takes one look at the arrayed celestial spirits and shouts: "Entrapment!" before trying to flee at all speed.
"I'll get it," you call, shaping the magic in the next breath... but the thing somehow keeps awake.
Sirim Caster Check: 1d20+7 = 14(Success) Imp Will Save One: 1d20+4 = 20 (Success)
Imp Will Save Two: 1d20+4 = 23(Success)
Cob Attack: 1d20+15 = 28(Success)
Damage... Enough
"Foolish mortals, you cannot entrance me! I have endured the eye-spikes of Duke Grboz..." That is as far as it gets before Cob jumps on it and clubs it into the deck with the hilt of one of his many daggers.
"I do hope that it is not dead," Sirim says dryly.
"Nah, still twitches, see!" Cob pokes the unconscious imp by way of demonstration.
"Shouldn't we say something? I feel like we should say something..." Oriel looks towards the silvanshee who opens his eyes lazily to look where she had been directed.
"I see no problem here." Definitely still a cat.
What follows is a thoroughly unpleasant ball of flesh and eyes and teeth and a demon alike enough in form to the imp for that similarity to have been the doom of many a conjuror. Its will, or spite at least, proves strong, unlike it's ability to avoid Cob.
"And done!" Sirim proclaims with the satisfaction of a frustrating task well done as the final scroll melts into a kind of brownish sludge from the touch of the Pit. "Gorok, the sword if you please."
As the warrior does as he was asked Oriel lets out an audible gasp. "Where... where did you get that?"
"A servant of Haggakal," Mina explains gently.
"I know... I know that sword. Seen it in my dreams." The other two look at him oddly, all the more so when he adds. "Can I come with you on your quest?"
What does Kori think?
[] Sound reasonable, you could use the help
[] No, it's too dangerous for the poor thing
[] Write in
OOC: This was a lot longer than I anticipated, hope it works.
