the house of manouk | test drive meme

[groundrules]

Hello, hello! Our latest event — doubling as a test drive meme and stretching until 12 August — is a one-off incursion in an uncharted time pocket dimension — the House of Manouk.

Anyone can hit up the test drive meme, but you will need an invite from an existing player to apply on 5 August. Have fun!

THE HOUSE OF MANOUK

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THE TERRACE

Old or new, you wake up on a white-stone terrace dominated by a twisting hedge maze that houses great columns, tattered statues, ponds, rivers, gazebos and pergolas — and high looming walls of thickly bound ivy, bloomed roses or thorny vines. Walking the Terrace somehow always brings you deeper into the maze, while a flushed, sunless sky stares down, unblinking.

You experience no thirst, hunger or language barriers here. Old translation & communication pendants can nevertheless be found scattered across the Terrace and Grounds.

New arrivals encounter the sorceress Karsa, who explains you were likely summoned by one of the undead lords who seeks control of Akhuras — and reached, along with the party she leads, a pocket dimension outside of time. Karsa’s associate, the Merchant, instructed to exit the time dimension by finding Ellethian waypoints — typically stone tokens engraved with the carvings of an eye with a sun for a pupil. Karsa may activate them for you to leave this place.

Your mission is to search the House and find the waypoints of Ellethia or of the rival Dawn’s Reach Trade Company without attracting the ire of the local exiled overlord(s).

■ Some of the statues you discover on the Terrace seem crudely carved, gaining the features of your loved ones, the longer you stare at them. Some seek to throttle. Escape them by having someone else stare at them, becoming their new target, or by leading them in a crowd of other statues.

■ Beware getting pricked by thorns: covetous vines can quickly ensnare and pull you into the maze’s green walls, or bind your hand to that of your companion.

■ The maze’s weather often mimics your mood: nice and balmy for contentment, cold for fear, torrential rain for sadness and a heatwave to answer anger. Smile.

■ Every now and then, you hear screams from other parts of the maze. Run, and you might find pairs of steel manacles or rusted chain on bloodied grounds, from where fresh rose bushes quickly rise up. Investigate.

■ Go deeper in the maze, and you find a heap of small stone tablets. Most list names, ages, occupations and include loving remarks, such as the finest husband or she smiled ever bright. Alarmingly, when your companion’s back is turned, you find tablets engraved with your handwriting, saying, don’t turn your back to them, blood reeks strong on them and that’s not their name. There are no waypoint tokens here.

■ Spend enough time in the maze, and you discover an old, red-eyed, white-haired and hunchbacked man with two chainless shackles on his wrists. He ignores you, muttering to himself about how the House must keep moving, moving. The House doesn’t like you. The House is awake. The House should sleep. The old man hits or trips you with his cane, or you might wake to find him hovering very closely over you. Engage him.

■ Now and then, he seems suddenly alert, if not outright fearful, shrieking that he comes and rushing to tinker with pulleys and stone mechanisms hidden within the maze vine walls. The maze’s architecture abruptly changes, with the ground quaking, walls shifting, while old plants wilt and fresh ones rise up within heartbeats. As the House changes, you might spot a long, spiralling staircase at short distance. Go down into…

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THE GROUNDS

The ground level of the House is splintered in dozens of decaying rooms, many locked. There are no windows here, dust thick in every corner, while faint scratches and canine footprints mar the floors — the marks of dozens of great skeletal hounds that haunt the corridors.

The dogs lead, chase or drag you towards a shuttered hall room, where a middle-aged, red-eyed and white-haired man furiously searches through haphazard mounds of tousled tomes. He too wears shackles. His manner is perfunctorily polite, as he calls back his dogs.

”…not from around here, are you? Must have broken time. Hooligan. Well, you’ve travelled centuries to be disappointed. There are no mysteries here, no epiphanies. All the great wells of myth and magic? Some other pigs have drunk them dry. Blame your luck, for bringing you to the shambling hut of — …the fine House of Manouk. Taravast’s greatest necromancer, til his mind turned to slaughter.

I was his disciple. Lisanther. Must’ve come from high on, did you? These cursed shackles… he senses everyone in his House through them. If he feels us on his scent, he works his little screws and wheels and moves the House stairs. Impressed? Don’t be. He’s a wreck, who feasts on time echoes of the anguished. That’s him. Paints a picture, doesn’t he? Stay out of his sights, or you’ll wear his chains soon too. Same as me, same as the dog he keeps in the dungeons. Dragged back every time he wanders.

If you want to make yourself useful, help me. I traded fairly with a caravan of the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company. They say they left behind scrolls in these grounds, with the words to free me. They overcharge, but they don’t lie. Help me find them. Break my chains, and I’ll break us out. I can. I swear it. ”

Deeper into the claustrophobic Grounds, you find specters of men and women, chained just like Lisanther — their skin translucent, their gazes lethargic. They feel neither dead nor alive to the magically sensitive. They are either very present in the moment or barely recall their whereabouts. If asked about tokens, they say the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company left scrolls in the Grounds main quarters:

▶ Bathing quarters

At times pristine and delightful, at others blood-marked and torn. The waters abruptly run very hot, cold or silty. The spectre of a wo/man might appear in the tub, staring unblinkingly or murmuring that people do all sorts of wickedness in this bathroom: they have even witnessed stabbings, treasures being hidden beneath tile boards, and even a birthing!

▶ Kitchens

Sprawling and soot-laden, bursting with supplies of stale wheat, eccentric cakes, exotic fruit and spice jars, these kitchens were built for long service. A heavy cauldron bubbles and boils a green broth in a cold fireplace, where ash and stone drown wood. A circle of spectres troubleshoots how to improve the meal — just as the kitchens’ doors slam shut, and they cordially invite you to do the legwork for their recipe. They instruct you to chop, clean and prepare the most unusual ingredients: hair of a dog, salt, moulded thyme, arsenic, one of your finest love stories… they’ll tire of their creation and release you within the hour. Don’t dine, dash.

▶ Sleeping chambers

There’s rest for the wicked in these deserted sleeping quarters, which boast exceptionally well-stuffed cushions and pillows, blankets and ‘reading materials’ — torn pages from books of history and magic. Some speak of the desperate attempts of the rulers of Taravast to flee death. Others talk of using spells, the elements and even mass sacrifice to achieve immortality. Enjoy your rest, only perturbed by occasional distant screams —

…or perhaps by a large, feral white bear that bursts in to briefly chase you, before disappearing. Veteran travellers may recognise him as the creature of Anurr.

Some of the chain-breaking scrolls of the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company can be found in each of the main rooms, along with some of the Company’s talismans, marked as waypoints, which should be brought to Karsa. See what your character finds.

Finish up here, or meander down a final stairwell to —

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THE DUNGEONS

Cold, deteriorating, crumbling — difficult to say if this is a tightly bound knot of underground tunnels, or a torturous weave of lost dungeons. Parts of the floor crumble to reveal abyssal depths below — or suddenly appear beneath your feet, to help your progress. Emptied, creaking bookcases abound. Here and there, you see your reflection in shattered wall-length mirrors, moving differently than you, or just slightly older or younger than you are.

■ Revived skeletons patrol the corridors, scantily armed with base blades, stones and torches. They largely ignore you, only blocking your path if you near a magically-locked stone door in the back of the Dungeons, from where you hear… human pleas.

■ Door engravings instruct to speak out the three truths of each day. Nearby, you find a mound of crumbled stone tablets, along with three golden ones raised on pedestals that read:

▶ with morning, my body is a weapon, sun-seeking, righteousness-bound

▶ by midday, my flesh has bent and battered, a shield of justice for young life to come

▶ come evening, I am blood and bone, a humble house to hope eternal

■ Tip bookcases into the narrow corridors to prevent the skeletal guards from reaching you, as you search diligently through the stone debris beneath the golden pedestals. You might even find Ellethian waypoint tokens: palm-wide, marked with a sun pupil. Take them to Karsa immediately… or open the now unlocked dungeon door as a man calls out.

■ Enter, and you discover an dimly lit dungeon alcove, with animate skeletal heads hanging on each wall. They cackle, Mind your step. Heed them and look for holes in the floor tiles — needle-thin spikes emerge from there periodically.

■ Go deeper, and you discover a large bare stone room, scantly livened by torches bearing green fire. A small hole — barely enough to fit a grown man standing and lying down — has been dug into one of the walls and secured. This inhumane prison’s bars crackle and sizzle with magical electricity. A skeletal hound waits by, with a set of keys fastened to its collar.

■ A white-haired, red-eyed twenty-something young man sprawls haphazardly in the prison: battered, swathed in rags, shackled and wild. He holds out his blood-tipped hand between the bars, but fails to lure the dog close — and calls out to you, instead:

”You must be mad to come to me. The old man sent you? Finally? Good. How wonderful. I’ll spit on you, and I’ll spit on his grave. He left me here to die. And now he’s remembered me? What does he want? …no. It doesn’t matter. Rip the keys off that mutt and get me out of here. ”

You can engage or release him, if you coax the key from the recalcitrant dog. Or leave him be and see Karsa with your waypoint token.

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NOTES:

■ There are multiple waypoint tokens to leave the time dimension: the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company talismans, hidden in the Ground rooms, and the Ellethian tokens, found in the dungeons. Bring whichever one you discover to Karsa.

■ You can optionally solve the mystery of Lisanther, the prisoner, Manouk and the spectres.

■ The House’s layout changes periodically, but characters can find the stairs to travel across the three levels every few hours.

■ Mention in your top level if you play an old timer or a test driving tourist. TDMers can make both logs and network prompts here!

■ QUESTIONS & NPC INBOX!

Comments

Lan Mandragoran | Wheel of Time | Tourist

[thewarder]

A. The Terrace | A King Without a Kingdom;

[The emptiness he feels is looming. The sky is beautiful, the greenery some of the most exquisite he's ever seen, even in all of his travels, and yet he can't take it in.

Alone. Standing on this terrace even with others being sent for the same quest. He can't feel her through the bond, it's severed and gone. His body is his and his alone for the first time in decades.

The one power seems to be gone but his senses are still in tact that it's easy to feel the person trailing just behind, following in the same direction as he is. He stops when he reaches the tablets though, they profess lives lived and loved in a way that nothing else quite had yet here.

Then it appears. don’t turn your back to them, blood reeks strong on them.

Strange, given that his back was already turned. The magic here, or whatever it's called is so different then what he's used to.]

This tablet seems to think you're going to try to kill me, are you? [He asks as he turns to face the person behind him. If he was less confident in his fighting skills he'd be drawing his blade, but something tells him the danger is in the tablet itself, more then the person.]

B. The Grounds| Bathing Quarters | Nothing to Live For;

[ Baths had always been a reprieve for Lan after a long trip. Time spent with his companion to discuss the day, or the weeks, that they had been traveling since their last ability to take a long soak. They were a place that typically brought peace and calm to his mind.

Yet there was nothing peaceful about the room in front of him. Dried blood lead in a trail into the tube where a ghost of some sort was leering at him from inside the tub as he glances in from the hallway. It seems to be murmuring something to itself although he's not quite close enough to hear from this far out.

Or at least, Lan assumes this is a ghost. He's never actually seen one, which triggers his warning senses. New unforeseen threats are always the greatest of concern to him so he turns to his traveling partner.]

What do you know about ghosts around here...?


C. The Dungeons | And Nothing to Die For;

[Somethings about the dungeons aren't so different from catacombs he's been in over all of the years of his adventures as a Warder.

That is until he sees the patrolling skeletons. Is that this worlds version of Shawdowspawn? If it is, they less aggressive then any Trolloc he's ever met. Yet he won't let his guard down, not with the chance that they could turn at any time. Many things have been disconcerting as he's traveled through this path, but this by far has sent the sharpest chill down his spine.

A piece of flooring crumbles and causes him to take a leap forward out of the way. He turns to look at where the last brick his foot has been on. It's missing now and instead a large gaping hole is there allowing him to pier into the abyss.]

I thought we were already underground? How is there something still below us?

[Whatever that place is, it looks corrupted. Like no good could come from it.]

D. Wildcard ;

[[ooc: Want something different? Throw it at me or hit me up on PM or Plurk endtransmission for something more customized. ]]

a

[mashiara]

That would depend on how much of a fool you think I am.

( Nynaeve says, stepping out from the opening between parallel lines of the maze, tone perfectly level, and perfectly serious. One hand rests at where the long knife at her hip hangs, while the other finds the end of her braid, tugging at it as she makes her slow, soft-stepped entrance to the section of the maze he's in. )

If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead already, wouldn't you?

( Factual, but not an easy fact: Nynaeve doesn't have the driving need to see someone she's saved die, let alone in a pointless place and space like this. Anything else tangled in can be ignored, and summarily is for the moment.

Her lips twitch into something like a grimace rather than a smile, eyes flicking to the piled tablets. )

I have no intention of undoing my hard work.

( This place, on the other hand, might delight in the chance. No, not might. After the dead they'd been fighting in Yancai, it would definitely delight in the chance. )

[thewarder]

[That isn't a voice he was expecting to hear anytime soon. Everyone else he had come across so far had been unfamiliar faces of people who seemed to be from distant lands.

But instead he's looking at her. The ones so many had commented on to him. He can't help but raise his eyebrows in reaction. ]

Wisdom.

[He expects she'll be much more then that someday. The way she touched the power to save him.

That is, if they ever find their way back home. This place, even in the shortest of times seems to be different, and could work in completely different ways.]

Did you track me here again?

[He knows it's not the same, that he wasn't avoiding tracking this time. Yet, he can't help but referencing the skill she had in it the first time she had tracked him down.]

[mashiara]

Warder.

( Title to title, if they'll have it be such. She breathes out in a snort, giving one clear shake of her head. )

Tracks shift too much in here even if I were so inclined. Can't make it through the walls where they stop.

( She gestures to the bare hint of disturbed dust, indicating someone else's passage over to the side, and how it's cut off by the wall those imprints appear to lead toward. )

You've seen them move, haven't you?

( Or suspected, she implies. There's a clanking of metal nearby, and her head whips around, tracking the sound with narrowed eyes. Her hand is at her long knife, knees bent, already moving around the outside edge of the tumbled pile of tablets and their words. Whatever nonsense they might say, there was someone else nearby. Or something else. That sound was suspiciously close to links of chain jangling step by step.

Her gaze flicks to Lan, lips pressed into a thin line. Had he heard that too? )

[thewarder]

[His eyes carefully follow the tracks she pointed out noticing just how they stop. He had noticed them before, sure, but he had figured that someone had some sort of skill which allowed them to scale the wall.

It hadn't occurred to him until that moment that perhaps the walls themselves were moving.]

The walls move? [He asks her for confirmation.]

[His concern about the walls themselves drop as the chains jingle somewhere from the northeast of them, assuming the sun moves in the same direction as it does in their world.

He moves to step around her in that direction, putting himself between whatever it and the sound is, although it's unclear if even it would come from this direction given the corners and walls of the maze.]

A fade? [His voice is soft, barely noticeable. It's guess perhaps too inspired by their recent encounters, but the closest he can think of.

He pulls his blade as he moves to peak around the corner.]

one lan meets another | the bathing quarters

[downswing]

Little. Oft, late.

( Revelation so often finds them old in their transgressions against whatever territories they cross in this forsaken land, entirely immersed in the inexcusable, the ignorant, the forbidden.

Stench of damp plaster, astringent. Blood aged so thick, it flakes and peels off tile and installations, like a serpent's skin on well-sunned rock. He hesitates, blind-white of his silks snagging on the ragged, blunt cuts of furnitures corroded by bloodied decay. He watches the ghost, its — her — smile like a halved moon, like a sharp cleaving.

Watches and walks, drifting past the gentleman, Lan Wangji's shadow conjuring shape, lost in the dim softness of the ambient gradient. He stills, steps away from the bathing tub, reaching his own hand out — arresting the movement. And whispered, behind himself: )

Touch nothing. ( Do not walk the room, do not breathe its putrid air. ) Trust less. These lands want purification.

[thewarder]

Purification?

[His mind turns over to the idea of saidin and it's corruption. It doesn't seem like the same kind. It's different somehow. Even if there was an Aes Sedai around to channel the power he's not sure it would make a single bit of different.]

And, how does one purify lands here, stranger?

[If the man is going to start giving instructions, he assumes he also knows what the solution for things are. As a new comer he knows that it is best to accept that instruction without criticism.

You must be willing to learn new things, or you'll never truly grow. Each person has their strengths they bring to the table, and when you don't know them, it's easiest to just ask. ]

I fear my sword would do no good, against something so incorporeal.

[downswing]

Not all cleansing is blood-born, fire-wrought.

( Not all purification is slaughter. But he does not wither from the proposition: destruction is the most efficient prologue of ablutions. When hope is lost, alternative depleted. His sword, his companion pronounces, would do no good — and Lan Wangji's gaze scatters at first, then seeks out the blade's heft. There is a weight to swords that betrays their temperament, unholy, corruptive, wrong. Even Bichen sleeps in feral quietude.

...no matter. Too often, faced with a storm of possibility, he finds himself — in stasis, impregnably silent, resolute. He is asked questions — the spirit before him, mutely, spiders and dances her fingertips in the air, landing on his sleeve.

He does not discard her grip. ) The first step is soothing. ( Soft, like powdered snow: ) We ask what the spirit requires.

( Just so, like peacemakers at long war. )

[thewarder]

[He speaks strange. It's no matter though, he would have said the same of the Aes Sedai when he first met them as well.

And this other Lan seems to know what it is he speaks of.

He takes a step back to let him in closer to the spirit, letting him pass him so that he's the one standing guard behind. It's a more natural position for him to be taking care of a threat from anything other then a pure physical attack for him anyways.]

And how does one sooth a spirit? [It sounds preposterous to him, even speaking that sentence. Yet he seems so confident that you need just ask, that he's going to let him have a go at it.]

bathing

[pacificator]

[ It's not like she'd really expected to be able to take a bath, wash some of this grime and blood and – what is that, is that ichor? – off, but it's still kind of a disappointment to see the tub taken up by a muttering specter.

What do ghosts even have to wash? It makes no sense. ]

Around here, specifically? Not much.

[ The insinuation being that, at home, she's kind of an expert, which is sort of true but mostly false. Waverly is the expert; Wynonna is the gun. Waves would love all this: she'd squeak out something about 'lore!' and disappear into whatever serves as a library, but Wynonna can't even shoot the damn thing because Peacemaker is sulking.

Which makes two of them. ]

But, I mean, ghosts are ghosts are ghosts, right? If it's not attacking us, maybe it wants to tell us something.

[thewarder]

[He takes a step out of the way and holds his arm out, an invitation to let her pass.]

If you would like to speak with it, by all means...

[She's intriguing, and bold it seems and he's willing to assume that maybe she knows more about ghosts them him because at least she has other ones to compare it to.

He doesn't drop his guard however. His sword hand reaches to hold at the holster strapped across his chest just incase any quick moves are needed.

Not that he thinks it would do much good in the case of a ghost.]

[pacificator]

Like is such a strong word.

[ It wouldn't be the first ghost she's chatted with, but her track record isn't what someone might call spotless: there had been that one Rev with the penchant for slicing throats, but beating it had been less her and more Waverly.

But the ghost currently murmuring in the tub doesn't seem violent, so Wynonna shoulders some bravado and heads past sword-guy into the bathing area itself. ] Hey.

[ Not her strongest start, but whatever. ] Is there, uh... something on your mind?

[ What's left of it, anyway. But the ghost just stares past her, lips moving, whispers too low for her to understand murmuring into the echoing chamber. ]

[thewarder]

[He can't tell if the ghost is saying something more specific to her or not, so he decides to step forward a couple more paces. The dried blood is gruesome but not in an unfamiliar way.

He swears he can feel a shiver go down his spine when he gets closer as well. Was that just the wind making it's way deep into the house perhaps?]

We don't have ghosts like this where I am from, The Wheel just recollects souls. [He says glancing at the woman. ]

Should we just leave him be? Or do you have any better ideas?

C. The Dungeons | And Nothing to Die For;

[starlingroad]

[America, who probably should have grabbed a buddy for the dungeons, but she's used to this going off on her own thing, was preoccupied with one of the nearby mirrors. She moves away, then moves back to see her face a little more mature, she's a little taller.]

[She hears Lan, and moves to look over the edge, cautiously. Rocks crumble from her feet and she takes a step back.]

[She isn't even trying to be sassy, just direct, when she responds.] There's still a long way to go after you get underground.

[thewarder]

[He glances across the divide at her. She's young, perhaps even younger then all of the traveling companions they'd gained shortly before he'd ended up here.

Not that age was any indication of power where he was from, and who knows what anything might be like on this new world.

It's always best not to make assumptions. ]

How can be certain? Are you from here?

[starlingroad]

No. But I keep ending up underwater here, or in sinking rooms, for one reason or another.

[It was what made sense. America shrugs off her uncertainty.]

Let's just...stay away from the edge.

[thewarder]

Makes sense. Now just to keep a watch out for any new edges. [He says that and instead draws his sword tapping it along the blocks as they move down the hallway.]

I suppose, given everything else here it's probably magical, when they're breaking away but it feels worth testing anyways.

A

[slippin]

[ His companion—who definitely seems otherworldly but in a slightly disappointing way, like a member of some kind of cross-dimensional traveling salesforce—has been trailing after him, reliably lagging behind. When he's not squinting skeptically skyward or looking wistfully backward he's preoccupied with keeping his suit jacket out of reach of treacherous thorns, either dodging or slapping them away; for his trouble, his hands are pretty scratched up. ]

Me? [ Unfortunately, even pure unadulterated disbelief looks a little—well, rehearsed, on Jimmy. His mouth kind of flops open and his eyes widen. He stares for a good long moment at the sword hanging at this guy's waist. Glances over his shoulder as if seriously considering wandering this...stupid family restaurant placemat of a maze alone.

Then the look in his eye hardens. Not a lot, but you know. ] Okay, well, the tablet should know—first of all, that's libel. I have a second of all, but [ —Jimmy cranes his neck, trying for a peek at the tablet in question, and raises his voice as if the crumbling stone slab might indeed be eavesdropping— ] I don't think we need to let things progress to that.

[thewarder]

[Lan's eyes settle on the man and spend a significant time on his torso studying the strange outfit. The neck tie is of particular interest because it certainly feels like something easy to take advantage on in battle.

He has no visible weapons either. He must be from a very strange world.]

I am not familiar with the word libel.

[It's a simple answer, his voice seeming unbothered by admitting it. There are simply things you don't know in a new land, and this was one of them.

He hands the tablet over to Jimmy for him to inspect on his own.]

You should be careful with that decoration around your neck, however, it's apt to get you killed.

[slippin]

[ Guy with a sword looking him over. Fine. Extremely fine. The air turns crisp, a wind-from-nowhere picking up as Jimmy basically acts like this is your standard interaction with a lunatic on a city bus: fixes a bland smile on his face and dodges in and out of eye contact, ready to...who knows, hurl himself into the bushes if he has to.

Credit where it's due, if this guy is suspicious or pissed off or anything at all besides imperturbably calm, it doesn't show. It's kind of reassuring—it also makes Jimmy feel kind of insane, considering their surroundings.

But hey, he's also less stuck up than anticipated, so Jimmy elaborates: ] It's like an honor thing? Besmirching someone's character and damaging their reputation and [ —all that jazz— ] uh, it's a very serious offense. [ Okay, he's being handed the tablet. Jimmy takes it reluctantly, holding it by the tips of his fingers, as if it's very hot, or he's worried about smudging it.

Frowning down, he reads: ] Milton Widmer, 22. Roofer. [ By the end, his voice has softened ever so slightly. He tips the stone toward Mr. Skeptical, reflexively smoothing his tie, a floral atrocity in which purple and yellow figure heavily. ] This disorients ghosts, actually. Well, I mean, it disorients everyone.

[thewarder]

[A serious offense about character, well that certainly would be a suggestion of whatever powering the tablet could be. There's nothing intimidating about this man and his ostentatious dress. ]

It sounds like a word the white cloaks would love. [He states that without explanation. He doesn't actually suppose this man is from a world that is anything like his, but he doesn't feel the need to explain either.]

I suppose disorientation is a good for a first start, but someone could strangle you with that easy. You should be careful. [It's a serious suggestion, as he'd prefer to not have to deal with a dead traveling companion. If they are to find these waypoints they were told to find, it would befit them to work together towards that.]

A

[beitangmoran]

[Time for an elegantly arched eyebrow here, because that was not a question Moran was expecting.]

... Now why would I do that? Besides, if I had truly wanted to, there were plenty of occasions before you even got a warning.

[He is dressed in his flowy blue robes, but still carrying his sword in his hand for now. This place warrants a bit of caution.]

And I would assume we would also not both be told the same [as he holds up his own tablet engraved with the same words] unless someone was trying to ensure we massacre each other.

[thewarder]

[Lan tilts his head a little bit as he holds out the tablet that he had just read offering it to him.

His sword is still seethed on his back in a sign that he's not quite yet concerned, he's new and he's still learning the dangers that are here. A little too cocky after all he'd been through before he ended up here.]

Well, whatever magic is haunting these tablets certainly seems to think we would be inclined to do that? [He pauses for a moment looking at the other man carefully his brows furrowed.]

Have you encountered magic such as this? The strange thing is that the tablet itself looks like it's in my writing.

[beitangmoran]

It's not... unusual for the place. The exact magic will vary from place to place, but inciting people to kill is indeed nothing new. I do not know how much Karsa has explained, but we're basically as valuable to them dead as we are alive, so they do not care much about which we are.

[Moran examines his own tablet, and indeed, the characters are written in his own, precise script.]

Interesting.

[But then he'll put it back down. There is no need to keep it.]

As we are, we have actually traveled five years in the past. Which means some of the undead lords we had killed previously are once again very much alive. This pocket of time is ruled by one, but which one? A known entity or one we haven't met?

Time and space are also quite... elastic here. We've already been to two places where time was not working properly.

[probably not a conversation to have standing where some unknown forces are trying to get them to kill each other, though.]

Let's press on towards the building.

[thewarder]

[Unknown forces returning to give them no break, it sounds familiar. The other man seems to know what he's talking about as well so he's willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he will keep an eye on him. Just incase the tablet was right.]

Let's do that. I'm Lan by the way.

[He says as he motions to towards the building, following him at pace.]

If we're in the past, do you have to worry about messing up what will happen in the future?