Avra stands tall. 

"Kindermarsh is my home, my people. Avra knows the way." she says. She bends down to look into Astrix's face. "Not quiet on the road with this beast, but we protect her." she says, scritching Astrix's ear briefly.  Astrix doesn't love her touch, though, and tilts her head away.  Avra looks nonplussed. She stands tall again and starts to walk purposefully, leaving the rest of you to follow. 

The afternoon sun casts a warm light on the road and through the thickening trees. It smells very lush and green, in an almost sweet kind of way. Effulgyn, though his family farm is near the mountain-flanked coast to the east, might find himself recalling those late summer afternoons when all he had to worry about was what was for dinner and what to spend his time on in the evening. 

The march is quiet and contemplative. Eventually the shadows start to grow long and Avra, still up ahead, begins peering into darkening corners of trees. Finally she finds something she is looking for and tells you to wait as she enters the forest quietly. She returns quickly telling you that there is a boulder just tall enough a hundred or so feet in that would cover the cart, and all of you, from being seen from the road.  You're still another three or so hours from Kindermarsh village, and maybe five or so from Avra's hut,  but you need rest. "Best to have light when seeing Sick anyway", Avra says, meaning the mold. 

OOC If you agree to stop, let me know if you are taking a long or short rest? Fin needs healing and you all need spell slots back, and a long rest has you back on the road by dawn at the latest. 

"T tell the truth, I'm beat," says Effulgyn. "Let's camp here for the night." (OOC: for a long  rest :)

Do you want to keep watch at all? 

((Watch rotations would be good. What was our total headcount again?))

5 players, but that includes Arc who is no longer playing (and Ferg who might also no longer be playing, just haven't confirmed yet).

(OOC: Effulgyn suggests this:

1. Arc, ferg

2. avra, fin

3. yesrora, effulgyn

sound okay to everyone?)

Yas nods.

giving Effulgyn a once over.

(Never liked the middle watches myself, but that's as much because I have a hard time waking up and staying up. Either delay going to sleep, or wake up early. That's my own personal tangent, but I'm good with the suggested rotation :) ))

"Works for me," Arc says, sitting up against a tree and taking a few items out from his various pockets and pouches, including the dark gem he found earlier. "Gives me a chance to explore the potential of this jet. I think I can figure out a way to use its properties to build something really special. Something like Parson, but more reliable." He flips the goggles that have sat perched on his head this whole time and peers through them. "I think this gem is special--it's like...it's like it already has life in it. I wish Ash was still here...he'd love this." 

OOC for Beartooth's benefit, Ash was a PC who started the journey but is now in Beres partaking in gladiator style fights somewhat against his will. He is also an artificer (which I don't think is something Yas would know or have any context for) but the idea here is that they had this in common and were sort of buds as a result. 

Is anyone doing anything before taking their rest? 

(OOC: just standard — eat, drink, roll out bedroll, sleep)

Ferg sits next to Arc, watching the Half Elf handle the jet with long nimble fingers. There is something wrong with that stone, he is certain of it, but he can't quite put his finger on it. He hopes that by being close to Arc, he can keep an eye on him and more importantly, that stone--but from a cool reasonable distance so he can make an intelligent, logical decision if and when the time came (believing in his heart it would come). 

It's an all too familiar feeling for Ferg--the sense of witnessing someone you love on a horrible path but being unable to stop it. The Mordechai family has been on a path like this for a long time, too long, never heeding his warnings, blazing confidently ahead into what, ruin? Damnation? And for what? No further ahead now than they were when they started. Worse off even, in Ferg's opinion, but no one asks for that any more.

Ferg supposes he could have left. He could have put his foot down, could have tried pleading, or something fancier like throwing a tantrum and making well timed threats but these hysterics were never Ferg's forte. He has always been as cool and placid as this rock Arc his turning over and over in his fingers. If he could only be just a little more like his brothers, things might be different. They might have listened. They might have chosen a different path.

But leaving...leaving was never an option was it? Not until now. And look where that got him! In the middle of a rough land, having killed someone, and having very nearly been killed himself. He shutters as he thinks about those vines wrapping around his arms, choking him.

And now watching a bad story unfold in front of his very eyes. Again. 

"Ferg, mate" Arc says suddenly, snapping Ferg out of his reverie. "You have those vials right? The ones ID gave Ash?" 

Ferg had forgotten about the vials--the precious blue crystal vials nestled so delicately in a pouch around his neck. Keeping his w(h)its about him ;), he resists the urge to reflexively feel for them, like checking for one's keys, instead willing his hands to stay neutrally splayed on his knees. 

"Oh yeah they're in my pack," he lies, gesturing behind to the cart which is about 15 feet away and just on the other side of the boulder. (See here for how I think you are all situated--I sort of think that folks are spread out a bit making little resting places for themselves and eating. Avra has a small fire going which I feel she would be inclined to stay close to, while Yas sort of retreats on her own. Arc and Ferg are facing the road but a little tucked in so they are less visible. Please let me know if you disagree with any of this and I will make necessary changes.)

Arc has no reason to be suspicious so doesn't question Ferg's lie. "I've been thinking a lot about them," he says. "The crystal that is. I'd like to study them a bit so I can see how they could be useful. Maybe I can give my homonclulus eyes of crystal so they can see beyond sight, better than any creature, even Parson. No offence," he adds. Ferg is actually a little offended but keeps it to himself. Parson is his most special magic to date. No one else is able to produce an owl at will. But again, he swallows his feelings, remaining cool and logical. 

Cool cool cool cool cool. And logical. 

"Clever, to think of crystal eyes and all that," Ferg says after a while, willing his voice to stay neutral. It occurs to him that he needs to get these vials into the hands of someone else, just in case. He thinks of who and realizes that actually the best course of action would be to split them up--one for Effulgyn, he's a handy halfling isn't he? And one for Fin, who probably should have taken them from Ash in the first place come to think of it. He allows himself 10 seconds to admonish himself for not having thought of it sooner, and then sets his mind to thinking about how he is going to accomplish the task of getting the vials into the hands of someone else. 

His mind first goes to Parson who is rested in a tree, about 10 feet away, watching the road. He could take one vial at a time but that would rouse suspicion. Best to deliver the vials himself then.

He could wait until it's time to wake the next watch and do a quick transfer then but....his heart tells him that if something is going to happen, it's going to happen in the next two hours. The more Arc plays with that thing the more imbued with it he becomes, or at least that's how it usually goes, if lore counts for anything and in Ferg's world, it counts for a lot. He spends the next few minutes recalling every historical interaction he's ever heard of involving a magically cursed item, or an infusion gone wrong, and shudders with the expanse of possibilities. Like that one bloke who inherited a cursed sword and became so evil he immediately killed his entire family with it. Or that time the little girl found a pretty ring without realizing it had a powerful fireball spell hidden inside and burned her own house down after a fight with her sister. No one was killed but still the mind boggles with how many ways it could have been worse, so much worse. 

He decides he is going to try to get the vials to Fin and Effulgyn so now he just needs to figure out how.

Fin had spent most of the day traveling in a quiet, pensive state. He'd tasted true combat now, and more so he experienced something truly greater than himself. M.O.M. always said there were monsters greater than him in the world, but she meant in a literal sense. This was different. His whole life, Fin was raised by a pious family surrounded by those with an air of academic skepticism. It was hard to reconcile the fervor of his parents with those who held fast to the tangible, or at least metaphysical.

Now here he was, faced with something incomprehensible that permeated his entire being. Fin flashed back to the feeling. This booming voice answering his prayer and shaking him to the core. Once he'd done up his patch of ground, Fin sat on his knees, arms laid before him, hands held before his face. It was a position of modified prayer, learned from his parents but modified by meditations learned from M.O.M. After several breaths, he tried reaching out through his mind once more.

Are you there? It's me again. Thank you for before. Who are you? What should I call you? A long, bittersweet silence followed; peaceful, but empty. Then it came.

Call me what you want. I do not claim such things

Fin's heart skipped as a smooth voice slipped into his mind. He'd expected something more ethereal, like a warmth or chill. Shaken, yet determined, he continued, Were you the one that answered my prayer in the woods?

You called, I came. That is how is always is...always has been...always will be...

Fin could feel his heart threaten to burst out and run away. Such a validation was beyond his wildest dreams. Thank you! Thank you a thousand times!

Fin snapped from his meditation and leapt to his feet. He rushed about in a joyous frenzy from one person to the other. "I've heard Him! Kord spoke to me! The voice we heard before was Kord blessing us with divine strength!"

Effulgyn, stretched out on his bedroll with his shoes neatly placed beside him and his pouch on the ground just above his head, stares up at the stars, reflecting upon the last two days of adventure, which feel like months, and is on the verge of drifting off when Fin calls out. The halfling props himself up on his elbow to observe his companion. “It were truly a miracle, Fin. You’re really making a name for yourself already, mate!” He holds his friend’s eye and smiles warmly, then lowers himself again. "G'night for now."

He is more wakeful after this exchange though, sleep, elusive. After tossing for some time, he turns decisively to one side, to face something that wasn't there a minute ago: a slightly glowing drawing of his parents, in a little wooden frame, just like the one in his bedroom at home on the farm, perched on the ground just inches from his face. He fumbles in his pouch for a moment for a small candle, then whispers, “Qis-f'tujej' gmb'nif” and the wick magically lights. Effulgyn uses it to study the details of the drawing for a few quiet minutes. “I miss ye both. Y’know me brothers can take care ’o’ themselves, aye?,” he asks in the barest whisper, but no answer is forthcoming.

In time, the wizard-in-training's heart put at ease despite the silence -- if only temporarily, Effulgyn blows out the candle and replaces it in his pouch. A moment later, the picture in its frame, conjured from thin air, evaporates slowly into fairy dust, as if eroded little by little by a passing breeze. Effulgyn stretches out, his breathing deepens and slows, and soon his bronze curls droop over his eyes as the young halfling man falls into a deep slumber.

Fin's joyous sprint around camp startles both Ferg and Arc as they each stare off in reflective reverie--Arc dreaming of finally creating his homonclulous, but better than he ever dreamed, now with this gem has come into his life, and with ice crystal eyes? By Kord's fist it would be the most magnificent structure to ever grace Stoacia. The adventures they'd get up to, the things they'd create. 

Ferg meanwhile scheming ways to get the vials out of Arc's reach and into the hands of their companions.

Fin's exuberance actually gives Ferg an opportunity he hadn't anticipated, not in a million years. Standing up quickly and deftly before Arc can even react he waves to Fin. "Fin! You  heard him again? What did he say? What's he like?" and feigning delight, jogs over to him, loosening his fine linen shirt as he goes so he can quickly remove the leather pouch out of Arc's view. 

Fin from your vantage you see the normally stoic gnome coming at you whilst practically stripping and he's got a wild look in his eye. What do you do?

Fin was taken aback by the reciprocal enthusiam. "I-um, well, he didn't say much. Just that he was present and listening. I think this is a sign we're doing the right thing, and that there might be something a lot bigger going on."

"Something a lot bigger going on, yes, great, indeed" Ferg stammers, fishing the pouch out of his shirt hastily and maintaining pointed eye contact with Fin. Closing his eyes for a moment he bends his mind toward Parson.

-What is Arc doing? he asks with his mind. It's a strenuous task to speak to Parson mentally and requires a fair bit of concentration to see though his eyes but with practice he's been able to master it. Within seconds, his mind fills with Parson's view from a tree he had been perched upon. It's dizzying really, he never got used to that sensation of being on the ground but perceiving things from a great height. Even more dizzying still is when he can feel Parson's head swivel back and an angle gnomes cannot manage naturally. Parson's eyes settle on the form of Arc who, depending on this next flat roll of a D20, is either standing and alerted to Ferg's strange energy or is sitting, still mesmerized by his precious gem.

OOC:

1-10, he is standing.

11-20 he is still sitting

Feel free to react according to your character.

19

(Effulgyn’s asleep :)