Henry Group RP Forum

Well, that was just fucking spectacular. Nevitash must be pretty confident in Aundair’s military plans to be talking about them so openly. He must be laughing inside that Khorvaire was so riven by conflict, so easy to push into warfare. Stella’s teeth ground. “That’s fascinating. I’ll bear that in mind. What’s your relationship with House Medani?”

"Well, as I said earlier, my father was a former inquisitive, and I worked with a number of Medani researchers at the Twelve. Why? Are you related or contracted to the House?" Invidia replied. "I have no connections to the House proper, if that's what you're asking. That's not a bad idea though. I should probably see if I can get some contract work when we're in Sharn—I'm fairly sure they'd pay for some of the notes I've taken down."

“I see.” That was simple, at least. House Medani expected her to render reasonable assistance to other Medani as long as it didn’t interfere with her work. Happily, it seemed she owed him no loyalty. “One minute.” Stella rose from the table, reluctantly setting her glass aside, and headed into her room. She came back with a small metallic sphere—covered in a hundred buttons, each one marked with a different rune—and set it in front of Invidia. “Here’s something to play with, if you’re so curious. A friend of mine pushed a few buttons and it opened and dumped a ton of psionic power directly into his mind. That’s all I know about it.” But she might have a few theories.

Nala took in Hendrick's words, watching the rushing waters below with a frown on her face. She sighed deeply, and turned to face Hendrick with a look of resignation on her face. "When I came to you before, I had never been possessed. Now that I understand that is a potential, I can't willingly ask for your trust. I understand your...hesitation...I do." Nala swallowed hard. "I wish I could offer you some kind of peace of mind, but I don't believe I can offer that truthfully. I can promise that, knowing this is a threat, I will work to make sure my mind remains my own. I can assume that it is in moments of heightened emotion that my mind becomes more susceptible to this, and if that is the case, then I will work to avoid those situations. But, I know that these are not reassuring. I know that ultimately, I have to figure out what this book is, and what can be done about it." Nala put her hand on Hendrick's. "I promise you, I won't hide anything else from you. I want you to be able to trust me again someday. I want to prove to you that I am a good person."

Nala had been his companion for what felt like an eternity. He had no doubt about her character. But ultimately this was not what was being discussed. He started talking, looking into the distance. “While you were asleep, I watched over you. I used some magic to potentially find out what was wrong with you.” He remembered very clearly. “You radiated pure evil. All of you. Particularly your book. I tried to have a brief look, without touching it. It is just gibberish, madness.” He paused for a moment. “It started speaking to me. Your book. It told me how it needed blood to pass you over the threshold. Like Korran. It told me very clearly if I was to ever interfere again, I would be the source of this blood. As parting gift, it tried to do something to my mind. I managed to resist the worst, but it still felt like it started breaking my mind.” He wished he still had his pipe. This would have been one of those moments. “You are a good heart. No doubt. What do you think?”

As Hendrick spoke, Nala was horrified. She looked almost disbelieving, but realization seemed to dawn on her as tears sprang to her eyes once again. "Hendrick, I..." Her mouth was open, like she wanted to keep talking, but nothing came out. She rubbed her eyes and let out a shaky breath. "I need you to do me a favor, Hendrick." Nala said finally, after thinking for a moment. "I refuse to be an antagonist to this party. I am prepared to take my leave. I have plenty of money; I can manage. I could even stay here and work with the Trust. I don't know. If you are willing to have me along, to help me resolve this, then I would be humbled. But I want that decision to be yours, and I want you to understand that I won't take it personally should you decide that I am not a good fit for this party. But beyond that, I want the decision to be unanimous. I'm going to go explore the city a bit. Maybe visit the library, if they'll let me in. I don't know. While I'm gone, talk to the others. Tell them everything. Make sure that they know the risk of travelling with me. I will only stay if every single person agrees. Including Invidia."  Nala was fairly certain that Invidia wouldn't be on board with letting her travel with them, but giving the party the opportunity to make that decision felt like the right thing to do. "I don't want anyone to feel unsafe. I don't want to cause any problems. So if you guys are willing to help me, then I would be forever indebted to you. But I can't ask you to take on that burden. So I offer the only thing I can; your relative safety away from me." She pursed her lips, a hint of finality in her eyes. If Hendrick was very insightful, he would know that Nala fully expected to never see her friends again. He would see the fear in her eyes, but he would also see the steely determination to keep her loved ones safe.

Hendrick sat there in silence, considering every single word she had said. Over and over again. He went through different ways of saying what he wanted to say. Nothing seemed quite right. So he kept searching. Until he found the precise words. “You have been a friend to me. Since the day we have met, I have witnessed your great potential. And I have noticed some of your dark secrets. If this was me ten years ago, one of us would be asleep now. But I believe in redemption. The Flame believes in it. I see the good in you.” He placed his hand on hers. “I am more than willing to fight for you, but as you have pointed out I cannot make this decision on my own. I agree. Whilst you might want to be elsewhere right now, I would strongly urge you to come back with me. So that you are at least somewhat safe.” And the world is safe from you. “You do not need to be there for the discussion, feel free to retreat to your quarters should you so desire. But if you leave now, you take the first step out of the door. I need you, Stella wants you and the rest depends on you. Maybe there is still cheesecake left.”

Nala smiled gratefully at Hendrick as a few more tears fell, this time of relief. A moment ago, she was prepared to say goodbye to everyone she had come to love. Now, Hendrick, at least, was willing to give her another chance. Maybe there was hope for the others, too. She tried not to think about Invidia, and how he would surely convince them otherwise. She pulled Hendrick in for a big hug. "Thank you, Hendrick. Your kindness exceeds everything I have come to know from this world. Even if the others don't feel the same way, I owe you so much. I'll come back with you." She pulled back and began walking with him towards the Blue Lotus, where her fate was to be decided by a group of people she had nearly killed the previous day.

As they arrived back at the Blue Lotus, Hendrick lead Nala straight to her room, before rushing to the kitchen to fix her a healthy portion of the already very decimated cheesecake. Meanwhile, everyone seemed to have fallen silent to watch them, before Hendrick reclaimed his chair at the table. “We all need to talk. Nala and I had a conversation regarding the source of her power. I know for a fact it is very bad. And she starts to understand this now as well. I think we should try help her to deal with this situation, such that she is no danger to us or herself anymore.” He leaned slightly forward, looking each and everyone into their eyes. “She however wanted me to ask all of you, whether you would want to take this risk with her. She offered to walk away from this if any of us did not want her here anymore, seemingly out of a sense of duty in trying to keep us safe.” “All of you, speak your mind. We need to discuss this. I for one believe in redemption and think we should at least see what we could possibly do. But this is not my decision alone.”

The small metallic sphere sat in front of Invidia. He stood up from his seat and did some brief stretches before going to his room and grabbing his wand and some parchment. "Alright, let's see what this thing is," he said. After sketching out some of the markings on parchment, muttering all the while, he began poking at the box with his wand. After a while, the wand began to emit a sharp whine before Invidia drew it away. "Curious." "Well, it's old," he explained to Stella. "Hard to place. Could be centuries, could be millennia. Markings don't match any known Dhakaani script, so probably not from Khorvaire. Looks modified, probably to interface better with modern methods. Arcane structure is... unique. Lines up with what I know of mind-based magics, but it looks like it would take a trained mind mage to learn more. Probably has to do with these psionics you mention. Where'd you find it?" Before Stella could reply, Nala and Hendrick walked in through the front door. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Invidia was quick to reply. "The decision here is between letting an increasingly unstable and powerful arcanist with a tenuous grasp of sanity loose onto the world or mitigating the risks of doing so," he began. "There may be solutions yet to be found in this case."

“Interesting.” Mind-based magic? That was one way of looking at it. This psionic bullshit was so fundamentally alien and frightening to her that she couldn’t view it as just another type of magic. “My friend was given this sphere by a monk who asked him to get rid of it. He was thirteen, so obviously he didn’t. Kept trying different combinations for months. Hit the right buttons one day and it unlocked.” A flash of light, a sudden rush of information. Rune’s memories felt so different to hers, yet equally vivid and real. “The combination seemed to have changed after that because he never got it open again. He seemed to think that was what it was for. Punch the combination in, get psionic power out. I’m not convinced. It doesn’t make sense to me to build a sphere that rewards you for randomly hitting buttons.” She paused as Nala and Hendrick returned. It didn’t take any special perceptiveness to see the marks of fresh tears on Nala’s face. Stella’s heart squeezed tight, but she waited in silence while Hendrick showed their warlock to her room and cut her a piece of cheesecake. Excellent cleric skills. Stella approved of the cheesecake. “Nala offered to walk away?” Her smile had no humour whatsoever. “That’s sweet, but no. If she’s a threat to us, she’s a worse threat to any innocent civilians she might come across. She needs to be guarded until the book is destroyed.”

"Any suggestions as to how we could deal with her here, if we are not letting her walk away?" Hendrick tried to let this be an open discussion and moderate, although his opinion on the matter was clear.

Stella didn’t hesitate. “Destroy the book immediately. I can get over what happened, but the book needs to be ashes. If she isn’t willing to destroy it…” Well. That was going to escalate fast.

"That's easier said than done," Invidia shot back. "That thing doesn't seem like it'll go easy."

He looked at Stella, slightly taken aback by her eagerness to destroy things she did not understand in the slightest. "I doubt it will be a case of simply taking the book away and burning it. I have tried separating it from Nala before. It did not like the attempt. I am not willing to let anyone but me try that, and I dont think that is a good idea to start with. Maybe we should really use the time we have here in Korranberg to research." He looked over to Invidia and Zeth. 

“It didn’t like the attempt?” Stella felt like she was missing something.

"When I was watching over Nala's sleep, I noticed her radiating pure evil. Particularly the book. I tried pushing it off her side with some magic. it did not move at all. I managed to open it instead. It was seemingly a random collection of symbols in no particular coherent way. Madness." Hendrick put his fork down. "It started talking. I told me about how Nala needed blood to reach the next threshold. Blood of a certain quality. I presume that is why it wanted her to end Castor Korran. At the end of the conversation, which seemingly took place primarily in my mind, I suffered a psychic backlash, most of which I resisted, along with whatever mind control it had thought up for me." Those years in the college training rooms finally paid off.

"It might be an anchor to something beyond this plane," Invidia mused. "Or a close connection to something on this plane. Whatever it is, it's clearly powerful and doesn't like its plans being disturbed. Of course, being adventurers, this means we need to disrupt those plans."   He sighed. "I can dig around more in the Library, but I'm not sure it'll be of any use."

Stella’s voice rose dangerously. “It attacked you?” Her friend. Her cleric! And it had threatened him? Harmed him? Fuck this book. Invidia could indulge his experimental curiosity with some other eldritch abomination. This one was done. “No. Absolutely not. The Trust already ransacked the entire Library of Korranberg trying to figure out what this book is. You have less access than they do. Why burn what little time we have left repeating what’s already been tried?”

"Attacking might be a strong term. But it showed, that it is not to be messed with. Whilst I dislike its presence, I doubt its removal is a simple task. The library still might hold some secrets. They might have looked, but have they looked for the right thing? Did they know what they should have looked for? Maybe there is some people from the Church who could help. I have been to Saint Elwilyn's, they seemed competent." He did not like that either, but there wasnt much to be liked about this anyway.

LOCATION: Outside the Blue Lotus DATE: 3rd of Vult CHARACTERS: Nala, Blue, Hendrick It wasn't until Nala's feet found solid ground that she allowed everything to come to the surface. Everything was primal; fear, pain, instinct...until it wasn't. Her feet found earth, and she blinked. Once, twice, and then her memories hit her like the lightning rail. She cried out in pain as a migraine tore through her brain, small explosions of red and orange behind her eyelids. She grabbed her head, briefly worried that the book was exacting its revenge. In a way, it was. The memories began with the most recent and worked backwards, a horrifying montage of trauma. She saw Rune's death, Jeezargo's , Lupin's , all of the guards they were being accused of killing...things she had been trying to understand for months suddenly became so clear. Then she remembered Dorn's death. Crow's . Her breathing was ragged and her eyes were flitting around her surroundings, trying to anchor her to the present, but she was too far gone.  Then, the memories grew darker. She saw the slaughter of dozens of her people, performed for the delight of pure evil. She saw her older sisters beaten until their bodies lay broken before her. She smells the stench of decay nearly fifteen years later...for the first time? No. Her insides twist and she falls to her knees, heaving until her body expels everything inside her stomach. But even then, the memories don't stop. Nala begins to see the horrific acts done by her own hand. She sees herself attack Hendrick and Zeth . She remembers the rage as she destroyed Jeezargo . She even remembers the exact feeling of her first eldritch blast, powerful enough to kill her slaver. Finally, her stomach empty, Nala lays on the ground, unmoving. Silent. Tears stream down her face, her mouth is open in pure shock. Poetically, she almost mimics that which she could not conceive only moments ago.  Death. She sounds out the word in her mind. The purpose of life; that which drives all of humanity is the knowledge of death. She felt afraid. She felt broken. She almost wished that she could forget again, but the thought filled her with shame, so she pushed it away. What have I done? Nala Delmirev the Deathless, Warlock of Tul Oreshka , is no more.

LOCATION: The Blue Lotus DATE: 3rd of Vult CHARACTERS: Nala, Blue, Hendrick, Invidia, Zeth Nala finally started comprehending. This was a welcome change for everyone. Maybe not for her right now, but in the long run this can be the only way to live. “Blue, help me get her inside.” Both of them looked rough, but they managed to help her to the suite. Invidia and Zeth greeted them as soon as they entered. Zeth was already back on the drinking. Maybe it was the stress. “The book has released her. It found a new host, I believe. The airship captain. Zeth, can you help her with some tea or something. Maybe some light, easy food Invidia.” They sat her down on her previous chair. “Did Stella not come back yet?”

Invidia exited the kitchen with tea, crackers, and sandwiches. "I see you had a good flight," he said to those present, raking his eyes across their injuries. "Stella came in and left without saying a word. Not sure where she's headed. Not very friendly, that one. Where's the book?"

Zeth nodded to Hendrick and blue as they entered, Zeth sat at the table, a light ale in his mug, with short lived swigs of his beverage. Zeth pours tea for the three of them, using a single hand as to not seperate himself from his drink. "Here you go." Zeth says, frustration clear from his tone. "Don't mind me", he says looking at Hendrick "care to join me? and not judge me." Zeth asks, the latter part muttered under his breath, but still audible, getting up before Hendrick has time to answer, Zeth grabs a mug for both Hendrick and Blue. Placing the mugs on the table Zeth continues "Drink?".

Nala said nothing. She went with Hendrick , heard things from what felt like the edges of reality. She felt like she was going mad, but she knew objectively that her madness was behind her. Still, the world felt so different. She felt so small. Someone placed a cup of tea and some crackers in front of her. Hunger. That's safe. She took a single cracker and began eating it slowly, with small bites. She didn't dare look at anyone. There was so much death on her that she almost felt it could be contagious. A frown embedded itself onto her face. Only when Invidia mentioned Stella leaving did Nala look up briefly, but she said nothing and returned to her food and drink.

Hendrick was slightly taken aback by Stella having left. "Oh thank you Zeth, but I cant now. I am not feeling a hundred percent. I might take you up on that later on. I am sorry if my look was judgmental." Hendrick's eyes looked less focused than usual.  He had not sat down yet, seemingly pacing and trying to put things together in his mind. "We do not know where the book is precisely. I believe the captain of the air ship to have it. Or it having him more precisely. I don't know. Things happened very fast. Nala seems to have gotten back her memories. She has a lot to process." He looked into Stella's empty room "Any idea where she went?"

Taking a long swig of his mug, Zeth stares at hendrick all the while gulping down the last of his drink. "Probably back to her family, though maybe she's drinking, she ought to after all that." Zeth places his empty mug on the table, filling it up again, "All in all, I have no clue" Zeth lifts his mug for another swig "and I believe I'm better off for it, she needs time..."

"Maybe you are right. She will need time. We all will. But we are supposed to leave tomorrow morning." Hendrick started fiddling in some of his pockets. "Time is something we do not have right now." After finding the pen he was looking for, he started going through his backpack. "Nala has been through a lot. This evil entity had ingrained itself into her mind and confused her perception. I trust you will look after her and make sure she feels welcome. We are her family." Hendrick produced the parchments of paper he was looking for and disappeared into his room for a little while. "Blue, if Stella gets back, could you give her this sealed letter. I am going to be back later this tonight. Could you place new candles if the old ones burn down?" He pointed towards a lid candle on his windowsill with plenty ones spare lying next to it. "I might need that ale you promised, Zeth." He mustered a tired smile, before turning to Invidia and trying to shake his hand. "Thank you for helping us out today, you have been invaluable." Finally he turned to Nala, her head hung, slowly gnawing away at some crisps. He gave her a pad on the shoulder and whispered into her ear: "Glad to have you back. It will be hard to start with, but we will get through that." He hastily left the Blue Lotus, checking from the street that the symbolic picture of a house was visible in his room window with the burning candle. "Alright Kashtai, let's go find her."

"Wait," Invidia croaked. "Give me a few minutes to improve our communication." He drew his wand and muttered a few incantations, pointing at each individual in the area. A pop rang out, with no indication of its source. "Alright," Invidia transmitted telepathically. "You've got an hour before this needs to be renewed."  

Nala winced with discomfort when she heard Invidia's voice in her mind.