Kevin's Watch

[ooc]

Seven Words wrote:nice natural 20 on spellcraft roll....about 15' feet into the hill is a portal...link to either an extradimensional space or some distant location. although..there is some very faint magic JUST at the portal. DIvine....heal potions, judging by past experience.

...so, I guess Vynarkus would say something about this before Led actually reaches the portal...[/ooc]

The portal Vynarkus detected is clearly visible..as is the body lying before it, with great rents in it..as is the HUGE white BEAR, with blood all over it, looking up and growling. Apparently, it came through the portal before the unfortunate body on the floor went through.....his cohorts passing through simultaneously with the bear's entrance. Looks like being last in line was most....unfortunate.

Led stops where he is. Then, he slowly lowers himself to the floor, not making eye contact. He starts to back away on hands and feet. (Assuming the bear lets him.)

Marrik also backs away slowly once Led has passed him....the bear growls again, in a desultory manner, before turning and stalking back to the portal. However, it cannot re-enter...The bear roars in frustration, before heading further into the waystation, seeking to get away from the uncomfortable warmth of this environment.

The bard looks at the bear.
Then looks at the portal.
Then back at the bear.

"Well, I do not know if anyone is prepared to brave the cold of the Icelands, should anyone know how to activate this portal. But it seems obvious that the Icelands are at least one destination those who enter will be taken to. So the question becomes...

"Do we enter unprepared to follow after Beauregard in all haste? Or do we mark this location and leave to supply ourselves first?"

Once the bear is out of range of the portal, Led moves over to the dead body. He kneels down to inspect it. "This body has been dead only minutes, so... the rest of his group went through only just now. If we can go through the portal, we should hopefully be able to catch them just there. If nothing else, we can take the warm-weather clothes from their dead bodies. Or come back through here."

Led Pighp wrote:If we can go through the portal, we should hopefully be able to catch them just there. If nothing else, we can take the warm-weather clothes from their dead bodies. Or come back through here."

"...take the warm-weather clothes from their dead bodies," Laurel thoughtfully repeats to herself. "Have you any expectation of what awaits us on the other side, should we go through?"

Turning towards Skyseeker, Barak and Vynarkus, the bard continues, "Have you any idea how this portal works?"

Skyseeker looks thoughtfully at the portal. "Perhaps inscribed upon it we might find a word of activation?"

Led groans and looks at the floor. "This is a Veracinean waystation. I can read that. should have thought of that myself"

He walks over to the portal, glancing through the doorway where the bear went, to make sure it doesn't come back, he leans in closer to read the inscriptions around the portal.

He grumbles a bit further. "My Veracinean is a bit rusty, but... this says to 'Speak the name of the seventh Magus Tyran Maximae, and enter.'" He looks confused for a moment, then turns to Laurel. "My Veracinean history is rusty... do you know his name?"

"I, too, speak Veracinian, and should have thought of looking," she wryly grins at the scribe.

The bard's eyes glaze over and take on an inward searching look...

[ooc]Bardic Knowledge and all other Knowledge that I have (arcana/history/local/nobility/planes), as it is applicable, checks please[/ooc]

~*~edit~*~

The bard's eyes slowly come unglazed and she gives a curt nod. "The name is known, but until we choose how to proceed I will refrain from speaking it aloud unless we leave the range of vocal activation."

Marrik nods, "I had not even thought of that. Well said..or rather, well NOT said" with a sardonic grin.

Casting her eyes downward, Laurel replies to the paladin's praise...

"I have made mistakes in the past, and undoubtedly will make mistakes again. But it is a sorry bard indeed who never knows when to hold her tongue..."

As she lifts her head her eye catches a glimpse of something. Striding towards the portal, she squats down and cups what appears to be multiple shards or chips in her hands. Remaining in a squat near the floor, she studies them closely for a few minutes.

[ooc]unsure of what to ask for among my skills, but appropriate skill checks to determine what it is Laurel spotted, please[/ooc]

Keeping her hands cupped together, the bard rises and approaches the rest of the group. "There are about thirty of these," she says, holding out a pile of small wooden chips. The party gathers closer to take a look and can see that each chip is about two inches wide by three inches long and about an eighth of an inch thick. The face is carved with a tiny tangle, or knot...or web, with a single strand extending the entire length of the chip from top to bottom.

Flipping the chip over, three High Elven sigils come in to view. They depict the Stars, Water and Stone.

"These are not familiar to me, although this knot depicted, this web... Could it have something to do with using the AetherWeb?" She asks Skyseeker. Then turning to Vynarkus she asks, "Do they resonate in a magical way that you can detect?"

Glancing down, she looks at them again. "Or are they merely something which would distract us from everything else?"

Skyseeker purses her lips, and whistles softly. "These are what were called SliverStrands. Bearing one upon your person and entering any sort of mystic portal such as, say Dimension Door would would take you to a portal near the place so marked upon it. They do not directly touch upon teh Web, adn so would not be affected by its fall. The sigils declare the portal to be at our redoubt wherein we mined mithril of old....in Common, Where Stars Shine From The Water On Rocks, for the natural waterfall twinkled so among the crystals it splashed over at the foot of the falls, fed by a hot spring."

At first, Laurel's eyes widen as the Elf reveals what the wooden chips are, but then puzzlement again enters them. "Why would they be here? Apparently discarded? There are far too many for the party we are following..."

"Perhaps they would take us to that specific place, instead of to where this portal normally goes?" He turns to Skyseeker. "I assume that we couldn't bring those with us into the portal, without them taking us to this other place?"

"So now we must decide if those who went ahead used others of these trinkets to go to the mithril mines, or to the frozen north. Wasn't there mention of mithril mines somewhere in the discussions of legends or cryptic hints? Perhaps that's where the men were going, when the bear came from the frozen north through the portal the other way."

[ooc]I went back and scanned the posts in that period, but couldn't find the thing I was thinking of, so... help me out here.[/ooc]

"Oh... now that we know how to open the portal, we could test it on the bear. But... those men are getting farther and farther away from us. If there is snowfall, or heavy winds over already fallen snow, it would disguise any tracks they may be making now. We should not tarry here for long, if we wish to catch them quickly."

Vynarkus has only been listening with half an ear to the conversation around him, because he has been finding and identifying the healing potions he detected from outside the cave.

[ooc]Seven, delete this if the divine magic that you said appeard to be healing potions was actually the SliverStrands.[/ooc]

Seeing Vynarkus kneeling by the corpse, Led mentions: "Oh, sorry. Those are labelled in Veracinean. It's three Cure Moderate Wounds, four Cure Critical Wounds, one Bull's Strength, and one Clairaudiance."

"But I really think we need to get through this portal. They're getting away. There's probably a LOT of awesome stuff here in this waystation. That bear still hasn't come back yet, so it's wandering around in a pretty big place. And it's all been hidden from people for centuries. But... it'll be here when we're done, so there's no rush. But those guy's we're chasing will not be there much longer."

"So, how do we tell if they went through the portal normally, or if they took some of those tokens with them?" He glances at Laurel. "Were those covered in dust before you picked them all up? I'd have liked to know if they were there from before, and the guys grabbed some, or just there and the guys ignored them, or if the guys left them there because they didn't want to go to that mine."

The bard shook her head slowly in the negative. "They are definitely not dusty, see?" as she held the ones in her hands closer to the scribe. "Nor were they haphazardly strewn about. They appeared to have been specifically piled by the portal.

"But that doesn't tell us why they were specifically left there. Or by whom..."

The bard looked at the group. "I could sing a Song of Knowledge" [ooc]Identify[/ooc] "over these chips and see if anymore about them could be learned. But it would take some time. Are we better off choosing to follow the group blindly? Or to take an hour and see if these," casting her eyes down towards the chips, "have anything more they can tell us?"

"An hour of snowfall could completely hide any trace of their tracks." Turning to Skyseeker, "What are the chances that there's a visible portal on the other side, and that we can probably come through from there, knowing this same keyword? I say we go through, see what we see, and follow them if they're there... or come back if they're not there after a bit of searching."