Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

For in-universe game play. Journey through both familiar and foreign settings, explore lost ruins and forgotten cities, and try to bring light to the darkness of the world... or, you know, blow stuff up. Either way.
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Jack Rothwell
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Re: Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

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"It seems I've been freed from that prisoner I had," he said, "and that leaves me free to seek Adventure! And I thought maybe you could use a hand on one!"

Jade straightened up in surprise from the forge she was leaning over at the arrival of her rescuer from the woods. She turned and saw the amicable man as he made his offer of help.

'Oh, what the hell.' She thought. 'Many hands make light work. Even if he turns out to be cannon fodder.'

"Udo!" She greeted him. "Glad to see you. yes, that would be very-" Her reply was cut off at the interaction between the new arrival and the young student.

"Do you know your brother-in-arms, Udo Fujomori?" cried Udo. "Of course you do! The Southern Continent! The firebug monster! Rescuing the kobold village!--with that great bomb of yours, too! Tearing up the Ralkin demonstration with those winds of yours--them and their magic ray guns, feh!--Blowing up the Ralkin altar!--that's some thaumo-baric history, right there, and I was keeping the monsters off you while you did it! You remember all that...!"

Jade stiffened at the mention of 'magic ray guns', nearly fumbling the strip of red hot metal she held in it's tongs and dropping it on her foot. It was a gesture Flint at least, didn't fail to see.

"Whoops... Mrs Buttersworth, erm, fingers." She unsteadily placed the metal strip on an anvil, traced a hand across the contours of her jaw and mumbled a calculation. She picked up a hammer. "If you're willing to help me in my endeavour against that-" Well, there was no use hiding it now. "Wizard in the woods I'd be very grateful. I'd compensate you for your trouble of course. It's just mushroom picking on the agenda today though."

She brought the hammer down with a touch more force than was strictly necessary. Backhandedly conveying her strength to the men who may or may not have known her previous employer. Having two of them both turn up in town at the same time was more than a little suspicious in the blacksmith's mind.

"Careful Jade." Crosby called. "You don't want to break your purchase on the first swing."

Jade winced again.
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Re: Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

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"Wizard in the woods I'd be very grateful. I'd compensate you for your trouble of course..."

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! thought Udo.

"...It's just mushroom picking on the agenda today though."

"Say no more!" said Udo with a knowing smile, tapping the side of his nose. He had a pretty good idea where those mushrooms were going to be picked, and why no one outside this forge must know. Beat the hell out of dishwashing anyway. "Except when where and what, say that part." He flexed his fingers.


* * *

Elke was met by one of the Falkenrohr's five-man mounted patrols, just as Jade and Udo had been, though this one wasn't singing any odes to Swoggle's Old Peculiar. The leader gave his standard salutation. ""Falkenrohr Patrol, guardians of Ester. Please state your name and business."

Elke's Eisenfaust documentation was very much in order, and assured her freedom from tolls or "civil penalties."

"Welcome to Ester, ma'am," said the leader. "You'll be wanting to look in on our leader, Tom Odd, at the Sign of the Flatiron." His tone was respectful but not diffident--no matter what the nature of her business, their leader would want to get a look at the Eisenfaust representative and find out what she was up to. "Lars, Endrede, give the lady an escort, then come straight back here." There was a slight emphasis on the straight, a reminder not to sample the Flatiron's wares before returning.
Last edited by Alberich on October 30th, 2017, 11:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Jack Rothwell
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Re: Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

Post by Jack Rothwell »

OOC Jade did make the connection about Khoo being there at the ray gun demonstration mate. That's why she knew that both of them had been there after udos mention of their adventures. Udo already told her about his participation in the previous thread. /OOC
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Re: Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

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[OOC: OK, edited]
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Re: Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

Post by Graybeard »

Now Khoo remembered ... and his first impulse on getting his memory cleared was to take off running from these people and never look back. However, he choked it down; duty and all that. Plus, Anna-Lisa seemed excited about this outing (so when did looking after her feelings and desires become such a priority for me? Khoo wondered, but put that thought quickly out of his mind). No, he'd go along.

"Nice to see you again, Udo," he said, not entirely truthfully but close enough. "Now excuse me for just a minute. I need to wait for my girlfriend --" I said that word again -- "plus, there's a little chore I need to do." Without waiting for a response, he found as quiet a corner as existed in or near the smithy and extracted his crystal ball. This he used to connect to Tsuipedia; they were still close enough to Lorrel, and the consulate there, that his connection was quite good... not to mention that he'd been issued an "official" ball that had much greater range than what the hoi polloi could lay hands on. Finding the hoped-for Tsuipedia article on the mushrooms and fungi of Farrel, he cast a Damping spell to minimize distractions (notably Udo) and began to read.

[OOC: More on Elke later. The way you set that up is basically OK; she's a big enough shot in the Eisenfaust that arrangements to contact a similarly powerful Falkenrohr figure would have been made.]
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Re: Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

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Khoo's patient searching bore fruit -- or at least fruiting bodies.

The kinds of people who contributed to Tsuipedia didn't normally tramp Farrell looking for mushrooms. The ones who did were often seeking experiences (or means to ends) the Tsuirakuan state didn't wholly approve of, and much of their lore passed mouth to mouth if it passed at all. But what one could abuse, another would have to treat, and C-net wasn't devoid of medical information.

Khoo learned the following:

- There was nothing specific online about the fungi of Ester, whether because the information was spotty overall, or because the locals discouraged investigation.

- Several medically and legally interesting mushrooms did grow in Farrell.

- These included the precursors to two of the common hallucinogens mentioned in his briefing, and that he had come equipped to test for.

- They also included a family of dark puffball-like growths called Totenaugäpfel, or "dead men's eyeballs," whose spores (depending on species) could cause dizziness and nausea, especially when inhaled, and which were warned against as a hazard for travelers. Based on his reading, Khoo was inclined to think that even a wet cloth filter would stop the spores--if you were wearing such a thing before you found the mushrooms.

- Khoo could now recognize both these and the more common kinds of Farrelian mushroom, both edible and inedible.
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Re: Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

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[OOC: Not exactly a curve ball yet, but the catcher is holding down two fingers and the pitcher is nodding ... But go ahead and play things out at the smithy, as the curve ball, if it happens at all, won't appear for a while.]

While all this was going on, a completely unremarkable young woman named Fumiko Otani was responding to a want ad in Tsuirakushiti.

She was 23 years old and utterly undistinguished in almost any way. She'd graduated from a mid-tier high school five years earlier, and seeing no point in going on for higher education (well, she'd had a life-long fantasy of going to Sashi Mu, but knew that her grades, social background, etc., wouldn't get her there), had worked odd jobs for a while, living with her middle-class parents in their typical small flat. About two years back she'd started a job working in a crystal-ball factory that paid slightly better, and if she could supplement her income just a little more, she could finally move to a flat of her own; hence her interest in this very-short-term gig.

Despite where she worked, she had no magical abilities at all, other than the capacity, universal among Tsuirakuans, to work gadgets like the thaumatic key to the apartment door, the people movers, and so on. That was part of why she was a candidate for this job; the ad had specifically asked for applicants with no magical skill, something of a rarity in Tsuiraku. The only place where magic had touched her life at all lay in the fact that she was rather more attractive than average. Her parents had given her a high-school graduation present of thaumatic straightening of her teeth and a slight nose job, and she'd blown her entire first paycheck on another ... enhancement. This worked better for her than for Mika, whom she knew very slightly, since she'd (more or less accidentally) done the two thaumatic operations at different times. The outcome was not a spectacular beauty, but someone whom heterosexual males would (and did) notice in a crowd. Her parents had hoped that these "attributes" would get her a rich boyfriend who'd take her away from the menial job and Otani flat, but it hadn't happened, not yet.

She also feared that the magical plastic surgery would make her ineligible for the project for which she was trying to become a paid volunteer. However, her interviewers, after a quick exchange of mind-speech, decided to give her a pass; thaumatic body modifications were so common in Tsuirakushiti that they might have had no volunteers for the project if they'd insisted on pristine bodies. To Fumiko's astonishment and pleasure, she shortly was asked to sign a contract (and non-disclosure agreement) and to report to a certain place at a certain time, not much later.

[OOC: So put Fumiko on hold for the moment, while things develop at the smithy, but we'll probably be seeing more of her soon.]
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Jack Rothwell
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Re: Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

Post by Jack Rothwell »

OOC Sorry guys, I'll get back to this over the weekend. Things have been hectic lately. /OOC
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Re: Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

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Jade breathed a quiet sigh of relief that Udo had either not noticed Flint saying her real name or had simply been polite enough not to comment on it. She finished her current task with a hiss of cooling metal as the strip took a plunge into a water basin.

"Just meet me at the edge of town by the woods at sunset." She responded to Udo's request for details. "Bring your best weapons and watch my back. Hopefully It'll be an easy job." She cast a meaningful eye over the other customers in the blacksmiths with a touch of mischief in her smile. "The more the merrier. It looks like it could be a nice night. A clear night and a full moon. Pretty romantic!"
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Re: Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

Post by Alberich »

At the romantic Udo chuckled, "heh-heh-heh!" and slyly winked at Khoo...who had magically ensured his ability to ignore this. Still broke but now anticipating better times, Udo wandered off to let Sensei know what was up, resolving to meet "Jasmine" at the time and place appointed.

[OOC: Whenever you are ready for sunset, Udo will be there, armed with his staff and ready for action.]
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