Chronicle: Session 6

The caravan is headed ever further away into the sunset dusk... What do we do?

"We've got to go after them!" Nothing is raring to go, and Spindle's already heading towards the road.

Faeleth looks back up the hill. "I really want to blow up Terry's tent, though."

"Same. Super with you on that. I want nothing more than to see his tent in flames...BUT Terry's gonna still be here later and we've got to go!" Faeleth sulks a little, but Nuth tries to reassure her of a continued intent to set his place on fire. She casts a torn little glance back up the hill but it really is a no-brainer.

They hit the road in hot pursuit. The tracks are, of course, fresh and clear in the dirt. The tracks then veer into the tree line, a clear path of crushed foliage leading the way.

As they follow, Spindle sights firelight in the near distance. He turns to Nothing (his logic being that she is the resident expert on "fire") and asks, "Is that a campfire?"

She peers through the trees. It's...fire? She dunno. "I guess?"

Tsalta cranes to look, and while she may not be any the wiser to the nature of the fire, she deduces its distance down to a tenth of a meter! It's EXACTLY that far away.

"I don't trust this," murmurs Tsalta as the group edges closer to the firelight. (It is a campfire, but unattended. The green caravan sits nearby. A horse, still saddled, is tethered by the caravan.) There's a hushed debate of whether this whole setup is a trap...after all, Hand must have known we were around for him to flee - could Terry have sent word? Nothing points out that we totally sent ripples round the town, who HADN'T seen or heard of us by the end of the night? Tsalta nods, "I am quite big and hard to miss..."

What if he's already expecting us?

Turns out nobody's hushed voice is as hushed as they think.

"I see you still pursue me. You did not heed my warnings. It seems I have no choice but to...incorporate you into my plans. Come, reveal yourselves."

Hand steps out of the caravan and looks expectantly into the treeline. Spindle steps forward. Nothing, determined to absolutely not reveal herself, casts Invisibility and starts clambering into a tree on the edge of the clearing (not as gracefully as she'd like, but she hopes her little grunts of exertion as she hauls herself up branches go unnoticed).

"And where are your friends?"

Spindle looks around himself, back into the trees. He didn't even realise nobody else stepped out with him! "I don't know," he says. Hand turns his gaze to the trees.

"Behind you? I see."

He twists his hand in the air, and with a flick of the wrist launches a burst of light into the nearby trees. It explodes with a sparkling flash of pink that dissipates into little floating motes, and Tsalta and Faeleth find themselves illuminated by a coating of this glimmering magical light. So, for that matter, does Nothing. She's still invisible, but her outline glows up pink.

(Spindle recognises this as Faerie Fire.)

Hand casts his eyes around the group. "Now. Come forward." It doesn't...sound like a threat? Still, nobody is eager. Faeleth and Tsalta emerge from the trees, but Nuth swings her legs awkwardly from her perch.

"Mind if I don't? It was kinda hard to get up here in the first place."

Hand obliges. He says he has something we want, emphasising his point by opening the caravan door and briefly bringing forward a little halfling boy - one of Nuth's. She tightens her grip on the branch.

He invites the party inside, if we want to discuss this further. Again, his tone is ambiguous - dude's creepy as hell, and this feels super like a trap, but at the same time he had every chance to do harm instead of just making everyone glow. And with that strange cordial invitation, he steps back behind the door himself and closes it. At the same time, the clearing is filled with an abrupt burst of fog.

"Spindle, did you do that?" Nothing is startled and confused. So is Spindle! "No? I don't think so. Did I do that?"

Nothing clambers down from her vantage point and finds her way towards the door. Someone in the party opens it to reveal deep blackness beyond. "I don't know about this, it feels...ugh..."

Tsalta is having none of it. "I'm not going in there." Faeleth agrees - this smells like trap.

You know who's totally ready to go in? Spindle. He scampers inside, peering around. This isn't a caravan on the inside, it's...more like a tunnel or stone hallway? Ahead of him, a trio of halfling children, gagged and bound and terrified. He tries to unbind one but he struggles to find purchase on the ropes for some reason? Spindle doesn't know knots?

He turns back towards the doorway. "...Not to alarm you, but..."

"Spindle, do NOT start anything with 'not to alarm you'..." Nothing is dithering on the threshold.

"What've you found?" asks Tsalta. Nothing's had enough, she's going inside to find out. She sees the kids and rushes over, hands flying to their bindings to free them except it's not working and it doesn't make sense because she knows exactly how to untie them and wait her hands aren't touching anything-

It's an illusion. Shit!

It gets worse. Spindle finds a strange sleepiness overcoming him, the floor looks so very inviting, his eyelids are so heavy. He curls up on the stone ground.

Nuth feels the same call to sleep, but she struggles against it, keeping herself conscious but only so, so barely. When Tsalta shouts in to ask if everything is okay, she can't even bring together a coherent sentence, she just sort of mumble-shouts something unintelligible that might contain the word 'magic' or 'more garbage' but it's really hard to tell.

It's pretty obvious that something's wrong - Tsalta finally pushes through the doorway, seeking out the fading pink glow emanating from Nothing and bundling her up under an arm as she pats on the floor to find Spindle, to little success. Nuth gestures vaguely - "S'ver there..." Oh, and so he is, snoring loudly. She gathers him up too.

As she does, a wind picks up inside the tunnel. It picks up outside, too, the fog from the campsite seeming to be sucked in through the door - the watchful Faeleth is powerless to resist and finds herself dragged through the doorway. It slams behind her. The fog dissipates. All is dark.

Spindle and Nothing start to take hold of their senses again in time to see the door meld into the wall, entirely sealed off. There's only one way forwards. And when they take it, moving deeper, the tunnel empties out into...a foyer.

A fancy mansion foyer.

Standard issue, big entrance room with a grand staircase up to a landing, doors in all the expected places. It's oddly empty, for a fancy mansion - no belongings to speak of, just the odd candle burning in a bracket here and there on a table or a mantlepiece. The windows in the hall only have blackness beyond them. The air is so very still. Oh, and there's a scroll sitting on a little table in the middle of the room, bound with a purple ribbon.

The door they entered from closes off, too. It's replaced with an ever-turning quartet of glowing runes - blue, purple, yellow, orange. We'll get to those.

Nothing tries to fathom what kind of magic this place is, and recalls reading about pocket dimensions - little pinched off realities created in the void and opened into by some arcane door. This is some crazy advanced magic - beyond what she'd expect of Hand with his mind tricks and illusions. Either he had help, or he's had to study this one very hard.

Meanwhile, Faeleth takes a hammer to a window. It breaks with a satisfying crash of glass. She reaches a hand into the void beyond, and it's biting cold, so frigid that even in the instant it takes for her to hiss in a breath and snatch her hand back it's already been covered in a layer of sparkling rime.

"Hell yeah, stick it to him! But uh...there's not anything out there. At all." Nothing gives an abridged explanation of pocket dimensions.

Spindle's spotted some writing in Druidic on a door. "For my children, and my love." Huh. Cute.

Nothing looks over the glowing runes. Even with her helm translating, they don't translate to Common, they're abstract pictograms. Whatever language this is, it's super weird. There's a music note, a book with pages that turn every so often, a shifting statue that is one moment a stoic man and the next a beautiful woman, and a puzzle piece. Huh.

She grabs the scroll from the table and twirls it between her fingers. Tsalta sees this and comes over, worried - "Wait, couldn't that be trapped?" Nuth scoffs.

"Nah. I'll make you a bet, right. I open this scroll and it'll be all 'you keep following me and it's annoying, now jump through a bunch of hoops and I'll let you out'. Then we do his garbage magic puzzles and jump through the hoops and he says something smug about it and then we've got to chase him and do it all again."

"Have you had to do that before, then?" Tsalta asks.

"Yeah, before we found you there was like, puzzle doors and crap. It's been pretty much three days of this."

Spindle scampers over to sniff the scroll. It smells of paper, ink, and a metallic undertone that catches a little in his throat as he breathes in. He relays this information!

"Yeah, its probably magic."

She opens the scroll. Tsalta reaches out for the ribbon and uses it to finish off a braid she'd been working on. Lo and behold, the message reads....

You persist in pursuing me.

I have tried to warn you that this is dangerous for you.

Now you will have to accept the danger you have put yourselves in.

We will start by playing a little game.

(Nuth pauses to groan.)

You have proven the courage of your hearts.

You have proven your prowess in combat.

Now, show me the sharpness of your mind.

My regards.

It's signed off with a halfling-sized handprint.

Nothing snorts. "Didn't I say so? Bloody puzzles and hoops. Also, pffff, look how tiny his hand is!" She shows the letter around, laughing. Spindle puts his tiny little palm to the paper - "No, it's a huge hand!"

But there's more!

Complete for me these tasks four,

Then I shall let you through the door.

By then you shall have the proof,

To open your eyes to the truth.

"Thinks himself a poet too, huh?"

Nothing reckons those runes are probably tied to each puzzle. Tsalta asks if she can translate, and Nuth gives her rough estimation of what they say. Nobody else knows which is which, however. Music doesn't sound too bad, surely. But again, nobody but Nothing even knows what rune is what. Spindle just hits the nearest rune (blue, his favourite of the colours) and a chime echoes out through the house - that was the book one.

Sooooo. Books. Faeleth suggests that we might be looking for a library.

"Where'd you reckon that would be?" asks Nuth. Faeleth scans the layout and suggests it might be upstairs. Unlike everyone else, Faeleth seems visibly at ease in a place like this - these mansions nobles love so much, they're all much of a muchness. Nuth notices the easy confidence of Faeleth's response and how she doesn't seem nearly as lost in this bigass house.

"Ohhh, right, yeah! You've probably been to the Baron's place, aint'cha? Cos of how you worked-"

"Let's get going, shall we?" Faeleth cuts across her abruptly and strides off for the stairs. Every time Nothing opens her mouth to continue this line of conversation, Faeleth starts talking over her. “ANYWAY.”

As the party reaches the landing, a disembodied voice fills their heads the way they've become unfortunately accustomed to. It's not as crisp as when Hand has spoken before, it's a little muted and crackly, like music on a gramophone.

"Ah, where are my manners as a host - here. Drinks have been provided for you."

Four wine glasses, already full, sit on a table atop the stairs. Nothing picks one up and sniffs it, and detects nothing unusual, but puts it down. Tsalta is the only person to partake, discovering the wine glasses magically refill. Nice!

Now, where's that library? Faeleth checks out one of the first rooms on the landing, and indeed, it's lined with shelves, a couple of chairs...bingo. Everyone goes in and has a poke around. Nothing scans the titles on the shelves and discovers a very familiar blend of genres - magic, history, smutty romance. She even finds a copy of How To Please your Dwarven Lover! She's delighted to have a replacement, even more so when a glimpse under the cover reveals it's a first edition. And signed by the author! Oh man, it'll feel so much better when this one burns.

On a table in the centre of the room is a big leather-bound book. That same crackly voice sounds out of nowhere when they all approach it - they must solve these riddles to uncover what they seek. Okay.

Inside the book, the first page is entitled "The One Desired". Below, a riddle. Nothing reads it out aloud.

''The rich man wants it. The poor man has it. If you eat it, you will die. What am I?''

There's a murmur of discussion among the group, and then Spindle pipes up - "Oh! Nothing!"

With that, the word Nothing seems to almost burn itself onto the page. Looks like they got it.

The next page, "What You Seek", has the party stumped.

''I have cities but no houses, forests but no trees, water but no fish. What am I?''

The party puzzle this one out for ages, to no avail. Who the hell knows. Nuth turns the page. Let's try the next one..."Where am I? What is Stopping You?"

''Young, I am tall. Old, I am short. Breath is my foe... What am I?''

While everyone else's brows are furrowed in consternation, Faeleth mutters to herself under her breath. Tsalta ventures "A shadow?" No response from the book. Hmm...Faeleth keeps thinking. "Tall when it's young, short when it's old... Breath is my... Is it a candle?"

The word Candle inscribes itself on the page. Tsalta sees this - "Ohhhhh, short when it's old because the wax melts away..."

The next page is entitled "How Do You Read Me?"

''I cannot be seen, I cannot be heard, cannot be smelt. I lie beneath stars and under hills. Empty houses, I fill. I come first and follow after. End lives. Kill laughter. What am I?''

This one's tricky too. The group repeat the riddle to themselves over and over. Under stars, under hills. What could it be? Ugh, this is hard. Nothing keeps flipping through the book to look at the titles on the pages, especially that first one. "If these titles are relevant, I don't like this. 'The one desired'..."

She hands Tsalta the book. Maybe she can crack this last one? Everyone puzzles over it for a while and then realisation dawns on Tsalta - "Is it...darkness?" So it is. Darkness.

Nothing's hung up on the titles. "What do we seek?" That second riddle is so hard! What has forests but no trees, even? Then she and Faeleth groan in tandem, understanding hitting them both simultaneously. "A map?" As the word Map burns onto the page, Nothing objects! "There are maps with trees on! I bet Red Larch had a tree on the map!"

Still, all four riddles are solved. Was something meant to happen? Oh, right, those titles! Nuth still doesn't like that first one, but the rest...we seek a map. What's stopping us is candles? How do we read the book......darkness. Ohhhh.

Spindleshanks snuffs every candle in the room with Druidcraft, startling Tsalta greatly but revealing a book on the shelf that glows with a soft light. Nuth retrieves it, and when she opens it out slides a piece of paper - a map of the region that Red Larch and the places they've since visited are part of. Off towards one of the corners, there's a very clear X.

The chime they heard earlier rings out again.

Tsalta sends Spindle to see if the runes downstairs have changed at all. He skitters away, and then he cries out - "NOOOOO, the blue one's gone!"

Spindle might be sad his pretty coloured glow is gone, but that sounds like good news. They tell him to hit another one - Nuth suggests he pick his second-favourite colour.

"I'll do purple!" And then a chime rings out through the house again before Spindle bounds back up the stairs. Purple...that was the music one, right? Where's a music room? Faeleth's not so sure about this and suggests checking downstairs. Nothing proposes next door - maybe fancy folks like to hear music while they read!

Next door turns out to actually be a bedroom. Nothing opens the wardrobe to discover - ugh, this corset is definitely lingerie and definitely Moira-sized. She holds it at arm's length with something between a laugh and a grimace - "I'm getting mental images I never ever ever needed."

Tsalta sees this little corset and just has to see how Spindle looks in it. She scoops him up in one hand - he realises what's happening and wriggles and kicks - and wrassles him into the lacy contraption like someone trying to dress up an uncooperative cat. She succeeds, sort of: with all Spindle's struggling and resistance, it's ended up upside-down.

"Aww, don't you look lovely, Ballsack!" Tsalta coos, with a barely hidden giggle. Spindle throws a suspender strap over his shoulder and seems to decide that, well, it's on now! He makes no move to divest himself.

Tsalta pokes curiously through a dresser drawer and discovers...some kind of...leather hood? Oh dear. She pops that back where it came from and shuts the drawer. Faeleth's determined to find something worth taking, checking under the pillows on the luxurious four-poster bed, inside the pillows ("Wow, you're thorough, aren't you?" laughs Nuth as she spots this) but it's nothing but soft cotton and eiderdown. Aww.

Time to try to find the actual room they're looking for!

Maybe it's downstairs. As it happens, they do get a response when they enter the door marked with Druidic writing. (Nothing reads it. "Huh. To my children and my love. Whose children?") A translucent, illusory child appears before the party. He's a halfling, his little features kind of familiar.

"Who would sing a song to send me to sleep?" he asks.

"Who will sing a song to send him to sleep - like a lullaby, right? A...parent?"

The illusion doesn't respond.

(Faeleth, ambigously OOC, asks "How would you even know?" Ouch, wow???? "Scuse you, I know what a bloody lullaby is!"

We will never know if this exchange actually happened.)

Tsalta seems deep in thought. She's a musician, and she knows sheet music - how letters are assigned to notes. "Spindle, could you try playing him D-A-D?" Spindle pulls out his ukulele and plucks out the notes, and the little halfling boy smiles. He vanishes, and a new scene plays before them. In the same translucent state, we see Hand (not much younger than he is now) tucking that child into bed, singing him a silent lullaby and ruffling his hair as he leaves to let the little boy sleep.

"He has kids?" Nuth asks to no-one in particular. That doesn't track with what she thought she understood of him.

There's a little frame by the bedside. It's got a family portrait in it - Hand, Moira, and three halfling kids. It's easy enough to recognise one of them as the boy from the puzzle. This is confusing new information.

Spindle's sent to check on the foyer runes. He exclaims in distress again - the purple one's gone! Maybe he should pick his least favourite this time. He hits the yellow rune.

When the party find the room for this puzzle, a different voice sounds. This one's not Hand - the speaker sounds softer, more feminine. This one sounds like Moira.

(NOTE: And I cannot for the life of me remember what she said. O: Something about untangling??? Hell, I’m not sure even if this was the right room. Mighta been the bedroom, come to think of it. I don't know! This is why I need to start bringing my ipad to sessions and make recordings, ahaha.)

There's some little metal puzzles on this room's table. Everyone sets to work trying to separate the two pieces. Tsalta and Spindle sort theirs out with relative efficiency, Nothing frowns and jiggles the pieces together haphazardly until by random chance they come apart, and Faeleth's comes apart with ease despite her not having paid any attention to how she was doing it. She's just that dextrous, it seems!

Last rune!

The chime that sounds from this one is deep, as it rings out the ground itself seems to vibrate from below them. Sounds like it came from a basement or something.

The basement stairs lead onto a corridor. The corridor leads out onto a dark, square room.

Everyone filters cautiously out into the big square room. There's a barred door on the other side, doesn't look like that'll open easy. But more importantly, there's four hunched stony creatures in each corner, winged, still as statues but everyone but Tsalta knows a gargoyle when they see one now. Tsalta sees everyone's wary stance and asks, voice hushed, "What are those?"

Nothing replies, "Hand set one of these on us before we ran into you. They're pretty nasty."

They're still not moving though. Spindle, already a bobcat, crawls up to the one left of the entrance door and sniffs at it curiously. Still not a flicker of movement.

Maybe they're not coming to life at all? Maybe they're part of a puzzle. Nothing heads towards the gated door, staff clasped tight in her hands, ready to blast if a statue even twitches...and as she steps into the middle of the room, red runes flare up on the floor, and there's that horrible cracking sound as the gargoyles shudder to life. She fires off a crimson blast at the nearest one she sees, but she's so jumpy it only just clips the edge of its wing, barely even chipping it.

The one she hit and its partner across the room turn on her in an instant, swooping in to claw and tear at her arms and shoulders - not good, not good, god damn it! Her leather armour barely even puts up a defence against those stony talons.

Faeleth rushes in towards the opposite gargoyle to Spindle, thrusting her rapier into where its vitals would be...but the tip of her blade scrapes on stone, rending a little scratch in its abdomen but nothing close to the deadly blow it would have inflicted on something made of living flesh. Crap.

Spindle, meanwhile, has sighted something curious. His gargoyle hasn't moved at all. He looks down and where every other podium had a rune, the floor in front of this one is cracked. He'd shout to the others, but he's a cat right now.

Tsalta rushes towards Nuth as she's beset by these horrible winged beasties and grabs one of them by the wing, wrenching it towards her and wrapping her arms around it so that it's pinned, wriggling and snarling in her grasp.

Spindle manages to draw Faeleth's attention as he leaps towards one of the glowing runes and scratches at it. The gargoyle it corresponded to seems to jolt and stutter in its movements before returning to the fray.

"Guys!" shouts Faeleth, "Those runes!"

The gargoyles and the party trade a few more blows before everyone gets the message, but then all attention is turned to the runes instead of the stony assailants. Unfortunately, Tsalta's gargoyle manages to wriggle free. Okay, never mind that! Nothing attempts to blast the floor but misses the tile she was aiming for horribly. One of the gargoyles is, frustratingly, standing right on top of its rune.

Faeleth yells out to that gargoyle - "Hey, you! Over here!' - and throws her arms up in the air, dancing to gain its attention. And oh, dance she does. Nothing might have that red skin and those devil's horns, Tsalta might be tall enough to fill a small room, Spindle might be strange and grey and bestial but if any of them had thought elves to be regular folk by comparison, surely they would remember now that Faeleth is a being that is not comparable to humans or halflings.

She's a vision of seamless fluid motion and long, long, elven limbs, and she is spectacular. Faeleth has locked eyes with this twisted construct of living stone and it is staring back at her, utterly captivated.

(At this point, the DM breaks, and has to stop to laugh into his arms for probably like half a minute.)

The gargoyle flies over to Faeleth with languid flaps of its wings, never once breaking her gaze, and it does not attack her despite being in arm's reach. As she sways and gyrates, it follows her motions with its head like a cobra transfixed by the snake charmer's flute.

Tsalta's arrow connects with its rune now that it’s accessible and the creature momentarily jolts, snarling, but Faeleth dances with renewed vigour! Its eyes snap back to her, and it...starts...following her moves, no longer just swaying its head but moving its whole body in an artless mimicry of Faeleth’s graceful (and slightly seductive???) dancing. Looks like this one's not a threat for now.

Spindle makes a beeline for the nearest rune, digging his claws into the stone and actually shoving his jaws against the tiles to try to bite into it. And he does! His fangs find purchase and the tile is crushed in his maw. Spindle, for his troubles, gets a mouth full of burning magic that scalds his tongue as the rune flashes and winks out.

Nothing super sucks at aiming today. She takes a shot at the rune but the blast hits just shy of it - great job cracking a totally unimportant bit of floor!

Luckily, Tsalta's aim is way better. She takes aim at another of the runes and the gargoyle harrying Nothing shudders then falls still. (Faeleth's still keeping her one entertained - emboldened by how weirdly effective this dance is, she even gives the gargoyle a little caress on its jagged snout. It feels like stone. She gazes deep into its eyes. They look like black pits of darkness. Because it's a gargoyle.)

Spindle leaps across the room to claw and bite at the final rune, cracking it with ease. There's that same burst of burning magic in his mouth as the rune breaks, but it doesn't feel so bad this time. He's kind of getting a taste for that spicy, spicy magic, actually.

It takes Faeleth a few seconds to notice that her gargoyle dance partner's stopped dancing, but by now everyone else in the room has had plenty of time to bear witness to her performance! Tsalta applauds, Nuth puts two fingers to her mouth and gives an enthusiastic wolf-whistle, and Spindle returns to gnomish form and whistles too (but it's like, not got any variation in pitch, it's just a really loud single whistle. Spindle totally knows how appreciative whistling works). Faeleth turns to the 'crowd' and bows with a flourish.

Nothing grouses, "You know, if he was trying to humanise himself or whatever in those last puzzles? Totally back to square one. Screw this guy and also his gargoyles."

The gate at the back of the room rises to invite them through.

The room it enters into is the darkest yet. There's a few candles, but that's it. Good thing everyone can see in the dark! On a central table sit four potions.

Hand's voice crackles through the dusty air.

"One will heal you. One will kill you. One will reveal your darkest secrets. And one...will make this all worthwhile."

Everyone agrees that this one sounds easy enough if it weren't for that whole 'one potion will kill you' thing, that bit is...unsettling. But probably the healing potion will cancel out the poison, right? The party holds the bottles and jars up to the light to get some colour vision.

There's a slender corked bottle of red potion (Nothing knows healing potions, she's spent enough time at the house of an apocatharess! Healing potions, in her experience, have always been red), a jar of something dark and inky-black, a tiny jar of something clear-blue, and a final bottle that shows up a vivid green.

Well, no matter which they go for, it's a three-in-four chance of NOT being death potion, right? Well. Two-in-three if we're assuming red is the curative. Good odds, right?

While everyone else is busy debating how to go about this (still collectively anxious about the fact that one potion will supposedly kill the drinker), Spindle grabs the green jar.

Spindle lifts it to his lips and gulps down a mouthful of potion, and the others watch on with concern as his eyes immediately glaze over and he stares silently out into the middle distance.

-

Spindle is a child - an infant really, only a few years old - again and his village is burning around him. Bodies litter the streets and houses are aflame, deep gnomes running everywhere, screaming. His parents are nowhere to be seen.

The scene cuts to a gnome wizard's tower as he broods, furious that his daughter could possibly couple with subterranean filth. They have to pay. He'll show them what they deserve, he'll rain down fire and fury on those deep dwellers who dare steal away and sully his precious flesh and blood.

Years pass and Spindleshanks watches the old man - his grandfather - grow wracked with guilt at the events he orchestrated. He sees him, in Terry's opulent tent, striking the deal that would cost him his mind. Beside the desperate gnome stands Tsalta, and she's with him too when his mind breaks.

-

Spindle returns to the present and curls up in a shaking, weeping ball. Tsalta tries to comfort him and lays a big hand on his shuddering back.

Everyone is looking at the potion now. Spindle's alive, so it's not the poison. But that response seemed hardly like he just experienced a positive revelation, so....this is the one that reveals secrets. Poor kid, must have been something real rough.

Nothing reckons she can handle secrets. Spindle's one clearly sucked, but...man, what if it shows her something worth knowing? There's so much about herself she doesn't know.

"Go on. Drink." Her patron's voice is close and eager in her ear.

Nothing raises the bottle to her lips and takes a tentative swig.

-

She is almost two years old and she is happy. So happy! She's in a garden outside a mansion and before her are two faces she'd only ever seen before in oil paint behind glass, smiling, lifting her in the air as she laughs. They are so happy. She is so happy.

-

The beautiful moment passes and she's back in the darkened room again.

It was only a swig.

"What did you see?" asks Tsalta, but Nothing doesn't answer, she just stares at the bottle. She wants to know. But it said the secret was dark...but she needs to know, though. She just saw her parents. Before anyone can stop her, the rest of the potion is down her throat.

-

She's a tiny child again, but now she's indoors, on the floor, and her mother is standing above her with her back turned to her, pleading with someone she can't yet see. Her father is on the floor, bleeding, eyes lifeless. There's someone standing in front of her mother and that someone steps closer, blade glinting in the firelight. Her mother begs, falls to her knees as she urges the intruder to spare her daughter's life. But there's no compassion or mercy in the elf's eyes. There's only the impassive gaze of a seasoned assassin, dark and blank as Faeleth drives her blade through the tiefling woman's heart.

-

She snaps back to reality, already sobbing. There's barely a moment's pause before Nothing hurls herself at Faeleth in an incoherent screaming whirl of flailing limbs and tears. She can barely get words out in a straight line as she tries to barrel Faeleth to the ground and fails, little fists hammering into her leather armour with ineffectual aimless fury as Faeleth stands there, silent and stunned. Tsalta pulls the tiefling away and pins her against her chest in a restraining bear hug. Nothing stabs her heels into Tsalta's legs and kicks and screams something about her and she killed them and let me go let me at her.

Faeleth looks back at the struggling Nothing, all too sure of what dark secret the tiefling has just seen. Her eyes are wide and her voice comes out small when she replies, simply, "I didn't know."

Nobody was looking when Spindle grabbed the bottle of black liquid, divested it of its lid and put it to his lips. But when he hits the floor the whole scene shifts in an instant. With a gasp and a shout of Spindle's name, Tsalta drops Nothing, who falls to the ground in an ungraceful heap. Nuth scrambles from there towards the red potion - Spindle is frothing at the mouth, twitching - and rips the cork out with her teeth, forcing the bottle practically half way down the gnome's throat.

Spindle awakes to himself almost drowning in healing potion. Grabbing the bottle and pushing it away, he splutters back to life with glimmering red spilling down his chin and probably leaving unfortunate stains on that lacy corset.

There's a lull after that. Spindle drinking Death Potion, while horrifying and totally unnecessary, has successfully caused enough of a distraction that nobody's trying to pummel anyone else to the floor any more. Tsalta looks over Spindle, then to Nothing and Faeleth.

"What did you see?" Tsalta's voice is firm and level. This potion has been, by the look of it, little else but bad news. "Whatever it is, you two need to work it out."

Nuth stares daggers at Faeleth. "You gonna tell them, or should I do it?" Faeleth doesn't reply, she looks like she'd rather be anywhere other than here right now. Nothing scoffs as she turns back to Tsalta. (Tsalta gently asserts that it was Nuth's potion-vision and so she should be the one to explain it.)

"She-" Nothing hesitates. "She killed-" a choked pause, "-she KILLED my parents."

"Look. I don't know what that potion made you see, but we've got to work together here to get out. Do you agree?" Tsalta hushes Nuth repeatedly as she tries to interject.

Spindle gives Nothing a stern look. "Don't make me have to use fog." Despite herself, she lets out a little cry-laugh at that. He's got a point. Spindle raises a tiny hand - "Come on. Promise to work together to do what we need to do?" Tsalta lays her hand over his, and Faeleth follows. Nothing makes no move at first, but Spindle gives her a Look. "Nothing, you've got to promise." She sighs and puts her hand on top of Faeleth's, still not meeting anyone's eyes.

"Save my life one more time and I guess maybe we can call it even or something," she mutters.

It's only then that anyone even really notices the note that was pinned under the potion of secrets. The rhyme on it has a couple of blanks, easily filled by the words "black" and "light".

Blacklight. For the sake of transferring this to the fiction, let's say Nothing lights the nearest candle up an unearthly shade of blue. One of the potions - the pale, bluish one - illuminates like a beacon under this light. Nothing grabs it and necks it.

-

She sees Hand, writing the scroll they read when they first entered this strange mansion. He finishes it, and then grabs another quill and dips it in a different inkwell... Despite his quill being touched to the paper and letters clearly being formed, no writing is actually visible.

-

Nothing comes out of the vision, and asks Tsalta to hold the letter up to the blue candle. As it does, bright new words gleam in the breaks between the inked lines.

I AM NOT THE DANGER.

SHE WHO COLLECTS ENDANGERS US.

SHE TOOK MINE, AS SHE TOOK YOURS. YOU ARE WHERE SHE CANNOT SEE.

SHE CAN NOT KNOW WE ARE WORKING TOGETHER.

I WILL TRY TO KEEP HER [????? ‘caged’? adam feel free to fill these in i couldn’t quite make out this last word??]

YOU WILL BE MY ACE. FIND MY MAP. LOCATE THE KEY. OPEN THE [????]

BE CAREFUL!! SHE HAS YOU IN HER SIGHTS. SHE LIKES TO WATCH YOU ALL, ESPECIALLY OUR LITTLE HORNED FRIEND.

REMEMBER: WE CAN NOT BE SEEN TO BE WORKING TOGETHER.

Oh snap. The pieces all fall into place. Hand - if his message is to be trusted - has just been playing the villain - no wonder all he's done is throw tricks and roadblocks our way instead of making any real effort to take us out. He's not been playing cat and mouse with us for a laugh, he's been testing us and maintaining his front at the same time...

Candles illuminate by themselves along the sides of a stairwell nobody had noticed before now - did that door just appear or was it there the whole time?

Tsalta suggests destroying the letter. It's probably in our best interests to have no evidence that Hand has made this communication. Everyone huddles around the scroll one last time to really absorb it. Locate the key with the map. Got it.

As the party ascends the corridor stairs, Tsalta touches the scroll to one of the candles and lets it burn away to cinders.

The corridor exits back into the foyer. It's a disorienting place for it to lead to - from the layout of the mansion, and the way the stairs led, it feels like it should have taken them to one of the back rooms or something.

The front door is back. Like, it's a real door now. We can leave. And the party finds themselves out in the campsite again, the caravan door closing itself behind them. The horse is gone, the campfire burned out. Hand's voice sounds once more in their heads - he's got a parting gift for us, not much, but something to aid us. It's waiting inside.

On a table inside the caravan-that-is-now-a-regular-caravan, there's a bag and a sword. (More precisely, a fancy-ass rapier with gold trim on the handle and pommel.) Faeleth looks around the group and then steps up to claim it. It feels as good as it looks - the balance on this thing speaks of fine craftsmanship.

+1 Rapier get!

(Nothing gives Faeleth just...the most stink-eye.)

Tsalta rummages in the bag, discovering 100 gold pieces and...a very familiar little round gemstone bead. Oh hey, it's a new Stone of Farspeech, nice! Hand's disembodied voice shows up one final time - he'll contact us as and when he needs to with this. The party explain its function to Tsalta...and warn her to not be too loud around it. Tsalta bundles it up in the center of a braid next to her ear, for convenience. That way he won't struggle to get our attention.

Now what?

Nothing shrugs.

"We do the same thing we're already doing. We keep on chasing him."