Crimson Sands of Time

Drawn by the sounds of music and light conversation, Cha!jil finds, within the pavillion, seven guests—one of them a talking bear—lounging around a picnic table covered with an emerald-green cloth and laden with cakes, teapots, teacups, and cutlery. Two of the guests are motionless and silent, but the others are engaged in spirited conversation. At the back of the pavilion, a string quartet of badger minstrels plays delicate chamber music.  The pair if unmoving figures appear to be frozen in time: a halfling and a half-orc; the latter, a familiar face: Cha!jil recognizes him as Captain Sparhawk. 

Aside from the bear, (who is speaking in common,) and the static duo, the guests include two well dressed ladies, (a human and a half-elf,) alond with a well-heeled high elf and a human, dressed un plain clothes, clean, though stained by grass and dirt, holding a pumpkin, 🎃 which also speaks common.  The final guest in the group does not speak but is not totally silent: a headless dwarf stools his foot twice in reply to a question put to him by the half-elf woman: "Everyone knows clotted cream should be applied to a scone before the jam. Don't you agree, Obal?"  With the two stamps, the woman becomes incensed with the dwarf. "Oh, what would you know of scones, you haven't even a mouth."

hi all -  would like to get back in.  i think i have time again…really.. this time!   need to fix the notifications. 

Cha!jil runs up to Captain Sparhawk and inspects him, poking and lightly biting him to see if he'll wake up or whatever...

Sparhawk is utterly immovable, his skin, as stone, unyielding to the touch. All he carries as if catved, immovable from its stationary pose.

@Tetrevess: Tess and Tetrevess are shunted to somewhere. Tess can be dropped in anywhere anytime. Tetrevess is slightly dead, but we can get past that pretty easily. I'll pm you 

"This place is strange indeed."

Trisk sees that the dwarf rushes up to one of the statues and after she bites it he waits to see what exactly is going on as he doesn't understand her behavior.

Having been unconscious for quite a while already, Ethan finally takes a moment to feel the ground below him; It's grassy. He must be dead. That's what he assumes, especially when he hears that his teammates and his brother are already up and running and he's only just begun to regain his senses... He painfully gets up, still wounded from the previous boss fight as his eyes morph slowly from a blur to finally projecting this mysterious, time-warped place...

"Ugh... Wait... where the hell are we now? Did we all just fail...?" He gasps in realisation. He jumps up only to slip down on his back painfully as his bones cracked. Groaning in pain, he gets up again, albeit at a slower pace, before whipping his head around. Everything seems to be frozen in time. Where even are they right now?!

"Randy, where's everyone going? And what's with those flowers you're inspecting? Why is everything at a standstill?!" He frantically asks, still unsure of what to make of his current surroundings to the point where he even misses Trisk asking what his brother is referring to by a movie.

This "Captain Sparhawk" appeared to be quite an interesting man in life, now an inanimate statue. 

He was a large imposing man of almost 7 feet in height, (as with many statues, the artist exaggerated their physical features) carved into the statue, what appears to be full battle scared plate mail. A golden lion head is embossed on the armor's chest plate. (A symbol of the god, Marduk). His protruding teeth make you realize he is a half-orc. A dark cloak, with a curious gold Kraken clasp rests on his shoulders. (a nice touch from the artist, and difficult to render on a statue).  A large greatsword protrudes out of the statue. Of note,  the nose of the statue appears to be damaged, parts of it chipped off at a strange angle and perhaps reattached by a non-artisan. His hair is black with some silvering, and his eyes, a hard steel blue.

<note: I think Sparhawk retains his usual hues, he isn't turned to stone, but if you bit him hard, it would hurt your teeth. Also true of the halfling.  The satyr statue in the rose garden is actually stone, though>

"Well, I never." The human woman exclaims as the wild dwarf bites a frozen Captain Sparhawk.  A quill floats in the air beside her, writing in bold letters, her words, verbatim, on a sheet of paper laid upon the table, one among many sheets of paper stacked chaotically about her.

The high elf, ever polite, says in a calm.and helpful tone, "No harm, done, I'm sure.  That hakf-orc's hide is even tougher than mine." with this he raps upon his forearm, his knuckles clacking against his sleeve. "Wild magic accident at the old family crypt. Hard as stone, whixh is more a curse than a blessing.  That's why I've come here."

Cha'jil turns towards the elf confused, " You fix now?", pointing to Sparhawk.

"Sorry to disappoint, Miss, but I actually came to beseech the aid of a powerful Fey it is said can grant wishes and will do so for the asking. We are waiting for her arrival, though it seems more and more arrive with no sign of Zybilna...."

"Ah, introductions, then.  The fellow withe the gourd over there is Sumai." He gestured to the farmer, who tips his hat: "Pleasure, ma'am. Ol' Yamzu here is sweet as sugar, but I do caution folk not to get too near, he gets rather impulsive when groped by his appetite." The squash smiles a broad toothy grin, eyes squinting slightly as his cheeks show his absolute joy.

The stone-skinned elf continues, "the dwarf in our company has not told us his name, but after a tedious guessing game has agreed to respond to 'Obal Obb' though I personally don't think we got it right, more like he grew tired of our efforts." To this the headless dwarf stomps once.

"To my left," he indicates tbe brown bear, "is Bodger."

"Charmed." Growls the bear in a delicate feminine voice, extending a paw.

"And this," he starts before being interrupted by the woman he is introducing,

"I can speak for myself, sir. I am Majera d’Valzey, and this is Dictato," the pen ceases crawling her word momentarily to raise in the air at the mention of it's name.

"Yes, quite, and I am Lord Eld of Highfolk," the elf concludes. "And how may we address you?" he asks the wild dwarf.

*everywhere can hear this conversation, if anyone wants to join. 

<As a reminder, there's still the pond,the standing stones, a pair of towers and that tree stump with an axe embedded, if anyone's interested.>

Randy suddenly jolts when Trisks asks him about the movie he watched a few years ago. Oh yeah. People in this realm have not been to a cinema, let alone watch something digital before. "Um... n-n... f-forget what I said, um... sorry. I-I-I was just speaking rubbish on my end uh... don't mind me..." He stutters as he distractedly turns his attention to the flowers again... at least until Ethan's sudden outburst causes him to double back. "Geez what the heck, man!" He yelps.

"Ok... escaping your death aside. Have a look at this." He points to the flowers. "These flowers... one of our deceased allies was holding them previously and it gave him some sort of resistance..." He plucks out all five flowers for now. "Who knows. Maybe they can be of our use again." 

"Man my throat is parched. I'm thirsty..." He walks over to the pond and inspects it. Slowly bringing his hands down to the frozen in time lake, he attempts to sip the water, but suspects there's something else underneath the surface of this eerily still liquid... (Investigation: 16). He also overhears the conversation nearby. What the heck? There are people that actually live here? Why weren't we told-?! Wha-?! He wants to throttle them so bad, but figures that those guys would have no problem with them. In the meanwhile he'll just keep inspecting for anomalies with... someone...

"Hey Ethan. You might wanna check the towers or that lone tree stump over there. Maybe give the latter a hand, will ya?" He calls out.

Trisk will go over to the standing stones and begin examining them for arcane markings or other runes that might give a clue to their purpose, he will also take the time to walk around and in between them, viewing the inside and things outside from within to see if there's a difference.

Investigation: 18 

"These stones might be relevant to this location. Do you strangers know anything of this place or were you also transported here by a portal?"

"We are unfamiliar with this strange land and seek to understand more of it and where exactly we are. What is this place known as, what name is it called by?"

At the plucking of the fifth and final flower🌹 , the entire vine withers and dies. 

Walking to the pond, Ethan notes the willow trees that encircle and shelter it. Lily pads dot the mirror-like surface of the water, and hungry dragonflies dart about, feeding on motionless fireflies that form an unmoving cloud above the still water.

Despite his suspicion, Ethan places his hand at the water's surface.  The instant his skin grazes the pool, a delicate hand made of water, black as winter’s night, silently breaks the water’s surface. The hand clutches a crown made of silver needles. Below the hand, under the surface, a school of shimmering black fish takes on a vaguely humanoid form.

Twelve moss-covered standing stones form a ring in the middle of a small clearing.  The space between the stones is free of vegetation.

Triskellion discovers an arcane sigil inscribed on the inward-facing side of each stone. He doesn't know what the symbols mean, but he is sure they must have a purpose.

<not sure if I posted these already. I meant to.>

And rht dragon I mentioned... currently somewhere within the castle (presumably; you watched it fly in from above. )

Triskellion will take out his spellbook and draw a copy of it into the book for study later... and a good luck charm.

After putting away his spellbook he will approach the standing stone with the sigil and trace it with his hand to feel how smooth the worked stone is.

"This is amazing craftsmanship!" Trisk will say in awe of it. 

<this set of 12 sigils (representing those found on the stones) is AI generated>