With our deal with the undead spirit done the giant pit that with the zigurat at its center began filling in again. When the sand reached our level it was risky for a moment, but we all managed to not get submerged in sand.
The problem has been solved temporarily by Ka’tau his sacrifice, but the option of sacrificing a child was still on the table. So when we came back from the meeting with the spirit a meeting of the town was arranged. This was a matter concerning all off Soro, so all would help decide: democracy, a particular form of ruling that has always drawn my attention. Sadly it’s not always very easy to manage in bigger communities, but in this case it would. Finally all the political reading would serve a purpose, I offered myself to lead this endeavor, to make sure nobody would try to mess with the outcome. We would vote the next morning, after which a group would leave to the north to find the pearl of the gloebgloebs.
Which would mean we had a day first, I spend some time with cristoff, and went out for the night (see Esk IC thread), while many of the others tried to convince the populace to either sacrifice or not sacrifice a child for the best of the community. Notable were Egbert, and the father of Romero, who both were very present, seeming to use this occasion not only to convince others of doing the moral thing, but also to gain some political influence.
The next morning we, the people of soro gathered. The folk from Fort palco had arrived just in time to join in. A number of people have a speech, after which the voting began. In the end the result was 112-90, opposed to child sacrifice, we would be depended on ourselves for at least the next year.
As our little band gathered our stuff to leave, we were approached by the new council of Soro: Davons, Doemas, Egbert, a representative from the Finley farm, Romero’s dad and I presume eventually a dwarf from the quarry in the east. As the mission we were embarking on was to important to just leave to a rag tag time of people with clear alliances, Thorn, a human, formerly employee of Doemas Sr would join us as a representative of the council. We will see how useful he will be, he looks dangerous enough..
Ka’Tau would not join us anymore, without the aid of Bahamut he was afraid he would not be of much use, so he decided to stay (for his adventures look at Ka’Tau IC thread).
When we left i asked for a cart and was able to show of a new bit of magic I’ve been working on. In many ways it is similar to my illusions, only I draw in stuff from shadowfell, to make it more.. Real. The process is a complicated and strenuous thing, so it is completely integrated of the spell, as is the illusion, which can only be.. A horse. Maybe I should have gone for a velocitaptor, but this will do.
I hope to someday be able to incorporate the shadowfell in all my magicks, but I’ll need to get a lot stronger to be able to do that.
The horses only stay for an hour, but the see fast, the last 2 days I’ve been casting the spell constantly, and I must say its quite draining. I feel like I’ll soon be able to cast the ritual without my spellbook.. And with my eyes closed and hands tied between my back.. It’s getting quite repetitive..
The distance we travel has been greatly increased though. During our ride over the hills in the north of soro we stumbled upon a strange thing. A house standing all alone on a hill. We decided to investigate and slowly approached. The house was only 1 room big, and that room was dominated with a giant canvas.
A painting of a house on a hill, a painting very similar to the house we were standing in right at that time, except that the hill was covered with pink flowers. That thing was magical was not a far out guess, and it was proven by a simple detect magic spell. The craziness started however when the door of the house in the painting opened and a gnome walked out, walked down the hill and towards us.
The small creature said that his house was an inn and the he insisted on supplying us with a meal. This of course sounded suspicious, but we had the feeling that the little gone didn’t have any bad intentions, so eventually curiosity won and we went with him.
We stepped through the painting and into some kind of pocket dimension. The gnome explained that he was a master painter with a magical brush, and that everything that he painted would become reality while in the painting.
He supplied us with some tremendous food and a wine, he called as sun. It was damn strong and damn good. Afterwards we couldn’t resist his offer of a afternoon nap, and were each let to a room. Mine contained a big library and humungous bed. I remember grabbing some of the books and lying down, after that, I’m afraid I fell asleep quite quickly.
Ricardo mentioned that his room had a giant tree, and Thorn had.. companionship in his room
After waking up a noticed a small scratch on my side, and when coming downstairs the other also had scratched. We questioned the innkeep who under pressure caved in..
It turned out that his magical pen replenished every day, and that often it would not be not be enough for him, but he could replenish the ink with.. blood. Garritas told us that he had not slept, but instead had looked around the building and found two secrets, something that sounded like a monster, and “the wife” of our host.
When asked about this the innkeeps complete story came out. His wife had died, and he was ready to throw himself of a cliff. At that point a shady figure came walking by, the shady men told him that he could give him the magic pen, which would allow him to draw his wife back. But in payment he had to draw the most horrific monster he could think off. Garritas had overheard his wife crying out in pain. When we went to investigate her, it turned that she was ony half drawn and in excruciating pain imaginable. We convinced him to wipe out his wife, wipe out the monster, and close the painting to outside influence, until we came back. With that we move on.