Aspiring Aspire-ations, Pt2

"These woods belong to us," says Vae, "They are an ancestral homeland, stolen from us by the wars of demons. We will not burn them. Besides, who's to say burning them won't release the fel power locked within them?" HE kneels down for a moment, now that the opal is contained, and lets out a breath. "Let us see if we can track a source of these things, yes?"|

"And yet here we are trying to fix it." Eztli shrugs, taking a moment to tap one foot against the ground. "I'm joking mostly, I've put too much time in this to just burn it all down, but I really still have no clue if the spires are doing anything. If all they do is look pretty, then I'll force the corruption out of this place ourselves if I have to."

Faranmidahn idly considers, for neither the first nor last time, about being tied as a people to a specific region. The albino cavalier purses her lips subtly, then, "I'd rather not do something so extreme if we could avoid it." Not an ambition, but, nontheless the option remains on the table, somewhere. "I can try to examine the mystical emminations, though the wood itself may overpower the traces of the opals."

Irshya rubs at her cheek, a pout forming on her face. "Sometimes a bit fire helps cleanse the evil away. As for fire releasing the power in them, that would be something we should check on. I mean, the woods have burned here and there over the years, have they not? A nice, controlled experiment." Goblins adn the potential for fire. The pool-shark shrugs, "But sure, we can do some looking around. I am not a hunter or scout, however, but I can probably tell is something is uh not natural."

Aelwyn puts his hand on his hip and looks at Eztli with small amount of look of someone who just got betrayed. 'Just joking'? The draconian was completely serious about burning this place down. Letting out a long low rumbling sigh, he tilts his head and gestures at Vae then. "The source, as far as this one can tell, was that it simply dropped off from the sky like a droplet of rain. Other footprints are far away from it."

"Well, if you ever change your mind..." Fidget offers, snapping her fingers to let a little magical flame flicker above her thumb in a clear thumbs-up to arson. "Perhaps before we get to solving the problem with fire, always a good solution, we can figure out what this weird rock is?" The goblin makes a quick couple of magical gestures and her eyes glow faintly as she peers at the bag in which the rock is, supposedly, safely contained.

GAME: Fidget casts Identify. Caster Level: 8 DC: 18
GAME: Fidget rolls spellcraft+10+2: (2)+20+10+2: 34
GAME: Irshya rolls survival: (15)+8: 23
GAME: Irshya rolls perception: (7)+13: 20

"Strange magic in that. Like it doesn't work the way magic is supposed to. Kinda awesome! I want one. But not in, like, a compulsion kinda way. In a Fidget-y kinda way. Actually reminds me of something else I found a while back, some Magicite that was also acting oddly - still working on that one. Hope it doesn't explode in a way that's unplanned." Fidget muses, "It's kind of hard to gauge much of it because it's so weird. It's probably powerful. And it's compulsion-y, like the Warden guy said. You up to carrying it? Want a little mental reinforcement in case it tries to make you touch it? Or eat it?" Fidget asks the stuffy elf (redundant I know).

"...I'll gladly take any protections you can offer to be on the safe side. I do not want to become possessed by a demonic force," remarks Vae.

He scratches his chin.

GAME: Fidget casts Owl's Wisdom. Caster Level: 8 DC: 19
<OOC> Fidget wisdoms up this Elf boi.

"Demonic forces may only be one side of it." Faran muses, "Though if the forces involved are too dangerous, it may be moot no matter the finer details." She watches the others do their willwork through the weaves before turning her own attention out into their surroundings, hoping to spot potential trouble before it pounces.

The Goblin looks around, rubbing at her chin, and HMMMing quite a bit. "So, again... I am no expert but..." She stares at Vae, "There are absolutely no tracks. At all. There's be uh, hmm, I am guessing that it's the wind. Perhaps what Aelwyn is saying is not just possible, but probable. They're rolling out of somewhere, and blowing here in the wind?

Vae looks at Faran, then Irshya after a nod of thanks towards Fidget. ...and then he sighs. "I really hate that you said that."

"Wind with conveniently no tracks around its landing spot?" Aelwyn asks, but then he rolls his shoulders. "This one supposes." He concedes and picks up his glaive. He wasn't a tracker per say, so it was hard for him to contribute more than glaring at Vae. The elf's words though make him pause. "Hate which words?" The draconian asks.

"Hmm? Yeah, I suppose it is pretty weird, for certain." Eztli agrees after a pause of looking off into the distance. "I'm no scholar, but that magic is acting weird. Wonder if there's some ancient dragon out their I could pick the brain of, not as an excuse to force them into a dance recital mind you even if I wouldn't mind that either." "I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like to know if this is a major discovery in the theory of magic or if people know that magic changes really, really slowly. Might get to tick off some wizards who claim to invent something too when it was really the rules of magic changing as a bonus, but that's neither here nor there." They continue musing.

Irshya peers at the man, her head canted to one side. Her little holy symbol flashes once, and she grins broadly, showing off a gap in her shark-toothed smile. "People really shouldn't hire adventurers to find answers to the questions they know the answers to, but don't want to hear." Her arms cross. "Are you sure there's something you aren't telling us?" The Gobbo peers at Faran for a moment, nodding. "That's a solid point."

"In other climes, we've encountered demons and dragons attacking from within shards of... other places. Splintered portals, or... fragments of disjointed time and space." Faran notes with a wan little smile toward the elf, "Severed time is common in some of the lands scarred during the demon wars." With Irshya's praise, she smiles warmly with a bow of her head. Hmmm, she considers Eztli's remarks for a breah or two, then notes, "Magic is in my blood, if the rules are really changing, I'd expect that I'd... feel it, somehow." There is a little shrug, mostly subsumed by her armour, then, "But I don't have... expansive schooling in the greater mysteries, I must admit."

"So, now we've got this one - is the plan to take it back somewhere for research, or to look for more, or something else? Because so far, so easy. It's in a bag, none of us are mind-controlled, we can head back." Fidget says with a shrug. "I could try to find some more of them. Not sure if I can Locate," the way Fidget pronounces that word you're sure it's got a capital L, "'one of those but not that one'. Probably? Magic's always been weird. Even if you do have expansive-slash-nearly-finished-schooling in the magic arts and read a bunch of dusty books."

Aelwyn turns to look at Eztli in confusion - for a moment, before he flashes his teeth at her. "This one hopes one is not here to look for a dancer in these woods," He teases with a whip of his tail. "Though this one would not mind running into one either." For the Dragoon's own purposes, but of course. "Yet this one wonders if Felwood is the best talent hunting ground." Then the Dragoon tilts his head questioningly. "The problem with magic again?" He clicks his teeth. "Is that what this is? The trouble with the ley lines?"

"No!, no, not a dragon in the felwood, even if that would still be cool if they aren't some demon possessed hellspawn, or something like that." Eztli considers. "Found a dancer in the woods named Aelwyn, so that's covered, and now isn't the time. We should be figuring out, how should we keep looking for more of these stones, or how they got here?" "Yeah, magic in the blood, I get it. I guess I mean, magic isn't changed, it's acting weird in places, but this is so far back that it was never abnormal even when Rune was establishing the modern theories of magic."

"That's right," is what Faran is told by Vae, nodding his head. "Severed time. A good way to put it, companion." Seems he's not incapable of giving praise either. Then he considere a moment. Then Irhsya is speaking to him again, "It's clear there's a deliberate intelligence delivering these, else it would not have landed in such a place as to be found by patrols. This means a few things, potentially, but we can't confirm any of them as of yet. I *don't* know the answers to the questions we're trying to find out and I've shared what I know." He makes a 'pfeh' sound about Rune. "So carried on the wind. You know, the first of these things were found in an elemental."

"I think we can all say that, for now the greater mysteries remain mysteries. For now, being the key point." The pool-shark winks at the Lucht, and grins again. She glances to Fidget. "We're trying to discern how they are coming to be here. I don't know if the answer we seek is in these woods, or from further afield." Irshya shrugs. "Uh huh. Elementals, air elementals." More shrugs.

GAME: Fidget rolls knowledge/arcana: (18)+18: 36
GAME: Fidget rolls appraise: (17)+15: 32
GAME: Irshya rolls knowledge/arcana: (2)+14: 16
GAME: Faranmidahn rolls knowledge/arcana: (5)+11: 16

"Hmm..." Fidget ponders, trying to put together some of these clues - "it might be that magic isn't changing in a new way, but that it's continuing to change in the way it always has, like a cycle. This might not be new magic, but old magic that once worked and then didn't for a long time. The last time there was a shift big enough to for people to study it was when the desolation happened. But... I don't know, it's pretty small right now - maybe this happens all the time on the small scale? It's probably fine." Fidget grins and adds, "Oh, also I was thinking that when opals are that shiny, that raw - it means they were broken or cut from the stone recently-ish. They've not been exposed to the elements for long. So wherever they're coming from is probably in the forest somewhere. Also, it's worth a small fortune. So maybe if we figure out how to de-evil it, we split it?"

Aelwyn flashes his teeth at Eztli. "This one thought there is always a time for a dance." The draconian flicks his tail, and then moves onto lean against his glaive as the others go on and talk about their magic business. He mostly spent his time observing Vae - there was still something odd about this whole setup, he thought. The notion of selling the opal makes him squint his face though, in that very makari way. Like he got booped. "Let us not consider such. This one also feels we are not getting any closer to the mystery by standing here." He glances up towards the forest. "Is there a direction to head towards, or shall we return to the camp?"

"I would much rather have a clear conscience than a fat coin purse, if I'm being perfectly honest. As nice as that sounds, I don't want to put my de-demonizing gemstone skills to a test that risks someone being controlled by outside entities if it's not done perfectly." Eztli sighs. "There's been too much going on of late to make me say things are just fine. But hey, that's some good information, we should keep looking, no? Bright side of all this fog is it'll be easier to see disturbances from elementals, and if they're fresh stones, maybe the source is close?"

There is a quiet, nostalgicc little nod at mention of the Desolation from the Knight of Spiders, for lessons learned, and prices paid. Things percolate in her head for some moments, then, "It could be stirred up with what happened with Animus." Faran idly pets her dear Torrent, then resumes sweeping her eyes about for signs of trouble, parsing within her thoughts a prayer to the Hunter to guide them in their course, "That sounds reasonable to me." she replies, glancing to the Makari.

Vae considers for a moment. "The last time a wizard tried to break the enchantment within one of those opals, it possessed them and the opal disintegrated. Not a good thing! But it did happen. No, if we can not find anything, we should return back to the camp before it gets any later but --" The wind starts to pick up. Vae hesitates.

GAME: Aelwyn rolls perception: (9)+1: 10
GAME: Fidget rolls perception: (9)+11: 20
GAME: Irshya rolls perception: (2)+13: 15
GAME: Eztli rolls perception: (11)+5: 16

AAAAAHHHH-CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" The Goblin's sneeze echoes through the nearby woods. Giving her head a shake, she looks almost apologetic. "'scuse me." Rubbing at her nose, she peers at the Elf. Sniffing delicately, and then tasting at the air with her mouth... "You can almost chew the air sometimes. Uhm.. so new theory. The air itself is tainted. The gems are made... like hail. Grit, floating up and down in the ... taint, slowly getting bigger and bigger until it's too heavy to stay afloat and then ... EVIL PLOPPING SOUND!" Irshya gestures randomly at a spot on the ground.

Aelwyn picks up his glaive and then starts to get closer, when Vae speaks those words. "What is it?" He asks, now all down to business. "Is something arriving?" He whips his head around - and gets startled when Irshya sneezes so loud. "... tch, be careful." The draconian chides. "This one could nearly stab one." And then he flashes his teeth. "And who would then take over TarRaCe?" At the words, Aelwyn just tilts his head, but beyond that, moves to guard the group.

"Well, if I didn't feel glad I didn't touch the rock before, now it's an evil sky birdpoop. But... I dunno, is it getting worse? I think we should be on guard for something to happen. Especially you, bag guy!" Fidget says and points at the elf, whose name she may not have been paying attention to, she was probably fascinated by a shiny rock or something. "I can try to search for another one of the gemstones in a moment...". The gobbo roots around in her pockets for spell components.

"Tainted air? Of course it is, or, I really hope that isn't the case. I don't want everyone here getting possessed because they've been here too long." Eztli grumbles out loud. "So, that's it? We can't do anything about it without clearing out the area itself? Air is pretty well, broad, I suppose, burning this place down is sounding better by the minute, if those towers are going to keep staying hidden." "And, I think that's our que to get out of here, right?" Eztli offers, taking a look back down the path.