Ivy and Chrome PbP Forums

OOC: Doh! So 30 PPE, then? Hmmm ... maybe I won't try to discharge that in a dimension the size of a walk-in closet.

Actually, based on your last post, would you let me alter it to stop after the '10 PPE' step (making the total 15PPE)?

Searching carefully for a way to discharge the staff, Darl tries tapping the top of the staff against the side of the dimensional wall. If that doesn't work, he tries tapping the bottom on the floor. If he fails there, he'll simply set it aside for a moment, to continue with his experimentations ...

Tapping the staff against the walls or floor doesn't seem to have any affect. Getting bored with the staff, Darl pulls the orb back out of it's hiding place, he studies it for a number of long minutes. Racking his brain, looking for any hint at to just what makes this object so special, he does everything he can think of to gain some insight, including opening himself up to the orb's mystical energies, and attempting to draw PPE from it but nothing happens. {OOC: Were you intending to use sense magic here?}

For a minute, he considers channeling some energy the other direction ... but then lets good sense get the better of him, and returns the orb to it's hiding spot before taking advantage of his 'alone time' and attempting to sneak in an hour or so of meditation to replace some of the energy he had just expended.

Darl meditates...

{OOC: You have about 2.5 hours remaining before the envelope collapses with you in it. I wonder what happens if you're inside a collapsing dimensional envelope? You are currently running dangerously low on PPE even after I gave you 8 freebies because I forgot to record them during my last update. I've updated your character sheet to reflect your current standings. Please review the sheet to see if there's something amiss. How long do you wish to meditate? (+10PPE/hour of mediation.)}

OOC: I have to stop looking at my character sheet and thinking I'm at '180' out of '260' ... the second number is my MDC, not max PPE! Recognizing that you hadn't put my previous night's meditation in there, I was thinking I was at 180+100 = 260 PPE. Ooops!

So on the character page, you have two time slips when I only cast one this morning ... and a few posts up, after you explained the result of the lore:magic role, I asked to amend so that I only put a total of 15 PPE into the staff instead of 30PPE (since after 1, 4, and 10 PPE, I should be able to recognize that I'm just charging ... whereas before the roll, my post was based on thinking it was a 'minimum PPE to activate' type of device).

Even with that, I could use the meditation time ... so if I can squeeze in 2.5 hours before the spell elapses, I'd like to take full advantage. As for what happens in a collapsing envelope ... Rift to Limbo and similar spells expel their contents - I assumed that a temporary envelope would be similar. (After all ... it would be too easy to just leave the orb behind and let the envelope collapse with it, destroying it forever, right? Not that a raider would ever consider the thought, of course!)

OOC: The two time slips were a cut-and-paste error but I didn't subtract the additional 20 from your total. I didn't notice the comment about asking to adjust the staff charge to 15. I'll let it go this time since you are so low at the moment, but don't count on that in the future since you now know something more about the staff than the adjusted amount of PPE would have warranted.

Your previous night's sleep had been included before now. It's the "Meditation: +105" line and was in there before this latest update. I added a little more to the line item description to make it more clear what the PPE was from.

I've fixed/adjusted your PPE accordingly.

IC:
Darl's eyes snap open as the time nears for the envelope to snap out of existence. Gathering his gear together, Darl steps back through the doorway and into the real dimension. As he looks around for any dangers he immediately notices something on the ground in front of him. Looking down at it more closely, he sees that it's a child's severed hand. There is a short note written above it in drying red blood and Darl has to concentrate hard to try to understand what it says. {OOC: One of your skills says "literacy", but it doesn't state what language you're literate in. Please chose now since that will affect whether you can read the bloody note or not.}

OOC: Hmmm ... let's go with the English, since I think I recall Darl looking at the contents of Malaki's notebook, which I assume would be written in English.

The scripted blood before Darl is unreadable. It's mangled style leads Darl to believe that it's likely Demongogian.

Darl inspects the hand closely, attempting to acertain just how recent the would looks where it was severed ... to see if this was very recent, or has been sitting here a while. Mentally, he assumes it's been here since he entered the dimensional envelope ... but can not be entirely sure.

He also looks at the note, checking to see whether the blood is fresh or dried.

Blood is thickly congealed on the stump of the hand. Some small oozing spots of blood glimmer in the mid-morning sunlight. With no medical or forensic background, Darl can't be sure how long ago the hand was severed, and since he ins't human he has little personal experience to draw upon. His best guess is that the hand was severed anywhere from 10 to 50 hours ago.

The writing on the ground, however was definitely made with fresh blood sometime while Darl was in the dimensional envelope, possibly within the last hour. It appears to have been written with a large finger. The finger that made it would have to be at least that of a large human or humanoid creature.

"Well, looks like my hunch was right," Darl thinks to himself. "And that means that the Shade is nearby, and I'm guessing this message is a warning ... which leads to another hunch, that it knows I have the orb. So now what?"

Remembering his visions, he knows that the Shade has something of a thing for self-mutilation. "This note is his blood," he realizes with a hint of disgust. "Wish I knew what it said ..."

Taking just a moment, he studies the script and tries to take a mental snapshot, so that he can at least recognize the handwriting later, if not the words. "Can't risk the chance of someone else stumbling across this," he adds silently to himself. "And if this Shade finds power in his own blood, perhaps someone else can find some way to use it against him." Carefully, he tries to smear a bit of the demon's blood on his travelling cape, on the inside and near the bottom hem; in a location where it won't easily be spotted but also where it is not likely to get worn away rubbing against his legs. To prevent anyone else from gleaning any more information about him or the orb from the message on the ground, he scuffs it out before leaving the site.

Picking up the hand, and holding it hidden away under his cloak, he heads back up towards the gates of the city ... this time deciding to take a more 'straight-forward' approach.