[LOG] The Tomb of the True God of Cibola
Summary: This is why Liam is not allowed to make the plans.
Lacking the proper skull and bones of the True God of Cibola, and no good way to track the original skull and bones of the True God of Cibola, the team is faced with having to make their own skull and bones of a True God of Cibola. And the only place to get the skull and bones of a True God of Cibola is from an actual True God of Cibola. Luckily Gods are thick on the ground in Cibola. They're a bit like the monkeys but they fling less poo. Usually.
See Hrafnkel take peyote! Charles Glanworth light a forest on fire! Celeste de'Mandrake perform 'surgery' on a dead god corpse! Sir Taran Solaris have a shining moment of awesome! And a Shadowpath get repaired and the Black Road beaten back away from Cibola in the nastiest, gloppiest, most odoriferous manner possible.
And no one is the same. But Liam got to keep the headdress.
The group, with slightly different composition, has gathered back at the Tomb of the True God of Cibola -- such as Charles Glanworth's cannon has left it. The small brick building is completely stove in. The once proud throne of the God covered in teeth looks dirty and lopsided. The clearing around the building is covered in bits of zombie that have, for the last week, been rotting in the Cibolan sun. And the place breathes with decay and evil.
"Whelp!" Liam says brightly, "here we are. Back in the heart of wonderful Cibola with no bones of a True God to lay eyes on." Liam has a bag. "So we sort of have a dilemma. Either we try to find the bones wherever they went in Cibola -- and really, who else would buy a dead god's skull? -- or we make our own bones to lay eyes on. I have some gear I picked up..."
Valentine points out, "This is Cibola. Who /wouldn't/ buy a dead god's skull, given the option?"
Celeste squints, "Make...bones..?" she shifts weight restlessly and looks around, "This place gives me the heebies."
Taran raises an eyebrow. "If it is a god's bones, there are collectors in Amber that would keep it as well." The young knight settles his shield on his arm, studying the surroundings. "You would create a god to kill it and bare its bones?"
Charles is smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, but is keeping it well away from the long be-hosed weapon slung over his shoulder. "Seems like the long way around."
Hrafnkel stands, regarding Liam attentively through the briefing as he sucks drags of smoke from a modern looking cigarette. "The throne made of teeth did get to me, a little." He shrugs though, then, sighing and flicking ash. "Well, you all know how I feel about killing, but if you wan't to avoid it, I'll go along, anyway."
"Well..." Liam says as he shifts slightly, "I spent the week working down two lines of research. One is path to a city that /might/ be somewhere the bones could be fenced, but it's hard to tell how long ago they were taken. They might be in some other Temple somewhere being venerated. I don't have any way to track a missing object long gone. The other option is to perform a, ah, Cibolan ritual, summon a Death God, and slay it. Then inter its bones. Granted it's not the True God of Cibola, but with the Gods coming back, they're all True Gods."
Taran slants a look toward Hrafnkel. "Perhaps hunting down the original bones will also offer you a chance for murder," he says mildly. "If they are in another temple, I suspect the locals will not simply hand them over."
Celeste squints at Liam, "then it would be a true god, and /how/ precisely does one summon a cibolan death god?"
Liam runs his hand through his hair and gives Celeste a nervous laugh. "Well, it's surprisingly not very hard in Cibola. They're like lice. Gods. Everywhere."
Charles says, "Ain't sanitary, that."
Valentine thinks back. "The last time someone summoned a Cibolan death god around me--well, do we have to cut the heart out of anyone /important/?"
Hrafnkel smiles brightly towards Taran, with a long draw of smoke. "I enjoy your sense of optimism. But excuse makes it sound as though I take it lightly." He looks to Valentine. "Define, 'important'?"
Celeste squints at Liam, "There's something you're not saying. SPill."
"Yeah, those bastards always want warm beating heart sacrifices," Liam says.
Celeste says, "Not it!"
Charles says, "Didn't you hear? Begmans don't have hearts. Just ticking clocks."
Liam says, "Can anyone here detect, like, evil? Because the True God of Cibola's skull has to be one super evil relic. If it's in a Temple, we can send Celeste up to find it."
Valentine nods to Charles. "Real handy when it's Sacrifice A Foreigner Day again."
Celeste shakes her head, "All of cibola smells evil to me, sweetness."
"I was thinking," Liam states, "if we go the Summon a Replacement Super Evil God of Evilness Route, that we, you know, attack it before ANYONE gets their heart ripped out. You know, set up a trap, prep the tomb, and then grab the sucker."
Taran mms. "This summoning...would not be *creating* a death god, would it?" he asks mildly. "Just...acquiring one already present?"
Hrafnkel regards Liam. "The old sacrificial heart bait and switch ambush trick? Sure it won't see that coming?"
Valentine says, "Not if there's a cannon involved, it won't!" He turns to Charles. "Do you have another cannon?"
Celeste squints at Hrafnkel as if he's lost his mind before wondering to Taran, "What's the distinction, Sir?"
Charles says, "Nah, it'll be at least a week before I can get the boiler repaired." He thumbs the strap of his current worrisome-looking weapon. "Brought a Projector, though.""
"We would not be creating a death god," Liam states, "because I am neither evil nor completely crazy."
Valentine says, "Oh, then, we'll be totally fine. What could go wrong?"
Celeste gives Liam a somewhat dubious glance on the last claim.
Liam adds brightly, "I have a helpful book! I found it in the library. Where all helpful books are found."
Taran appears to be with Celeste in the judgment of Liam's goodness and/or sanity, but takes a deep breath and shuts his mouth.
Celeste smiles to Taran and lifts a hand to pat his shoulder.
Hrafnkel's weary gaze is distracted by Charles' new... item. He drifts over, cigarette hanging out of his lips as he cocks his head towards it. He gives frequent nods and murmurs to the others to reassure he's following the conversation.
"So do we look for the bones or do we make new ones?" Liam asks. "Do we have consensus?"
Celeste says, "We could spend a long time hunting for bones with questionable payoff. I saw if you know what you're doing..." She sighs heavily, "We make new ones."
Valentine claps Celeste on the shoulder. "It's the most fun! Scavenger hunts are boring, believe me."
Charles's new toy has a lot of hoses and valves and pipes, and a pair of reinforced brass tanks. Doesn't look pneumatic though. Who knows what it projects?
Celeste looks to Valentine, "Cousin, I love you dearly but I always worry when we agree on anything."
Hrafnkel nods vigorously. "Still down on the killing side of things, I'm afraid," he pipes in, still distracted with the item.
Valentine says, "...y'know, Celeste, I think that's pretty fair."
"If you can summon such a being without resorting to murder, and you are certain that it will fulfil the necessary requirements, then summon it," says Taran quietly. "I will do battle with it."
Celeste says, "If you need a lure, use me. I'm...I've got...well. You won't be able to kill me even if you try but I don't know how close it needs to be."
"Okay, okay," Liam sets down his big pack and starts pulling things out. A book, dusty and horrible, in Cibolan and stolen from the Royal Library. A big strange headdress which he promptly puts on. Pots of paint in red and green and black which he opens and starts putting on his face. "This is all necessary. We need to sit in a circle. Oh! And take some peyote. That's a requirement. It's in here somewhere..."
Celeste sighs in exasperation, "Why does everything with you require drugs?"
Valentine makes a broad gesture that indicates the place they're standing to answer Celeste.
Charles says, "Heathen drugs and mumbo-jumbo."
Celeste nods to Charles, "Agreed, Mr. Glanworth."
Taran sighs. "Of course. Just make certain that I do not get glared at when I come to tell the story to Pascal later, will you? Such things are not against my codes, but my cousin at times is rather stricter than they are."
Celeste says, "I...think we should refrain from telling your cousin that Liam got you stoned."
Hrafnkel looks between the others and moves dubiously to take a seat. "Maybe we should have brought some music to go along with it?" He looks to Charles reassuringly. "I'm sure my cousin would employ only the safest Unicorn fearing drugs."
Celeste quints at Hraf, "I hate to ask but...were you dropped on your head before your softspot hardened?"
Taran gives Celeste a wry smile. "I do not lie, my lady. I certainly do not lie to my kin. So I live in a manner that makes certain I need not."
"It helps to break down the wall between us and the Mystic Realms," Liam says. "In the Mystic Realms the Gods hear our call and they come scurrying." He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a plastic baggy with slices of a suspicious-looking cactus. He pulls one slice out and passes the baggy around. "It won't hurt you. It's all natural. And Cibolan. Although the bag is not, obviously."
Celeste says, "Omissions are not lies and they /just/ reconciled. C'mon. Keepin the peace is all."
Valentine takes a slice from the baggy and passes it on. "There's nothing wrong with drugs in the proper context. This? Totally the proper context."
Charles eyes his slice. "What, like herbs?"
"Yeah, except with a mellowing principle. It will make the killing and skinning and burial ritual go easier," Liam says.
Hrafnkel looks to Celeste. "You're making the troops uneasy. This is bound to be perfectly safe." He turns his attention back to Liam and takes his own bit when it comes around, passing it on.
Celeste snorts, "Fine."
Taran takes a slice and studies it. "I will hope that it does not hinder my fighting skill over much. Death gods likely do not die easily."
Liam pulls on the big feathered headdress and opens the big dusty book to a particularly interesting page. He looks vaguely ridiculous in paint, a big feathered headdress, a t-shirt and jeans, like some sort of demented Indian. He runs a finger down a page and says, "Ah! This looks good. I'll try this one." Then he starts reading the chant in a loud, even, theatrical voice. It doesn't seem like it needs much more prep than that around here -- a few 'worshippers,' the right frame of mine, a silly headdress, and a good chant.
Valentine drums his hands on his knees, and contemplates the nature of the universe.
Charles eyes his slice again, and shrugs. And so, the man with the flamethrower takes the powerful hallucinogen. What could possibly go wrong?
Celeste issues a soft rumble and watches dubiously. Liam's look draws a soft snikker.
Hrafnkel watches Liam don the thing, trying to look serious, still holding his bit of peyote in his palm. "Admit it. You had that lying around waiting for an occasion to use it, didn't you?"
Liam stops for a moment and bends down to reach into his bag. He pulls out a Cibolan death mask made of clay and covered in gold paint. He does this juggle with his book, headdress and mask to get the mask on and then puts the headdress back on. It doesn't help that he had facepaint on before this. "Of course I did. Don't be ridiculous." He goes back to chanting the strange Cibolan chant.
Hrafnkel nods, reassured, and pops his with a buttressing breath, washing it back with a swig from a wineskin and a grimace.
Strangely enough, even though this seems to be a joking half-ritual, the sky does darken and the entire area does start to smell more like dead worshipper bits and the earthly smell of death and evil.
Taran considers the peyote in his palm, purses his lips...then steps back from the circle - several steps back, actually - and waits, with his hand at the hilt of his sword and his bright shield at the ready. As the sky darkens, the knight smiles a small, grim sort of smile.
Celeste shifts restlessly and looks upwards, "oooh, this was a /bad/ idea...."
Hrafnkel drinks from his wine-skin, watching with pleasant intrigue. "This looks promising."
Valentine stares up at the sign. "It's a good sign! I mean, a sign of evil, I'll bet, but we want that."
Down at his side, Charles is snapping his fingers. Very quietly, almost unnoticable, but with a precise and unwavering rhythm. Perhaps it's keeping him from freaking out and spraying flaming naphtha over the jungle and everyone in it.
The air begins to take on that sharp TANG of electricity like the moments just before a really serious rain storm.
Celeste steps away from taran and her breathing alters. There's a sudden popping and groaning as she shifts into dragon form-the action announced by the sudden, intense blast of furnace likeheat as her form solidifies.
Taran breathes deep of the oncoming storm. "It is times like this I almost know what he was talking about," he murmurs, as if to himself. Then, more clearly to Celeste, "This is not the company one should keep if one is looking for *good* ideas, my lady. But whether I live or die at least it is a battle I am not ashamed to fight." His eyes return to the sky, anticipating.
Hrafnkel sniffs the air and betrays telltale signs of exuberance, as he sits there watching with a smile of anticipation.
Celeste laughs a rumbling, reverberating sound, "You are not gonna die. I won't permit it." as if her desire alone altered fate and reality.
Perhaps it is this place, already consecrated to evil and death. Perhaps this place knows that it is THE node at the end of the road of shadow path to Cibola. It is HERE that Cibola is anchored to the rest of the Golden Circle. The place nearly vibrates with evil. Grey smoke begins to leak out of the surrounding trees. Something green and foul issues from the tomb itself.
Liam keeps chanting. His voice has taken on a loud, even, rhythmic tone that sounds utterly inhuman.
Charles is sweating in only the way that a man who wears wool into a jungle can sweat. Without moving anything else, one hand pulls a stained handkerchief from his pocket, and mops at his forehead.
Celeste's tail lashes and her crest goes up, her rows of wicked looking teeth bared as she resists the urge to fly away from this insanity and waits for something to attack.
Hrafnkel notes the smoke and rises from his earthen seat, smiling mellowly. He unclasps his cloak and folds it tidily before laying it aside. Those nearby can detect him humming a chipper tune under his breath. Out comes the sword, with a few practice flicks to limber up his arm.
Valentine goes "oooooo" faintly.
Taran grins, teeth white in the gloom, and it's...not *quite* a human grin. "No, my lady, I am not," he agrees as his hand moves to grip the hilt of his blade. "To fight such an embodiment of darkness is what I live for. By the Graal's grace it will not take me down."
Charles says, "I ain't the only one what's seeing that smoke, right?"
Celeste rumbles softly, "You are particularly resplendant when you're serving your purpose, Sir Knight. It's rather awe inspiring."
In one moment there is nothing and no one in the center of the little group. Then comes a feeling of pulling. Gathering. Coming together. And the next moment there is a little old man. The same man from the node with the twisted basketball game. The Death God Cuancolotl. He looks around at the group and says, "Ah. You. I see I am going to eat your livers after all." And he immediately starts to change and grow...
Hrafnkel looks between charles and the smoke. "No, pretty sure I see it, too. Does it look green to you?" *whoosh-whoosh* he practice swings as he speaks boyantly.
Celeste's forked tongue laps her chops, "Nope, but I thought yours might be taste, even if you
Celeste says, "Are a bony geezer."
Valentine says brightly, "Hey! It's the guy with the cheerleaders!"
Charles says, "Augh! Sports!" He pulls his weapon off his shoulder, and fumbles to get it pointed in the right direction. "Bugger that!"
Hrafnkel seems relatively nonplussed. Summoned a death god, it came. Everything's going swimmingly in his world. Of course, he's not so stoned that he gets anywhere near between a death god and Charles with a flame thrower.
Taran simply draws his blade, shield at the ready, and approaches. Slowly, deliberately, as one does when one expects ...just about anything, from one's opponent. No words, no threats. It's a death god. Where would one even start?
The Death God Cuancolotl grows and grows and changes shape. He reaches almost twenty feet tall, like a huge, lumbering building. His form loses all human recognition and becomes giant and blob-like and covered in spots and tentacles. Bits of him drip off him and hit the ground -- and maybe local worshippers -- and goo. He has arms with hands. But he also has a thousand eyes.
The dead limbs scattered everywhere from the last time the group was here start to tremble, and then ooze their way to join the Death God. A strange green light emanates from the tomb.
Somewhere off in the wilderness, Liam continues to chant to keep the God summoned here.
RPG: Charles declares he is consuming token a9o:
-------------------------------------------------------------------[ a9o ]----
Author: Charles Held By: Charles
Date: Tue Aug 19 19:04:28 2008 Focus: 3
Title: Portable Naphtha Projector
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Created via Begman Artificer (BEG-AR): power-token rechargeable special token-0 token-3 token-6
Gift description:
The difference between a Begman Tinkerer and a Begman Artificer is that the artificer's device work. The character may construct rechargeable items in the form of 3 or 6-point tokens (representing the equivalent of 5 and 10-point RPG items). These constructs should always be mechanical in nature and have some sort of explanation for how they work. The explanation need not be logical or make sense in any meaningful way, but to a Begman, this is engineering, or at least mad science, and should be treated that way. Visually, the technology should not be more advanced than roughly 1900 on earth.
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Token Description
Just over a yard long, this weapon is a complicated mass of hoses, tubes, and pipes all wrapped around and nestled in a polished mahogany frame decorated with brass fittings. Two brass tanks, heavily reinforced, hang vertically from the bottom of the device. Hoses lead to a series of valves and gauges, controlled by a large lever at the back of the wooden stock, then past to a conical nozzle at the end of the device. A strange spring-driven mechanism rests by the end of the nozzle, linked to a secondary trigger at the rear of the weapon.
(OOC: This is a flamethrower. It only has a short range, and provides no mechanical bonus in combat, but expending this token allows the user to shoot fire for the duration of the scene, which has its own benefits. If the user takes a consequence in combat, the results can range from the inconvenient to the gruesome, depending on the outcome of negotiation, but the destruction of the weapon must always be accepted if requested.)
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RPG: Charles used the following +token/use targets: The End of the Cibolan Road
RPG: Charles challenges a difficulty of 12. Charles chooses Wits and the gift SKL-MK. Charles almost succeeds.
RPG: Celeste challenges a difficulty of 12. Celeste chooses Wits and the gifts DRG-BS, PHY-ST, and SKL-TD. Celeste succeeds.
RPG: Celeste declares that she has the Breath of the Dragon (DRG-BD) gift. Use '+gift DRG-BD' to view the gift description. Last edit: 27 months ago.
RPG: Celeste used the following +declare targets: The End of the Cibolan Road
RPG: Hrafnkel challenges a difficulty of 10. Hrafnkel chooses Grace and the gifts BLD-OB, SKL-WM, and STY-SW. Hrafnkel succeeds.
RPG: Taran challenges a difficulty of 10. Taran chooses Resolve and the gifts GKN-KG, PAS-CH, and SKL-WM. Taran succeeds.
RPG: Valentine challenges a difficulty of 10. Valentine chooses Grace and the gift STY-SW. Valentine succeeds.
Celeste issues a /TREMENDOUS/ roar of challenge and launches into the air, wings pumping and churning with power and speed. She climbs high into the air-to the point her image begins to shrink as she flies higher and then suddenly nosedives, her entire body streamlined and she falls out of the sky towards the god with alarming acceleration, at the last moment her talons lash out but she dows not spread her wings-hitting the god with her full force shiels built up, talons seeking to wound deep at the god's eyes.
Charles forgoes coherent language to weave a tapestry of profanity that spreads out over the jungle and, for all we know, can still be seen there. This seems to focus his mind somewhat, though, and he gets the Device oriented on the God. There's a spark and a sputter and a hiss, and then a gout of writhing, churning flame floods out of the nozzle, playing over the dripping body of the God. Sadly, death gods are not particularly flammable, and when the fire is finally reined in, there is little damage to be seen.
Taran is more cautious, but not by a whole lot. The Graal knight raises his bright sunburst shield and ...lets the death god *hammer* on it. Wherever this leaves an opening, the knight jabs his blade into it - but it's a terrible patience, an implacable resolve, that lends the Graal Knight an aspect of terror. Evil shall be cleansed from the land and darkness dispersed; the way he takes hits and deals wounds, it would seem there is no other acceptable resolution at all.
Hrafnkel is as wary of the flame from Charles as of the thing itself. He circles, trying to give as wide a space as he can, to try to approach the things flank. And then he begins hacking, his sword flicking in the low light as though trying to perform a one armed drum solo on it. He cuts, and cuts, and cuts, warding off tentacles that may come his way in between.
Valentine shouts something only slightly insane in Cibolan--that is, it's only a little bit insane to shout about "killing death for the glory of death" when in Cibola--and dashes forward between the enormous legs, doing vicious stab-stab-stabbing with his rapier. One would not think that a rapier would be all that effective on something that giant, but Tine is currently engaged in proving that it's not the size of the sword, but how you use it.
The Death God is far from done. It seems to be ripping life energy from the forest to fuel its angry fight. The trees die in huge circles around the clearing. Animals fall from the branches, twitching. Wave after wave of sheer malevolence pours from the creature. It opens hinged jaws to show rows of teeth and it ROARS. The ground shakes. It is harmed and large glops of it fall off and onto the ground but it is by no means stopping.
Liam, in the background, keeps chanting to keep the God here.
RPG: Hrafnkel challenges a difficulty of 10. Hrafnkel chooses Grace and the gifts BLD-OB, SKL-WM, and STY-SW. Hrafnkel succeeds.
RPG: Valentine challenges a difficulty of 10. Valentine chooses Grace and the gift STY-SW. Valentine almost succeeds.
RPG: Taran challenges a difficulty of 10. Taran chooses Resolve and the gifts GKN-KG, PAS-CH, and SKL-WM. Taran succeeds.
RPG: Celeste challenges a difficulty of 12. Celeste chooses Wits and the gifts DRG-BS, PHY-ST, and SKL-TD. Celeste almost succeeds.
RPG: Charles challenges a difficulty of 10. Charles chooses Wits and the gift SKL-MK. Charles succeeds.
"It's feeding off the jungle!" Charles declares, and in a leap of perfectly reasonable logic...turns his flamethrower outwards. A firebreak, of sorts, burning trees and squirrels before the God can drain them dry.
The trees, they do so burn.
Celeste doesn't relaunch, she bites and her long slender neck twists with bestial force to tear loose hunks of flesh her powerful maw latchesonto, her talons slash and rake cruelly. It is as if she has gone /ballistic/. As if this death god were personally responsible for the death of every dearly departed in her life. She tries to latch on wildly attempts to maul the god-unfortunately while she took out it's top eye-she's not making the same progress in her bestial rage.
Valentine is somewhat thrown off his stab-stab-stabbing by the abrupt need to avoid catching on fire in the process. "Good plan, Charles!" he shouts, and contemplates stabbing a tree. Somehow, it doesn't seem like the best use of his time. He turns back to pin-pricking the Death God, dancing about the edges of its nastiness and ick.
Hrafnkel seems to be subscribing to the 'death of a thousand cuts' strategy, hastily but patiently slashing and cutting in, dodging felinely between tentacle and arm swings, carving deeper and deeper with each boneless seeming flick of his arm. As the flames build around him it lends an aesthetic that seems to find his approval, as he smiles appreciatively. Almost wistfully. "oooh."
Taran is, by contrast, relentless. He fights not to take the lead but to center the god's focus on himself, on the Graal-and-sunburst crest...and on the long blade that cuts deeply at every offered opening. But mostly, the knight's indomitable will seems focused on getting the god's attention, so that others are freer to attack with wanton abandon.
The God is thrashing under the assault. It opens its jaws and makes an empty noise. Its many eyes are focused on Taran and the Graal-and-sunburst crest. It wants to consume it. Corrupt it. Force it all to decay. Around it the forest is dying and burning. Hrafnkel and Taran take out huge chunks of gloppy God that just lay on the ground and thrash around by itself.
RPG: Hrafnkel challenges a difficulty of 10. Hrafnkel chooses Grace and the gifts BLD-OB, SKL-WM, and STY-SW. Hrafnkel succeeds.
RPG: Charles challenges a difficulty of 10. Charles chooses Wits and the gift SKL-MK. Charles succeeds.
RPG: Taran challenges a difficulty of 10. Taran chooses Resolve and the gifts GKN-KG, PAS-CH, and SKL-WM. Taran succeeds.
RPG: Celeste challenges a difficulty of 12. Celeste chooses Wits and the gifts DRG-BS, PHY-ST, and SKL-TD. Celeste succeeds.
RPG: Valentine challenges a difficulty of 10. Valentine chooses Grace and the gift STY-SW. Valentine almost succeeds.
Celeste snarls and launches off the god to evade an attempt to dislodge her. Again wings flap powerfully, scales glistining and winking in the firelight as muscles snap taut with her motions. And again she dive bombs, talons snapping out at last moment and tail lashing at the creature so that the spaded tail cleaves into it's eyes along with her talons.
Charles gets the trees! Oh, those trees are rueing the day they crossed his path, yes indeed.
Hrafnkel is still humming, and still carving. He doesn't have so much ducking to do, as Taran distracts it, so he focuses and incising as deep and as much as he can, now mixing in deep hard stabs. There in the light of Charles' apocalyptically irreversible environmental impact, he humms, giggles, and cuts.
Valentine has lost his more accurate targets in the midst of raining godgoop. He stabs a few removed pieces that still thrash, before they can slurm their way towards anyone's ankles.
Taran fights with a relentless patience, taking strike after strike on his shield until the long-awaited perfect opening comes. The death god tilts in just the wrong way, just the wrong time, an error born of wounds and weariness, and its last. The Knight's bright blade plunges deep, cuts upward through the center of its body, and now the raised shield is deflecting a rain of gore as the Knight of the Graal wrenches his sword free with a ruthless sideways cut. As he steps back, it seems that death gods are really made up of...wow, a terrible lot of extremely odiferous goo. Skunks should have it so good.
The Death God shudders and lets loose a truly inhuman scream, a kind of screetch that splits the sky. It is the sound the Gods made when they were killed long ago by others from Amber. The thing just starts running goo everywhere in big black sticky sheets and then it sways. It sways backward and forward and then falls with an all-mighty WUMP on the ground. It is solid and for now, it is dead.
Liam pushes up the death mask and stops chanting. He yells, "QUICK! We have to perform a death ritual to celebrate its death! Then we need to rip out its skull, inter it in the tomb, and get the tomb patched up somehow! .... Um, is the forest on fire?"
Meanwhile, the forest is on fire.
Charles turns brightly, grinning beneath his goggles. "I took care of it!" he exclaims proudly, while the nozzle of his weapon still drip drip drips flaming goo to the ground.
Celeste 's head cranes, "Skull?" She considers the corpe and then shrugs her scaled shoulders, "I'll try." And like that she begins to show what teeth and talons were made for-dismantling one's kill. Flesh is efficiently removed as she roots and digs to free the thing's skull.
Valentine tries to remember Cibolan death rituals that can be performed rapidly. "Does anyone have a vulture?"
Hrafnkel gives Taran a sympathetic look across the freshly felled corpse, surveying his plight. He pulls a kerchief. "Good show, friend," he offers, passing the small cloth over. "Bad luck with that smell though. Try lemons when we get back?" Charles, of course, recieves a buoyant thumbs up!
"I don't have a vulture," Liam says and he pulls the mask over his face again. He flips to another page and says, muffled by the mask, "Good thing the FOREST IS ON FIRE or else I would have a hell of a time reading this book! GOOD THINKING THERE!" He starts yelling some new ritual and then adds, "People need to chant! Something! We have to venerate it and inter it!"
Taran accepts the cloth solemnly with a slight bow, wipes the goo off his face, and then uses it to wipe the goo from his crested shield. "It is of no concern right now. We must stop the fire from spreading and give the others time to perform the death ritual. Go - that way." He points. "Cut a trench, fell the nearest trees and push them toward the fire as they fall. I will go the other way and do the same. If we are quick it should cause the fire to burn itself out before taking the nearest villages with it."
Charles gives Hrafnkel a thumbs-up in return, and screws down the safety valve, stopping the flow of beautiful, beautiful fire.
Hrafnkel looks between his sword and the raging fire but... dubiously paces off to do his best in making a fire break, hacking down brush in a tidy line around it, trying not, in his state, to be distracted by the pretty lights.
Celeste's tail lashes-threatening to fling stinky god goo wish the motion . She peels and tears flesh off it's skull with teeth and talons-she's COVERED in god goo. She reaches back with her talons, hooking them beneath the jaw bone and cradling it against her hody as she backs up, hind haunches straining and a loow grrrrrrrrr of effort before there's a wet sucking POP! and she goes tumbling head over tail with the skull in her grip, at some point the glowing brain slips out with a wit, sickening PLOP! Celeste rumbles, now on her back clutching the skull, "got it!"
Liam is yelling over the sound of the burning forest and the building of the firebreak some kind of death god funerary ritual chant in pretty bad Cibolan.
Meanwhile, out of nowhere, because it's Cibola, it starts to rain.
Valentine chants, helpfully. He's even chanting in Cibolan. About death. That's got to count for something, ritual-wise.
Taran sets off in the opposite direction from Hrafnkel, doing exactly what he told Hraf to do - using his blade to cut a clearing in a wide circle, and fell nearby trees to push into the blaze where he has to. The rain helps - both to wash off the goo and dampen the fire a bit - but he works as quickly as he can.
Hrafnkel ohs skywards, figuring his job is done, then, and marches back towards the others with his somwaht trademark, if slightly duller than usual 'what now' look.Celeste hoists the god skull, "Take this, I'm gonna go roll in the fire to get rid of this stink."
Liam lifts a hand to Hrafnkel trying to get him to Join the Chant like some sort of freaky techno show. But then again, Celeste is offering Hrafnkel an enormous drippy horrible multi-eyed god skull.
Hrafnkel takes the skull, doing his best to go along mimicking the chanting. He holds it in his hands with a questioning look to the others as he soaks with rain. He copes somewhat better with this part than he otherwise might, but still seems uncertain.
Charles is keeping well clear of the fire - perhaps his weapon isn't entirely empty of fuel. In fact, he seems to be keeping his distance from most of the ongoing process, looking unnerved again.
And Taran's missing all of it, cutting the trench alone now, trying to finish the circle of firebreak before the rain lets up.
Celeste rolls to her feet and lunbers into the fire. She then flops over on her side and rolls in burning plant matter and smoldering embers and there's a low, gratified, "Ooooohhh...yeaah...." all that can be sceen is the kicking up of burning plaints and the occasional flailing of her tail.
Liam lifts the book in one hand and his empty hand in the other and continues to chant loudly at the dripping, horrible skull in Hrafnkel's hands. The skull in Hrafnkel's hands starts to glow with a sickly greenish light all of its own.
Meanwhile, the forest neither goes out nor really spreads. It mostly just burns but Taran's firebreak is keeping it from taking out the entire tomb.
Valentine tries to chant in unison. He's not reading from the same book, but he can try.
Hrafnkel holds the glowing skull aloft, mimmicking the chanting with a troubled and questioning 'Is this supposed to happen' looks to Liam.
When Hrafnkel holds the skull aloft, it BURSTS into sickly green light and the feeling of unease and evil rolls across the clearing.
Charles tries to find a corner.
Celeste emerges from the fire, smudged in ash-but no longer god goo, steam rolling off her scale and raindrops hissing angrily as they hit her scales. She pauses and looks like she's contemplating retreating back to her fire when she sees Hrafnkel holding concentraited evil.
Taran's teeth bare as he cuts that firebreak, now nearly done. It would seem the Knight is fighting an urge to cleave a skull in half.
Valentine says, "Ooooooo. Evil."
Hrafnkel continues holding but his chanting wavers. "Uhhh..."
Liam yells, "In the tomb! We must ritually bury it in the tomb and then ensure that the tomb works as a proper tomb! Can we do that?"
Charles says, "TRAPS! We need traps!"
Valentine says, "First the burying, then the trapping!"
Hrafnkel nods and hesitates before... running for the tomb, stoned, in the rain, holding a glowing death god skull.
Celeste watches, she has no clue how to trap evil. She follows to help with the burying, loping awkwardly after Hrafnkel.
The tomb is exactly as they left it: with a huge gaping hole where the door was, the lopsided throne, the interment point with the old bones -- which look much shabbier compared to this skull -- and the hole that the thieves originally came in. Nothing has changed except now the throne itself is glowing with the same sickly green light which makes the teeth set in the throne look very special indeed.
Finally finished with his firebreak, Taran comes to set his hand to ...trying to mend a tomb, it looks like. This seems to involve trying to jam trees into smaller holes and rocks into bigger holes, insofar as one man's capable of doing.
Hrafnkel runs clumsily into the tomb, holding the skull and looking around him as he skitters to an ungraceful stop. "What now?"
Valentine suggests, "Dig a hole?"
Charles has found his notebook, and is furiously scratching notes into it, examining the tomb from time to time. A close ear might hear things like 'poisoned needles' and 'pit traps' and 'bee cannons'.
"You're the High Priest of this guy right now," Liam says to Hrafnkel. "So you need to lay him to rest. You need to put him down --- but in a way that we can see his skull! And the rest of the bones! The old bones and the replacement skull! And, um, say some nice words about the Death God we summoned and killed."
Celeste skids to a stop and twists to avoid slamming into Hraf but smacks right into a wall with all 2000 LBS of dragon, falling back dazedly on her haunches, "Throne?" she suggests dazedly.
Hrafnkel uhs and nods at the input, struggling to process with a mask of anxiety. He cusses under his breath and takes the skull to the throne, turning it this way and that like it was some sort of puppet as he goes. "There... see the bones... rest now... laying you to rest, right here... where you can see the bones..." he croons, as he does.
"Hraf," Liam says gently, "There's a platform with the rest of the bones right over there." Liam points to the platform with the skull-less skeleton of some other previous True God of Cibola.
Hrafnkel ohs silently to Liam with an abashed look, taking the skull there, instead, eager to get rid of it.
The skull sort of sits there and glows ominously in a horrible way.
Valentine says, "Do we look at it now? Or not until the traps are in place?"
Celeste scoots back near the exit, tail lashing in clear agitation.
Charles mumbles, "Gonna take time to train the bees."
"We need to secure the tomb," Liam says and he finally pushes the death mask up onto his forehead again. "We need to get out and help Taran prop this place up."
Hrafnkel lets it sit there and glow as he backs away eagerly with Celeste. He seems to defer the trap question uneasily.
Celeste slinks out and looks over the temple. She begins to scoop up mud and grass from the rain, using it like spackle to cover the cracks and pack in gaps.
Hrafnkel fixes Liam with a sincere 'I just want to go home' look, seeming like the unhappy recipient of a bad trip, but he dutifully follows Celeste out to assist in repairs.
Liam stands in the tomb by the throne and stares at the skull. Apparently he is waiting for something to happen.
Valentine rubs the back of his neck, and says, "Maybe if we brought in some fresh paint..."
Celeste 's long neck stretches out and Hraf gets a tickling of a forked dragon tongue against his cheek while her talons work to shove mud in the cracks.
Taran is, by dint of being one of the non-stoned, working his tail off trying to repair the damage to the tomb. Stone blocks, tree trunks hacked to length with his sword...he's neither a carpenter nor a mason, but he's definitely doing all he can.
Liam calls over his shoulder, "It has to be enough to bind this guy and his skull to this place. We'll need to leave someone behind to properly trap the tomb..."
Celeste says, "Not it!"
Hrafnkel is trying his best despite his state, and is quite able of lifting rocks and mud, doing so with eager, if not coordinated or well planned efficiency.
Charles says, "Huh? Yeah, yeah, traps. Working on them."
Liam calls over his shoulder, "Something is working!"
Valentine shrugs. "I can hang out here for a few weeks working on traps. Why not?"
Celeste continues to work, carefully scailing the temple to work higher.
Charles waves distractedly towards Valentine. "Sure. Going to need a whole flippin' load of tar and eighteen penny-whistles."
The tomb flashes green again.
Valentine studies the temple. "What about the giant rolling ball? I bet we can get one of those locally."
Celeste carefully prowls the temple, looking over the joined efforts and examining her handiwork.
Hrafnkel continues slapping mud and stacking rocks and whatnot, encouraged by the calls and flashes of green.
Taran has, by now, slung his shield across his back and if he looks any better it's probably because rain and sweat are driving god-goo from his person. Oh, and dirt. And branches. And leaves. "Be careful with that hole in the wall, there are snakes in there," is all he has to say as he passes through looking for rubble he can use to shore up holes with.
Charles says, "Snakes! Very dangerous."
Charles looks pleased by this.
Valentine frowns. "Someone has to /feed/ snakes, though. We going to set up some sort of regular maintenance schedule?"
Celeste leaps down, "Snakes feed themselves. Many need only feed once every few weeks. They'll be fine."
The tomb goes from glowing a mere hideous green to glowing a very sudden ghastly green. Liam's figure within the tomb is a portrait in a sketched black as he stands there laying eyes on the Bones of the True God.
The building itself seems to pull itself together. It sits straighter. The blocks from Taran's, Celeste's and Hrafnkel's efforts align themselves. The throne slides back into proper position. It feels like a very horrible holy spot. Somewhere so terrible and awful no man would ever wish or desire to be within it. This place is dead and it is /terrible./
Then comes the sudden feeling of alignment as if this place is terrible in its own right, somehow. Everything flows from this central spot and then out again back down the Road and all the way to Amber. While this is a horrible place it is suffused with the Correctness of it's terribleness. The shadowpath aligns with Amber and rituals, once again, become functional. This is a place of Death, but it is a place of right death, the death of a True God who died here and had its skull ripped out and was interred.
Of course, the tomb is still a mess and the clearing is littered with the remains of dead god, fire, fire break, and zombie bits from the last visit here but hey, no one is perfect.
Celeste settles back on her haunches, "Uh. Is it done?"
Valentine shivers. "That was...that wasn't just the cactus, was it?"
Hrafnkel had been trying to stack rubble and rock and mud in a a crude immitation of architecture when the moment comes. If not an 'Ahh,' at least it's an 'eh'. De drops the muddy rock he'd been carrying with a sigh, sagging with relief. "I'm never, ever coming back here," he vows.
Liam is gone for several minutes and then he steps out of the small temple looking deeply shaken. He closes the door and he doesn't look particularly stoned. He says, "Yes."
Charles isn't paying a lot of attention. "The snakes eat the rats. The rats eat the honey. The bees sting the snakes."
Taran breathes out a long, weary breath as the work is done. "A strange people, to stare at death so baldly and yet think it would not come for them," he says quietly. "Only their enemies." He turns to walk toward the exit; if the unholiness of the place disturbs him, it shows only in the level of calm resolve he has *not* to retreat from it. "If our work is done, I request a return to Amber for a long bath."
"I cannot figure out who is more awful," Liam says, sounding profoundly shaken and not saying at all what the bones were like once the node activated. At all. Ever. "This node or Grandfather for having built it in the first place."
Celeste says, "Sage advice."
Celeste moves and nuzzles Liam comforting, "I'm sure there is good cause."
Hrafnkel seems, for this moment, to agree with Taran. "Aye... A bath and a drink." He looks to Liam. "I'm sure he had... some reason." He is already cleaning off his hands to reach for a trump.
Liam has stopped cold and looks at everyone still here and says, "Something is wrong. Something is very very wrong. And weird."
Valentine hesitates. "Aside from the whole 'summon and smite a death god then stare at it' thing?"
Hrafnkel looks up from trying to rinse his hands in rain water. He seems o be coming down, but his reply is still a not quite brilliant, "Huh?"
Liam frowns darkly and says, "First, I can feel that the Black Road has rolled back away from Cibola. I can feel it. Down in my bones. But that's /not it/."
Celeste frowns Liam, "Wrong and weird how, sweetness?
Taran tilts his head slightly, watching Liam with...honestly, about the same expression a miner might have when watching a caged canary. He says nothing, however - only waits.
Valentine tilts his head. "I'd call that /good/, mate, but I gather there's more."
Liam says, "The path is pretty old. All the paths are pretty old. But foreign ships only started coming, what, 200 years ago? But this path was already ancient by the time the ships came. There's something else important about Cibola. It's very important for some reason. I know there are stories about the swallow who flew the path, but the swallow, and Oberon, came here way before anyone started using it."
Hrafnkel frowns, listens, and makes no secret at all of not understanding.
Celeste says, "Uh. Well. I could I could talk to the priests and see what I can find out if maybe there are some tales to learn of that?"
Liam says, "We treat Cibola as a throw-away. But it's not. It's very important to Amber's underlying structure."
Celeste says, "Ooooooooooh."
Celeste says, "I get what you're saying. I understand."
Liam says, "And I don't get why but Oberon thought it was important enough to entomb a... a... thing here to anchor the point down. A long, long time ago."
Hrafnkel still listens revernetly and with fascination, but less than thorough comprehension.
Taran nods slowly, but says, "You still have not said what is wrong."
Celeste says, "It's about intention, and tradition. His acts, as you noticed bred stories, holidays, traditions. The same things that hold the nodes in shadow together hold Amber together and somehow interlace it to the cosmic whole."
"The path itself, the trading path, with the rituals, is about 200 years old," Liam says. "It's built on a much more ancient underlying structure. These paths are sitting on top of something else."
Regardless, Cibola is once again accessable through ancient paths to any who wish to find drugs, danger, and almost certain doom.
Celeste says, "OH. Hrrm."
Valentine says, "So...we fixed the wrong path?"
Liam says, "No, we fixed the right path. That's what makes it worse."
Celeste says, "I'm...so confused."
Liam says, "So am I. I think I need a bath and to go sit and think for a while."
Hrafnkel looks to Celeste and nods his head. "Welcome to my world."
Celeste says, "Good idea, sweety."
Liam says, "And I have to talk to Benedict. One of my five least favorite things to do."
Celeste says, "You want me to go with you, honey?"
Valentine asks, "Can I still trap up this temple?"
Celeste smiles to Liam, "Maybe it won't be so bad if I'm there to threaten to be a pain in his ass? Or, offer moral support?"
Liam tells Valentine, "You can still trap up the temple." He smiles to Celeste and says, "Either way. If you're available. I mean, I'm going to say, okay, it's done, and there's something weird and wrong here."
Celeste says, "You could just submit a written report, and I'm always available for you."
Celeste lays a dragon kiss on Liam's cheek.
"Anyway, I am grossed out beyond belief," Liam says. "Let's go home. Yes? No more Cibola. For now."
Celeste says, "Thank sweet holy unicorn."
Lacking the proper skull and bones of the True God of Cibola, and no good way to track the original skull and bones of the True God of Cibola, the team is faced with having to make their own skull and bones of a True God of Cibola. And the only place to get the skull and bones of a True God of Cibola is from an actual True God of Cibola. Luckily Gods are thick on the ground in Cibola. They're a bit like the monkeys but they fling less poo. Usually.
See Hrafnkel take peyote! Charles Glanworth light a forest on fire! Celeste de'Mandrake perform 'surgery' on a dead god corpse! Sir Taran Solaris have a shining moment of awesome! And a Shadowpath get repaired and the Black Road beaten back away from Cibola in the nastiest, gloppiest, most odoriferous manner possible.
And no one is the same. But Liam got to keep the headdress.
The group, with slightly different composition, has gathered back at the Tomb of the True God of Cibola -- such as Charles Glanworth's cannon has left it. The small brick building is completely stove in. The once proud throne of the God covered in teeth looks dirty and lopsided. The clearing around the building is covered in bits of zombie that have, for the last week, been rotting in the Cibolan sun. And the place breathes with decay and evil.
"Whelp!" Liam says brightly, "here we are. Back in the heart of wonderful Cibola with no bones of a True God to lay eyes on." Liam has a bag. "So we sort of have a dilemma. Either we try to find the bones wherever they went in Cibola -- and really, who else would buy a dead god's skull? -- or we make our own bones to lay eyes on. I have some gear I picked up..."
Valentine points out, "This is Cibola. Who /wouldn't/ buy a dead god's skull, given the option?"
Celeste squints, "Make...bones..?" she shifts weight restlessly and looks around, "This place gives me the heebies."
Taran raises an eyebrow. "If it is a god's bones, there are collectors in Amber that would keep it as well." The young knight settles his shield on his arm, studying the surroundings. "You would create a god to kill it and bare its bones?"
Charles is smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, but is keeping it well away from the long be-hosed weapon slung over his shoulder. "Seems like the long way around."
Hrafnkel stands, regarding Liam attentively through the briefing as he sucks drags of smoke from a modern looking cigarette. "The throne made of teeth did get to me, a little." He shrugs though, then, sighing and flicking ash. "Well, you all know how I feel about killing, but if you wan't to avoid it, I'll go along, anyway."
"Well..." Liam says as he shifts slightly, "I spent the week working down two lines of research. One is path to a city that /might/ be somewhere the bones could be fenced, but it's hard to tell how long ago they were taken. They might be in some other Temple somewhere being venerated. I don't have any way to track a missing object long gone. The other option is to perform a, ah, Cibolan ritual, summon a Death God, and slay it. Then inter its bones. Granted it's not the True God of Cibola, but with the Gods coming back, they're all True Gods."
Taran slants a look toward Hrafnkel. "Perhaps hunting down the original bones will also offer you a chance for murder," he says mildly. "If they are in another temple, I suspect the locals will not simply hand them over."
Celeste squints at Liam, "then it would be a true god, and /how/ precisely does one summon a cibolan death god?"
Liam runs his hand through his hair and gives Celeste a nervous laugh. "Well, it's surprisingly not very hard in Cibola. They're like lice. Gods. Everywhere."
Charles says, "Ain't sanitary, that."
Valentine thinks back. "The last time someone summoned a Cibolan death god around me--well, do we have to cut the heart out of anyone /important/?"
Hrafnkel smiles brightly towards Taran, with a long draw of smoke. "I enjoy your sense of optimism. But excuse makes it sound as though I take it lightly." He looks to Valentine. "Define, 'important'?"
Celeste squints at Liam, "There's something you're not saying. SPill."
"Yeah, those bastards always want warm beating heart sacrifices," Liam says.
Celeste says, "Not it!"
Charles says, "Didn't you hear? Begmans don't have hearts. Just ticking clocks."
Liam says, "Can anyone here detect, like, evil? Because the True God of Cibola's skull has to be one super evil relic. If it's in a Temple, we can send Celeste up to find it."
Valentine nods to Charles. "Real handy when it's Sacrifice A Foreigner Day again."
Celeste shakes her head, "All of cibola smells evil to me, sweetness."
"I was thinking," Liam states, "if we go the Summon a Replacement Super Evil God of Evilness Route, that we, you know, attack it before ANYONE gets their heart ripped out. You know, set up a trap, prep the tomb, and then grab the sucker."
Taran mms. "This summoning...would not be *creating* a death god, would it?" he asks mildly. "Just...acquiring one already present?"
Hrafnkel regards Liam. "The old sacrificial heart bait and switch ambush trick? Sure it won't see that coming?"
Valentine says, "Not if there's a cannon involved, it won't!" He turns to Charles. "Do you have another cannon?"
Celeste squints at Hrafnkel as if he's lost his mind before wondering to Taran, "What's the distinction, Sir?"
Charles says, "Nah, it'll be at least a week before I can get the boiler repaired." He thumbs the strap of his current worrisome-looking weapon. "Brought a Projector, though.""
"We would not be creating a death god," Liam states, "because I am neither evil nor completely crazy."
Valentine says, "Oh, then, we'll be totally fine. What could go wrong?"
Celeste gives Liam a somewhat dubious glance on the last claim.
Liam adds brightly, "I have a helpful book! I found it in the library. Where all helpful books are found."
Taran appears to be with Celeste in the judgment of Liam's goodness and/or sanity, but takes a deep breath and shuts his mouth.
Celeste smiles to Taran and lifts a hand to pat his shoulder.
Hrafnkel's weary gaze is distracted by Charles' new... item. He drifts over, cigarette hanging out of his lips as he cocks his head towards it. He gives frequent nods and murmurs to the others to reassure he's following the conversation.
"So do we look for the bones or do we make new ones?" Liam asks. "Do we have consensus?"
Celeste says, "We could spend a long time hunting for bones with questionable payoff. I saw if you know what you're doing..." She sighs heavily, "We make new ones."
Valentine claps Celeste on the shoulder. "It's the most fun! Scavenger hunts are boring, believe me."
Charles's new toy has a lot of hoses and valves and pipes, and a pair of reinforced brass tanks. Doesn't look pneumatic though. Who knows what it projects?
Celeste looks to Valentine, "Cousin, I love you dearly but I always worry when we agree on anything."
Hrafnkel nods vigorously. "Still down on the killing side of things, I'm afraid," he pipes in, still distracted with the item.
Valentine says, "...y'know, Celeste, I think that's pretty fair."
"If you can summon such a being without resorting to murder, and you are certain that it will fulfil the necessary requirements, then summon it," says Taran quietly. "I will do battle with it."
Celeste says, "If you need a lure, use me. I'm...I've got...well. You won't be able to kill me even if you try but I don't know how close it needs to be."
"Okay, okay," Liam sets down his big pack and starts pulling things out. A book, dusty and horrible, in Cibolan and stolen from the Royal Library. A big strange headdress which he promptly puts on. Pots of paint in red and green and black which he opens and starts putting on his face. "This is all necessary. We need to sit in a circle. Oh! And take some peyote. That's a requirement. It's in here somewhere..."
Celeste sighs in exasperation, "Why does everything with you require drugs?"
Valentine makes a broad gesture that indicates the place they're standing to answer Celeste.
Charles says, "Heathen drugs and mumbo-jumbo."
Celeste nods to Charles, "Agreed, Mr. Glanworth."
Taran sighs. "Of course. Just make certain that I do not get glared at when I come to tell the story to Pascal later, will you? Such things are not against my codes, but my cousin at times is rather stricter than they are."
Celeste says, "I...think we should refrain from telling your cousin that Liam got you stoned."
Hrafnkel looks between the others and moves dubiously to take a seat. "Maybe we should have brought some music to go along with it?" He looks to Charles reassuringly. "I'm sure my cousin would employ only the safest Unicorn fearing drugs."
Celeste quints at Hraf, "I hate to ask but...were you dropped on your head before your softspot hardened?"
Taran gives Celeste a wry smile. "I do not lie, my lady. I certainly do not lie to my kin. So I live in a manner that makes certain I need not."
"It helps to break down the wall between us and the Mystic Realms," Liam says. "In the Mystic Realms the Gods hear our call and they come scurrying." He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a plastic baggy with slices of a suspicious-looking cactus. He pulls one slice out and passes the baggy around. "It won't hurt you. It's all natural. And Cibolan. Although the bag is not, obviously."
Celeste says, "Omissions are not lies and they /just/ reconciled. C'mon. Keepin the peace is all."
Valentine takes a slice from the baggy and passes it on. "There's nothing wrong with drugs in the proper context. This? Totally the proper context."
Charles eyes his slice. "What, like herbs?"
"Yeah, except with a mellowing principle. It will make the killing and skinning and burial ritual go easier," Liam says.
Hrafnkel looks to Celeste. "You're making the troops uneasy. This is bound to be perfectly safe." He turns his attention back to Liam and takes his own bit when it comes around, passing it on.
Celeste snorts, "Fine."
Taran takes a slice and studies it. "I will hope that it does not hinder my fighting skill over much. Death gods likely do not die easily."
Liam pulls on the big feathered headdress and opens the big dusty book to a particularly interesting page. He looks vaguely ridiculous in paint, a big feathered headdress, a t-shirt and jeans, like some sort of demented Indian. He runs a finger down a page and says, "Ah! This looks good. I'll try this one." Then he starts reading the chant in a loud, even, theatrical voice. It doesn't seem like it needs much more prep than that around here -- a few 'worshippers,' the right frame of mine, a silly headdress, and a good chant.
Valentine drums his hands on his knees, and contemplates the nature of the universe.
Charles eyes his slice again, and shrugs. And so, the man with the flamethrower takes the powerful hallucinogen. What could possibly go wrong?
Celeste issues a soft rumble and watches dubiously. Liam's look draws a soft snikker.
Hrafnkel watches Liam don the thing, trying to look serious, still holding his bit of peyote in his palm. "Admit it. You had that lying around waiting for an occasion to use it, didn't you?"
Liam stops for a moment and bends down to reach into his bag. He pulls out a Cibolan death mask made of clay and covered in gold paint. He does this juggle with his book, headdress and mask to get the mask on and then puts the headdress back on. It doesn't help that he had facepaint on before this. "Of course I did. Don't be ridiculous." He goes back to chanting the strange Cibolan chant.
Hrafnkel nods, reassured, and pops his with a buttressing breath, washing it back with a swig from a wineskin and a grimace.
Strangely enough, even though this seems to be a joking half-ritual, the sky does darken and the entire area does start to smell more like dead worshipper bits and the earthly smell of death and evil.
Taran considers the peyote in his palm, purses his lips...then steps back from the circle - several steps back, actually - and waits, with his hand at the hilt of his sword and his bright shield at the ready. As the sky darkens, the knight smiles a small, grim sort of smile.
Celeste shifts restlessly and looks upwards, "oooh, this was a /bad/ idea...."
Hrafnkel drinks from his wine-skin, watching with pleasant intrigue. "This looks promising."
Valentine stares up at the sign. "It's a good sign! I mean, a sign of evil, I'll bet, but we want that."
Down at his side, Charles is snapping his fingers. Very quietly, almost unnoticable, but with a precise and unwavering rhythm. Perhaps it's keeping him from freaking out and spraying flaming naphtha over the jungle and everyone in it.
The air begins to take on that sharp TANG of electricity like the moments just before a really serious rain storm.
Celeste steps away from taran and her breathing alters. There's a sudden popping and groaning as she shifts into dragon form-the action announced by the sudden, intense blast of furnace likeheat as her form solidifies.
Taran breathes deep of the oncoming storm. "It is times like this I almost know what he was talking about," he murmurs, as if to himself. Then, more clearly to Celeste, "This is not the company one should keep if one is looking for *good* ideas, my lady. But whether I live or die at least it is a battle I am not ashamed to fight." His eyes return to the sky, anticipating.
Hrafnkel sniffs the air and betrays telltale signs of exuberance, as he sits there watching with a smile of anticipation.
Celeste laughs a rumbling, reverberating sound, "You are not gonna die. I won't permit it." as if her desire alone altered fate and reality.
Perhaps it is this place, already consecrated to evil and death. Perhaps this place knows that it is THE node at the end of the road of shadow path to Cibola. It is HERE that Cibola is anchored to the rest of the Golden Circle. The place nearly vibrates with evil. Grey smoke begins to leak out of the surrounding trees. Something green and foul issues from the tomb itself.
Liam keeps chanting. His voice has taken on a loud, even, rhythmic tone that sounds utterly inhuman.
Charles is sweating in only the way that a man who wears wool into a jungle can sweat. Without moving anything else, one hand pulls a stained handkerchief from his pocket, and mops at his forehead.
Celeste's tail lashes and her crest goes up, her rows of wicked looking teeth bared as she resists the urge to fly away from this insanity and waits for something to attack.
Hrafnkel notes the smoke and rises from his earthen seat, smiling mellowly. He unclasps his cloak and folds it tidily before laying it aside. Those nearby can detect him humming a chipper tune under his breath. Out comes the sword, with a few practice flicks to limber up his arm.
Valentine goes "oooooo" faintly.
Taran grins, teeth white in the gloom, and it's...not *quite* a human grin. "No, my lady, I am not," he agrees as his hand moves to grip the hilt of his blade. "To fight such an embodiment of darkness is what I live for. By the Graal's grace it will not take me down."
Charles says, "I ain't the only one what's seeing that smoke, right?"
Celeste rumbles softly, "You are particularly resplendant when you're serving your purpose, Sir Knight. It's rather awe inspiring."
In one moment there is nothing and no one in the center of the little group. Then comes a feeling of pulling. Gathering. Coming together. And the next moment there is a little old man. The same man from the node with the twisted basketball game. The Death God Cuancolotl. He looks around at the group and says, "Ah. You. I see I am going to eat your livers after all." And he immediately starts to change and grow...
Hrafnkel looks between charles and the smoke. "No, pretty sure I see it, too. Does it look green to you?" *whoosh-whoosh* he practice swings as he speaks boyantly.
Celeste's forked tongue laps her chops, "Nope, but I thought yours might be taste, even if you
Celeste says, "Are a bony geezer."
Valentine says brightly, "Hey! It's the guy with the cheerleaders!"
Charles says, "Augh! Sports!" He pulls his weapon off his shoulder, and fumbles to get it pointed in the right direction. "Bugger that!"
Hrafnkel seems relatively nonplussed. Summoned a death god, it came. Everything's going swimmingly in his world. Of course, he's not so stoned that he gets anywhere near between a death god and Charles with a flame thrower.
Taran simply draws his blade, shield at the ready, and approaches. Slowly, deliberately, as one does when one expects ...just about anything, from one's opponent. No words, no threats. It's a death god. Where would one even start?
The Death God Cuancolotl grows and grows and changes shape. He reaches almost twenty feet tall, like a huge, lumbering building. His form loses all human recognition and becomes giant and blob-like and covered in spots and tentacles. Bits of him drip off him and hit the ground -- and maybe local worshippers -- and goo. He has arms with hands. But he also has a thousand eyes.
The dead limbs scattered everywhere from the last time the group was here start to tremble, and then ooze their way to join the Death God. A strange green light emanates from the tomb.
Somewhere off in the wilderness, Liam continues to chant to keep the God summoned here.
RPG: Charles declares he is consuming token a9o:
-------------------------------------------------------------------[ a9o ]----
Author: Charles Held By: Charles
Date: Tue Aug 19 19:04:28 2008 Focus: 3
Title: Portable Naphtha Projector
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Created via Begman Artificer (BEG-AR): power-token rechargeable special token-0 token-3 token-6
Gift description:
The difference between a Begman Tinkerer and a Begman Artificer is that the artificer's device work. The character may construct rechargeable items in the form of 3 or 6-point tokens (representing the equivalent of 5 and 10-point RPG items). These constructs should always be mechanical in nature and have some sort of explanation for how they work. The explanation need not be logical or make sense in any meaningful way, but to a Begman, this is engineering, or at least mad science, and should be treated that way. Visually, the technology should not be more advanced than roughly 1900 on earth.
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Token Description
Just over a yard long, this weapon is a complicated mass of hoses, tubes, and pipes all wrapped around and nestled in a polished mahogany frame decorated with brass fittings. Two brass tanks, heavily reinforced, hang vertically from the bottom of the device. Hoses lead to a series of valves and gauges, controlled by a large lever at the back of the wooden stock, then past to a conical nozzle at the end of the device. A strange spring-driven mechanism rests by the end of the nozzle, linked to a secondary trigger at the rear of the weapon.
(OOC: This is a flamethrower. It only has a short range, and provides no mechanical bonus in combat, but expending this token allows the user to shoot fire for the duration of the scene, which has its own benefits. If the user takes a consequence in combat, the results can range from the inconvenient to the gruesome, depending on the outcome of negotiation, but the destruction of the weapon must always be accepted if requested.)
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RPG: Charles used the following +token/use targets: The End of the Cibolan Road
RPG: Charles challenges a difficulty of 12. Charles chooses Wits and the gift SKL-MK. Charles almost succeeds.
RPG: Celeste challenges a difficulty of 12. Celeste chooses Wits and the gifts DRG-BS, PHY-ST, and SKL-TD. Celeste succeeds.
RPG: Celeste declares that she has the Breath of the Dragon (DRG-BD) gift. Use '+gift DRG-BD' to view the gift description. Last edit: 27 months ago.
RPG: Celeste used the following +declare targets: The End of the Cibolan Road
RPG: Hrafnkel challenges a difficulty of 10. Hrafnkel chooses Grace and the gifts BLD-OB, SKL-WM, and STY-SW. Hrafnkel succeeds.
RPG: Taran challenges a difficulty of 10. Taran chooses Resolve and the gifts GKN-KG, PAS-CH, and SKL-WM. Taran succeeds.
RPG: Valentine challenges a difficulty of 10. Valentine chooses Grace and the gift STY-SW. Valentine succeeds.
Celeste issues a /TREMENDOUS/ roar of challenge and launches into the air, wings pumping and churning with power and speed. She climbs high into the air-to the point her image begins to shrink as she flies higher and then suddenly nosedives, her entire body streamlined and she falls out of the sky towards the god with alarming acceleration, at the last moment her talons lash out but she dows not spread her wings-hitting the god with her full force shiels built up, talons seeking to wound deep at the god's eyes.
Charles forgoes coherent language to weave a tapestry of profanity that spreads out over the jungle and, for all we know, can still be seen there. This seems to focus his mind somewhat, though, and he gets the Device oriented on the God. There's a spark and a sputter and a hiss, and then a gout of writhing, churning flame floods out of the nozzle, playing over the dripping body of the God. Sadly, death gods are not particularly flammable, and when the fire is finally reined in, there is little damage to be seen.
Taran is more cautious, but not by a whole lot. The Graal knight raises his bright sunburst shield and ...lets the death god *hammer* on it. Wherever this leaves an opening, the knight jabs his blade into it - but it's a terrible patience, an implacable resolve, that lends the Graal Knight an aspect of terror. Evil shall be cleansed from the land and darkness dispersed; the way he takes hits and deals wounds, it would seem there is no other acceptable resolution at all.
Hrafnkel is as wary of the flame from Charles as of the thing itself. He circles, trying to give as wide a space as he can, to try to approach the things flank. And then he begins hacking, his sword flicking in the low light as though trying to perform a one armed drum solo on it. He cuts, and cuts, and cuts, warding off tentacles that may come his way in between.
Valentine shouts something only slightly insane in Cibolan--that is, it's only a little bit insane to shout about "killing death for the glory of death" when in Cibola--and dashes forward between the enormous legs, doing vicious stab-stab-stabbing with his rapier. One would not think that a rapier would be all that effective on something that giant, but Tine is currently engaged in proving that it's not the size of the sword, but how you use it.
The Death God is far from done. It seems to be ripping life energy from the forest to fuel its angry fight. The trees die in huge circles around the clearing. Animals fall from the branches, twitching. Wave after wave of sheer malevolence pours from the creature. It opens hinged jaws to show rows of teeth and it ROARS. The ground shakes. It is harmed and large glops of it fall off and onto the ground but it is by no means stopping.
Liam, in the background, keeps chanting to keep the God here.
RPG: Hrafnkel challenges a difficulty of 10. Hrafnkel chooses Grace and the gifts BLD-OB, SKL-WM, and STY-SW. Hrafnkel succeeds.
RPG: Valentine challenges a difficulty of 10. Valentine chooses Grace and the gift STY-SW. Valentine almost succeeds.
RPG: Taran challenges a difficulty of 10. Taran chooses Resolve and the gifts GKN-KG, PAS-CH, and SKL-WM. Taran succeeds.
RPG: Celeste challenges a difficulty of 12. Celeste chooses Wits and the gifts DRG-BS, PHY-ST, and SKL-TD. Celeste almost succeeds.
RPG: Charles challenges a difficulty of 10. Charles chooses Wits and the gift SKL-MK. Charles succeeds.
"It's feeding off the jungle!" Charles declares, and in a leap of perfectly reasonable logic...turns his flamethrower outwards. A firebreak, of sorts, burning trees and squirrels before the God can drain them dry.
The trees, they do so burn.
Celeste doesn't relaunch, she bites and her long slender neck twists with bestial force to tear loose hunks of flesh her powerful maw latchesonto, her talons slash and rake cruelly. It is as if she has gone /ballistic/. As if this death god were personally responsible for the death of every dearly departed in her life. She tries to latch on wildly attempts to maul the god-unfortunately while she took out it's top eye-she's not making the same progress in her bestial rage.
Valentine is somewhat thrown off his stab-stab-stabbing by the abrupt need to avoid catching on fire in the process. "Good plan, Charles!" he shouts, and contemplates stabbing a tree. Somehow, it doesn't seem like the best use of his time. He turns back to pin-pricking the Death God, dancing about the edges of its nastiness and ick.
Hrafnkel seems to be subscribing to the 'death of a thousand cuts' strategy, hastily but patiently slashing and cutting in, dodging felinely between tentacle and arm swings, carving deeper and deeper with each boneless seeming flick of his arm. As the flames build around him it lends an aesthetic that seems to find his approval, as he smiles appreciatively. Almost wistfully. "oooh."
Taran is, by contrast, relentless. He fights not to take the lead but to center the god's focus on himself, on the Graal-and-sunburst crest...and on the long blade that cuts deeply at every offered opening. But mostly, the knight's indomitable will seems focused on getting the god's attention, so that others are freer to attack with wanton abandon.
The God is thrashing under the assault. It opens its jaws and makes an empty noise. Its many eyes are focused on Taran and the Graal-and-sunburst crest. It wants to consume it. Corrupt it. Force it all to decay. Around it the forest is dying and burning. Hrafnkel and Taran take out huge chunks of gloppy God that just lay on the ground and thrash around by itself.
RPG: Hrafnkel challenges a difficulty of 10. Hrafnkel chooses Grace and the gifts BLD-OB, SKL-WM, and STY-SW. Hrafnkel succeeds.
RPG: Charles challenges a difficulty of 10. Charles chooses Wits and the gift SKL-MK. Charles succeeds.
RPG: Taran challenges a difficulty of 10. Taran chooses Resolve and the gifts GKN-KG, PAS-CH, and SKL-WM. Taran succeeds.
RPG: Celeste challenges a difficulty of 12. Celeste chooses Wits and the gifts DRG-BS, PHY-ST, and SKL-TD. Celeste succeeds.
RPG: Valentine challenges a difficulty of 10. Valentine chooses Grace and the gift STY-SW. Valentine almost succeeds.
Celeste snarls and launches off the god to evade an attempt to dislodge her. Again wings flap powerfully, scales glistining and winking in the firelight as muscles snap taut with her motions. And again she dive bombs, talons snapping out at last moment and tail lashing at the creature so that the spaded tail cleaves into it's eyes along with her talons.
Charles gets the trees! Oh, those trees are rueing the day they crossed his path, yes indeed.
Hrafnkel is still humming, and still carving. He doesn't have so much ducking to do, as Taran distracts it, so he focuses and incising as deep and as much as he can, now mixing in deep hard stabs. There in the light of Charles' apocalyptically irreversible environmental impact, he humms, giggles, and cuts.
Valentine has lost his more accurate targets in the midst of raining godgoop. He stabs a few removed pieces that still thrash, before they can slurm their way towards anyone's ankles.
Taran fights with a relentless patience, taking strike after strike on his shield until the long-awaited perfect opening comes. The death god tilts in just the wrong way, just the wrong time, an error born of wounds and weariness, and its last. The Knight's bright blade plunges deep, cuts upward through the center of its body, and now the raised shield is deflecting a rain of gore as the Knight of the Graal wrenches his sword free with a ruthless sideways cut. As he steps back, it seems that death gods are really made up of...wow, a terrible lot of extremely odiferous goo. Skunks should have it so good.
The Death God shudders and lets loose a truly inhuman scream, a kind of screetch that splits the sky. It is the sound the Gods made when they were killed long ago by others from Amber. The thing just starts running goo everywhere in big black sticky sheets and then it sways. It sways backward and forward and then falls with an all-mighty WUMP on the ground. It is solid and for now, it is dead.
Liam pushes up the death mask and stops chanting. He yells, "QUICK! We have to perform a death ritual to celebrate its death! Then we need to rip out its skull, inter it in the tomb, and get the tomb patched up somehow! .... Um, is the forest on fire?"
Meanwhile, the forest is on fire.
Charles turns brightly, grinning beneath his goggles. "I took care of it!" he exclaims proudly, while the nozzle of his weapon still drip drip drips flaming goo to the ground.
Celeste 's head cranes, "Skull?" She considers the corpe and then shrugs her scaled shoulders, "I'll try." And like that she begins to show what teeth and talons were made for-dismantling one's kill. Flesh is efficiently removed as she roots and digs to free the thing's skull.
Valentine tries to remember Cibolan death rituals that can be performed rapidly. "Does anyone have a vulture?"
Hrafnkel gives Taran a sympathetic look across the freshly felled corpse, surveying his plight. He pulls a kerchief. "Good show, friend," he offers, passing the small cloth over. "Bad luck with that smell though. Try lemons when we get back?" Charles, of course, recieves a buoyant thumbs up!
"I don't have a vulture," Liam says and he pulls the mask over his face again. He flips to another page and says, muffled by the mask, "Good thing the FOREST IS ON FIRE or else I would have a hell of a time reading this book! GOOD THINKING THERE!" He starts yelling some new ritual and then adds, "People need to chant! Something! We have to venerate it and inter it!"
Taran accepts the cloth solemnly with a slight bow, wipes the goo off his face, and then uses it to wipe the goo from his crested shield. "It is of no concern right now. We must stop the fire from spreading and give the others time to perform the death ritual. Go - that way." He points. "Cut a trench, fell the nearest trees and push them toward the fire as they fall. I will go the other way and do the same. If we are quick it should cause the fire to burn itself out before taking the nearest villages with it."
Charles gives Hrafnkel a thumbs-up in return, and screws down the safety valve, stopping the flow of beautiful, beautiful fire.
Hrafnkel looks between his sword and the raging fire but... dubiously paces off to do his best in making a fire break, hacking down brush in a tidy line around it, trying not, in his state, to be distracted by the pretty lights.
Celeste's tail lashes-threatening to fling stinky god goo wish the motion . She peels and tears flesh off it's skull with teeth and talons-she's COVERED in god goo. She reaches back with her talons, hooking them beneath the jaw bone and cradling it against her hody as she backs up, hind haunches straining and a loow grrrrrrrrr of effort before there's a wet sucking POP! and she goes tumbling head over tail with the skull in her grip, at some point the glowing brain slips out with a wit, sickening PLOP! Celeste rumbles, now on her back clutching the skull, "got it!"
Liam is yelling over the sound of the burning forest and the building of the firebreak some kind of death god funerary ritual chant in pretty bad Cibolan.
Meanwhile, out of nowhere, because it's Cibola, it starts to rain.
Valentine chants, helpfully. He's even chanting in Cibolan. About death. That's got to count for something, ritual-wise.
Taran sets off in the opposite direction from Hrafnkel, doing exactly what he told Hraf to do - using his blade to cut a clearing in a wide circle, and fell nearby trees to push into the blaze where he has to. The rain helps - both to wash off the goo and dampen the fire a bit - but he works as quickly as he can.
Hrafnkel ohs skywards, figuring his job is done, then, and marches back towards the others with his somwaht trademark, if slightly duller than usual 'what now' look.Celeste hoists the god skull, "Take this, I'm gonna go roll in the fire to get rid of this stink."
Liam lifts a hand to Hrafnkel trying to get him to Join the Chant like some sort of freaky techno show. But then again, Celeste is offering Hrafnkel an enormous drippy horrible multi-eyed god skull.
Hrafnkel takes the skull, doing his best to go along mimicking the chanting. He holds it in his hands with a questioning look to the others as he soaks with rain. He copes somewhat better with this part than he otherwise might, but still seems uncertain.
Charles is keeping well clear of the fire - perhaps his weapon isn't entirely empty of fuel. In fact, he seems to be keeping his distance from most of the ongoing process, looking unnerved again.
And Taran's missing all of it, cutting the trench alone now, trying to finish the circle of firebreak before the rain lets up.
Celeste rolls to her feet and lunbers into the fire. She then flops over on her side and rolls in burning plant matter and smoldering embers and there's a low, gratified, "Ooooohhh...yeaah...." all that can be sceen is the kicking up of burning plaints and the occasional flailing of her tail.
Liam lifts the book in one hand and his empty hand in the other and continues to chant loudly at the dripping, horrible skull in Hrafnkel's hands. The skull in Hrafnkel's hands starts to glow with a sickly greenish light all of its own.
Meanwhile, the forest neither goes out nor really spreads. It mostly just burns but Taran's firebreak is keeping it from taking out the entire tomb.
Valentine tries to chant in unison. He's not reading from the same book, but he can try.
Hrafnkel holds the glowing skull aloft, mimmicking the chanting with a troubled and questioning 'Is this supposed to happen' looks to Liam.
When Hrafnkel holds the skull aloft, it BURSTS into sickly green light and the feeling of unease and evil rolls across the clearing.
Charles tries to find a corner.
Celeste emerges from the fire, smudged in ash-but no longer god goo, steam rolling off her scale and raindrops hissing angrily as they hit her scales. She pauses and looks like she's contemplating retreating back to her fire when she sees Hrafnkel holding concentraited evil.
Taran's teeth bare as he cuts that firebreak, now nearly done. It would seem the Knight is fighting an urge to cleave a skull in half.
Valentine says, "Ooooooo. Evil."
Hrafnkel continues holding but his chanting wavers. "Uhhh..."
Liam yells, "In the tomb! We must ritually bury it in the tomb and then ensure that the tomb works as a proper tomb! Can we do that?"
Charles says, "TRAPS! We need traps!"
Valentine says, "First the burying, then the trapping!"
Hrafnkel nods and hesitates before... running for the tomb, stoned, in the rain, holding a glowing death god skull.
Celeste watches, she has no clue how to trap evil. She follows to help with the burying, loping awkwardly after Hrafnkel.
The tomb is exactly as they left it: with a huge gaping hole where the door was, the lopsided throne, the interment point with the old bones -- which look much shabbier compared to this skull -- and the hole that the thieves originally came in. Nothing has changed except now the throne itself is glowing with the same sickly green light which makes the teeth set in the throne look very special indeed.
Finally finished with his firebreak, Taran comes to set his hand to ...trying to mend a tomb, it looks like. This seems to involve trying to jam trees into smaller holes and rocks into bigger holes, insofar as one man's capable of doing.
Hrafnkel runs clumsily into the tomb, holding the skull and looking around him as he skitters to an ungraceful stop. "What now?"
Valentine suggests, "Dig a hole?"
Charles has found his notebook, and is furiously scratching notes into it, examining the tomb from time to time. A close ear might hear things like 'poisoned needles' and 'pit traps' and 'bee cannons'.
"You're the High Priest of this guy right now," Liam says to Hrafnkel. "So you need to lay him to rest. You need to put him down --- but in a way that we can see his skull! And the rest of the bones! The old bones and the replacement skull! And, um, say some nice words about the Death God we summoned and killed."
Celeste skids to a stop and twists to avoid slamming into Hraf but smacks right into a wall with all 2000 LBS of dragon, falling back dazedly on her haunches, "Throne?" she suggests dazedly.
Hrafnkel uhs and nods at the input, struggling to process with a mask of anxiety. He cusses under his breath and takes the skull to the throne, turning it this way and that like it was some sort of puppet as he goes. "There... see the bones... rest now... laying you to rest, right here... where you can see the bones..." he croons, as he does.
"Hraf," Liam says gently, "There's a platform with the rest of the bones right over there." Liam points to the platform with the skull-less skeleton of some other previous True God of Cibola.
Hrafnkel ohs silently to Liam with an abashed look, taking the skull there, instead, eager to get rid of it.
The skull sort of sits there and glows ominously in a horrible way.
Valentine says, "Do we look at it now? Or not until the traps are in place?"
Celeste scoots back near the exit, tail lashing in clear agitation.
Charles mumbles, "Gonna take time to train the bees."
"We need to secure the tomb," Liam says and he finally pushes the death mask up onto his forehead again. "We need to get out and help Taran prop this place up."
Hrafnkel lets it sit there and glow as he backs away eagerly with Celeste. He seems to defer the trap question uneasily.
Celeste slinks out and looks over the temple. She begins to scoop up mud and grass from the rain, using it like spackle to cover the cracks and pack in gaps.
Hrafnkel fixes Liam with a sincere 'I just want to go home' look, seeming like the unhappy recipient of a bad trip, but he dutifully follows Celeste out to assist in repairs.
Liam stands in the tomb by the throne and stares at the skull. Apparently he is waiting for something to happen.
Valentine rubs the back of his neck, and says, "Maybe if we brought in some fresh paint..."
Celeste 's long neck stretches out and Hraf gets a tickling of a forked dragon tongue against his cheek while her talons work to shove mud in the cracks.
Taran is, by dint of being one of the non-stoned, working his tail off trying to repair the damage to the tomb. Stone blocks, tree trunks hacked to length with his sword...he's neither a carpenter nor a mason, but he's definitely doing all he can.
Liam calls over his shoulder, "It has to be enough to bind this guy and his skull to this place. We'll need to leave someone behind to properly trap the tomb..."
Celeste says, "Not it!"
Hrafnkel is trying his best despite his state, and is quite able of lifting rocks and mud, doing so with eager, if not coordinated or well planned efficiency.
Charles says, "Huh? Yeah, yeah, traps. Working on them."
Liam calls over his shoulder, "Something is working!"
Valentine shrugs. "I can hang out here for a few weeks working on traps. Why not?"
Celeste continues to work, carefully scailing the temple to work higher.
Charles waves distractedly towards Valentine. "Sure. Going to need a whole flippin' load of tar and eighteen penny-whistles."
The tomb flashes green again.
Valentine studies the temple. "What about the giant rolling ball? I bet we can get one of those locally."
Celeste carefully prowls the temple, looking over the joined efforts and examining her handiwork.
Hrafnkel continues slapping mud and stacking rocks and whatnot, encouraged by the calls and flashes of green.
Taran has, by now, slung his shield across his back and if he looks any better it's probably because rain and sweat are driving god-goo from his person. Oh, and dirt. And branches. And leaves. "Be careful with that hole in the wall, there are snakes in there," is all he has to say as he passes through looking for rubble he can use to shore up holes with.
Charles says, "Snakes! Very dangerous."
Charles looks pleased by this.
Valentine frowns. "Someone has to /feed/ snakes, though. We going to set up some sort of regular maintenance schedule?"
Celeste leaps down, "Snakes feed themselves. Many need only feed once every few weeks. They'll be fine."
The tomb goes from glowing a mere hideous green to glowing a very sudden ghastly green. Liam's figure within the tomb is a portrait in a sketched black as he stands there laying eyes on the Bones of the True God.
The building itself seems to pull itself together. It sits straighter. The blocks from Taran's, Celeste's and Hrafnkel's efforts align themselves. The throne slides back into proper position. It feels like a very horrible holy spot. Somewhere so terrible and awful no man would ever wish or desire to be within it. This place is dead and it is /terrible./
Then comes the sudden feeling of alignment as if this place is terrible in its own right, somehow. Everything flows from this central spot and then out again back down the Road and all the way to Amber. While this is a horrible place it is suffused with the Correctness of it's terribleness. The shadowpath aligns with Amber and rituals, once again, become functional. This is a place of Death, but it is a place of right death, the death of a True God who died here and had its skull ripped out and was interred.
Of course, the tomb is still a mess and the clearing is littered with the remains of dead god, fire, fire break, and zombie bits from the last visit here but hey, no one is perfect.
Celeste settles back on her haunches, "Uh. Is it done?"
Valentine shivers. "That was...that wasn't just the cactus, was it?"
Hrafnkel had been trying to stack rubble and rock and mud in a a crude immitation of architecture when the moment comes. If not an 'Ahh,' at least it's an 'eh'. De drops the muddy rock he'd been carrying with a sigh, sagging with relief. "I'm never, ever coming back here," he vows.
Liam is gone for several minutes and then he steps out of the small temple looking deeply shaken. He closes the door and he doesn't look particularly stoned. He says, "Yes."
Charles isn't paying a lot of attention. "The snakes eat the rats. The rats eat the honey. The bees sting the snakes."
Taran breathes out a long, weary breath as the work is done. "A strange people, to stare at death so baldly and yet think it would not come for them," he says quietly. "Only their enemies." He turns to walk toward the exit; if the unholiness of the place disturbs him, it shows only in the level of calm resolve he has *not* to retreat from it. "If our work is done, I request a return to Amber for a long bath."
"I cannot figure out who is more awful," Liam says, sounding profoundly shaken and not saying at all what the bones were like once the node activated. At all. Ever. "This node or Grandfather for having built it in the first place."
Celeste says, "Sage advice."
Celeste moves and nuzzles Liam comforting, "I'm sure there is good cause."
Hrafnkel seems, for this moment, to agree with Taran. "Aye... A bath and a drink." He looks to Liam. "I'm sure he had... some reason." He is already cleaning off his hands to reach for a trump.
Liam has stopped cold and looks at everyone still here and says, "Something is wrong. Something is very very wrong. And weird."
Valentine hesitates. "Aside from the whole 'summon and smite a death god then stare at it' thing?"
Hrafnkel looks up from trying to rinse his hands in rain water. He seems o be coming down, but his reply is still a not quite brilliant, "Huh?"
Liam frowns darkly and says, "First, I can feel that the Black Road has rolled back away from Cibola. I can feel it. Down in my bones. But that's /not it/."
Celeste frowns Liam, "Wrong and weird how, sweetness?
Taran tilts his head slightly, watching Liam with...honestly, about the same expression a miner might have when watching a caged canary. He says nothing, however - only waits.
Valentine tilts his head. "I'd call that /good/, mate, but I gather there's more."
Liam says, "The path is pretty old. All the paths are pretty old. But foreign ships only started coming, what, 200 years ago? But this path was already ancient by the time the ships came. There's something else important about Cibola. It's very important for some reason. I know there are stories about the swallow who flew the path, but the swallow, and Oberon, came here way before anyone started using it."
Hrafnkel frowns, listens, and makes no secret at all of not understanding.
Celeste says, "Uh. Well. I could I could talk to the priests and see what I can find out if maybe there are some tales to learn of that?"
Liam says, "We treat Cibola as a throw-away. But it's not. It's very important to Amber's underlying structure."
Celeste says, "Ooooooooooh."
Celeste says, "I get what you're saying. I understand."
Liam says, "And I don't get why but Oberon thought it was important enough to entomb a... a... thing here to anchor the point down. A long, long time ago."
Hrafnkel still listens revernetly and with fascination, but less than thorough comprehension.
Taran nods slowly, but says, "You still have not said what is wrong."
Celeste says, "It's about intention, and tradition. His acts, as you noticed bred stories, holidays, traditions. The same things that hold the nodes in shadow together hold Amber together and somehow interlace it to the cosmic whole."
"The path itself, the trading path, with the rituals, is about 200 years old," Liam says. "It's built on a much more ancient underlying structure. These paths are sitting on top of something else."
Regardless, Cibola is once again accessable through ancient paths to any who wish to find drugs, danger, and almost certain doom.
Celeste says, "OH. Hrrm."
Valentine says, "So...we fixed the wrong path?"
Liam says, "No, we fixed the right path. That's what makes it worse."
Celeste says, "I'm...so confused."
Liam says, "So am I. I think I need a bath and to go sit and think for a while."
Hrafnkel looks to Celeste and nods his head. "Welcome to my world."
Celeste says, "Good idea, sweety."
Liam says, "And I have to talk to Benedict. One of my five least favorite things to do."
Celeste says, "You want me to go with you, honey?"
Valentine asks, "Can I still trap up this temple?"
Celeste smiles to Liam, "Maybe it won't be so bad if I'm there to threaten to be a pain in his ass? Or, offer moral support?"
Liam tells Valentine, "You can still trap up the temple." He smiles to Celeste and says, "Either way. If you're available. I mean, I'm going to say, okay, it's done, and there's something weird and wrong here."
Celeste says, "You could just submit a written report, and I'm always available for you."
Celeste lays a dragon kiss on Liam's cheek.
"Anyway, I am grossed out beyond belief," Liam says. "Let's go home. Yes? No more Cibola. For now."
Celeste says, "Thank sweet holy unicorn."