"They already know something happened," Sam replies to Paul. "Luckily they don't seem to understand what. I was guessing some kind of explosion... Turbine, you say? Would that be somehow able to turn something into a lot of various bits of the thing?" ((Not thinking Sam would know quite what a turbine is. Large fan, maybe, but not turbine?))
"But yeah, unless these things reproduce by breaking up into tiny bits I think we've rounded up all we need to... Now, are you saying you have a safe place to keep them? Or you want to lead us to this turbine?? If keeping them, I'd suggest you not talk too much about it being for experiments. I'm not sure how smart they are but most things don't cotton to being experimented on..."
"imagine a pipe with a hole through it" Paul begins to explain, "within that pipe are diamond edged blades curved around a rotational point like one of those flower things, it's designed to catch wind turning the blades very fast and then turn that movement into power... That's one of the things I actually did pay attention to, because it sounds as dangerous as the hells!" Turning to Muir the guard shrugs, "you were interested in seeing it though, these things seem to phase through the walls maybe a change in materials might hold them, I'll get ginro to meet us there..." As he makes the suggestion he speaks into a speaking stone and then leads on.
Hearing that it is just other shadow-born people, Elthana looks relieved. She isn't sure what else to ask to find out if Nivara had infiltrated this isle as well, but she sees Muir's logic. Nothing they could really do other than gather these creatures up and get some sleep. She yawns as she thinks about it and then follows the rest of the group.
With neither Ingram nor Paul seeming to be interested in what he said about items being the magical glue that keeps Nivara's followers hidden, rather than specific people, Vin shrugs and gets ready to follow along. Obviously everyone showing up to a meeting is enough to be absolutely certain that they haven't been infiltrated by the spies of an entity with centuries and more to plan.
Muir will follow to the tree room keeping his eyes opened for anything suspicious or any suspicious smells that would be familiar from the last isle (18)
"imagine a pipe with a hole through it" Sam translates in real time into Orcish for Timmy and Tommy. "Within that pipe are diamond edged blades curved around a rotational point like one of those flower things, it's designed to catch wind turning the blades very fast and then turn that movement into power... That's... errr..." Sam suddenly realizes just what Paul is explaining and how that explains what happened to the third creature. Sam decides it is maybe best not to continue translating for them.
"But, errr... yes! Diamonds. You will LOVE diamonds. They'll feed you them with your gold and silver and all... But first we'll show you where you will stay while they bring this to you," Sam adds as cover. "Come along now, no dawdling..."
"It might actually be best to turbine them," Sam offers to Paul and the others in Common. "We have no proof they cannot move through wood and even if they cannot it'll still cost you an arm and a leg to keep these things fed..." Sam isn't generally for slaughter for slaughter's sake but he was a pragmatist at heart. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
The monsters seem eager by what Sam promises, not reading into whether he believes his own words or not.
Muir keeps a nose out bit senses no undead, and despite the lack of acknowledgement of Vin's warning, Paul seems confident in his other guards having not been corrupted or changed.
The walk to the bio lab is not too long, when the group stops it is outside of a room with large wooden doors, in sharp contrast to the rest of the crystal isle that the group has observed so far. Muir sees the sign, repeating the words that Paul showed him before 'cyclical ecosystem biome lab: floral growth'.
Through the doors the group enter a small room with nothing in it, but another set of wooden doors, Paul explains that the scientists set it up like this so that only one set of doors open at once, "something about keeping the climate steady?" He muses with a general lack of knowledge on the why.
Upon entering the room proper the first thing the group sees is a massive tree standing in the center, at least 150ft tall and radiant green in it's foliage. The walls are indeed clad in large wooden panels which look old and are protected by a glass screen sitting about 5ft in front of them and extending half way up the room. The humidity in here too is hard to ignore, it condenses upon the glass screens and makes the soil underfoot springy with moss and growth, patches of flowers and vegetables and tubers thrive here and there and there seems to be at least 20 something scientists taking samples and notes and measurements throughout this cavernous high ceilinged room. "Well this is it, mind the Chwingas" paul says pointing to a small circle of stones arranges upright as of having some kind of tiny meeting.
The monsters appear perplexed by their surroundings, but don't seem to mind the heat, and the group does spot Ginro half way into the room at the base of the tree talking to a scientist, the orb back in his staff.
"Alrighty boys, in you go!" Sam says with vim and enthusiasm, in Orcish, and points the two creatures inside with a dramatic flourish of his arm. "This is where you'll be staying for the next... " The next what? Few days? Weeks? Forever? Sam really had no clue despite taking all of a second to think about it. "Yeah, this'll be where you are staying. Nice, eh? Just watch the... whatchamacallit's there, for some reason, and everything will be grand. Just grand!"
"What's up with the rocks?" Sam asks curiously in Common as he encourages the Xorns inside further. "They like tiny Stonehenge or something?" If he was closer he would be tempted to pick one up and give it a look but he's deliberately ushering the creatures in away from what they were told to avoid. "It something I need to try to convince these two to not eat?"
Vin and Neferox enter the room but stay by the entrance, surveying the scene from there.
Vin has no idea why they are meeting Ginro here, having assumed they would just drop off the creatures Sam summoned. It certainly is a different environment to the rest of the isle. He looks across to Muir, expecting the druid to feel a little more at home, although possibly disturbed by the scientists.
Elthana also follows everyone into the wooden room, and heads over to Ginro. "Well, we have the two remaining creatures, the third seems to have unfortunately found a turbine? I hope this satisfies your request and we can finally get some rest."
Muir uncaring about the creature situation approaches the trees and the stones. He inspects both closely. He turns around to Ginro but sees that Elthana has caught his ear and waits patiently.
"Ah, they are either Graves of Chwingas or actual petrified Chwingas, I'm not actually 100% sure but probably best that the monster things don't eat them" Paul answers in regards to Sam's question. The monsters hesitantly at first but seemingly too stupid to truly care, take to their new environment and begin sniffing around, despite their general lack of visible nose.
Ginro finishes talking to the scientist and regards the group, listening intently to elthana he gives her a smile back to his normal self after the unpleasantness of the situation in the vault. "Yes I have preliminary status reports on something having been caught in the turbines, as well as one of these having been able to access the treasury." Seeing Vin waiting by the entrance Ginro nods for Elthana to follow toward the doors so that the entire group can hear, before continuing "It is a shame only two survived, but we will make do with what we have, I'm sure we can provide for these creatures and eventually return them home. Though, I do want to observe the effects of the items that the large one ate, if the creature remains unaffected by -and can break down the magical items, then it is truly a marvel and may be the key solution to a problem that your group brought to me to think about. It'll take some testing to verify but it is possible that these creatures could eat the very container that you believe is being used as a phylactery!" He grins turning to the group to gauge their reaction to his hypothesis, "oh also the test on the dimensional pocket was a success, the time dilation in contrast to personally perceived time passing was large enough that with enough distance you can all get enough rest in less time! It's ready when you are, though as expected there will be a little teleportation involved, though you shouldn't feel the nauseating effects of it this time"
"And what is a Chwinga?" Sam asks, intrigued but confused. Just how does this guy not know if it is the thing or the thing's grave?
Once the Timmy and Tommy have had a moment or three to check out their new surroundings, Sam calls them over to himself to huddle up with them for a minute. "Listen guys," he says in Orcish in his best Coach in Charge voice. "You will have a very easy, comfortable time here if you follow some simple rules. Rule 1 - Only eat what you are told you can eat! Everyone is promising to keep you well fed but they are also afraid of you... So you need to behave and not give them reason to think you may eat them, understood?"
"Rule 2 - These little stone things here?" Sam says, pointing to the Chwinga things. "Be very, very careful of them. Do not eat them! Do not step on them! Probably best if you don't get closer to them than you are right now, ok? Disturbing the Chwinga could threaten your food supply... So don't!"
"So only eat what you are provided, not hurting or scaring the providers and be very, very careful of the Chwingas there... Can you two do that? Because in exchange you will be well fed and taken care of..." Sam has to cut himself off before he says he promises, because he doesn't. He can't. He doesn't trust these Djinn or these scientists or any of them so he really doesn't feel he can promise a thing at all to the Xorn...
"Ok then, you two behave, eh? I'll be back to visit soon..." Yeah, maybe. Maybe not.
Heading towards the door, pausing to make sure the Xorn aren't following him out of habit, Sam makes a bit of an "eek" face when he hears Ginro talking about one of them getting caught in the turbine thing. "Maybe a bit quiet on the details, eh?" he suggests, looking back to the surviving two as he does. "So far I know they speak Orcish and Dwarvish but who knows what else they understand... Or how fast they learn?"
Sam then listens and mostly just nods along. He does chime in again though when what Timmy ate is mentioned. "You mean the axe that the professor said was cursed?" he asks. "Now that you mention it, I did notice Timmy's eye flash a deep, full black. It was creepy but only lasted a moment. You think it was the curse? I just figured it was what they did... But I only saw it the once, and not at all from Tommy..."
"So you want to feed it the phylactery and hope it doesn't crap out evil??" Sam ponders aloud, amused...
Sam falls silent when discussion goes to the pocket dimension experiment. Sam still feels very NOPE about that and so stays quiet about it altogether.
Elthana doesn't know what to think about feeding the phylactory to this beast. She honestly would rather have a more tried and true method of destroying it rather than one that has no real base other than it ate a cursed axe. But she smiles back at Ginro, doing her best to appear happy at the suggestion, "Hey, that could work!"she adds.
As for the rest, she's ready to try it. She is honestly scared to go to sleep but knows that her body needs it. "That sounds good, the less time I'm asleep, the better. Couple of requests... I need to sleep alone and," she then remembers what Gewyn said and looks at him but turns back to Ginro, "I need to confer with Gewyn before I do anything."
Vin also listens to Ginro's potential plan for using the creatures as a means to destroy the phylactery.
"How big was the box that you created?", he asks Ginro. He can't remember if it was ever mentioned. Was it something they could steal and return back here, or was Ginro suggesting they take the creatures with them?
As for resting, he was ready and willing to make use of the dimensional pocket, as long as the teleporting doesn't make him feel even worse.
"I certainly hope it doesn't crap out evil" Ginro chuckles, "but the theory needs testing, and since it ate both a cursed battle axe and an enchanted amulet, it has already introduced items into it's system which we can observe. The blackness in the eyes is good information, we can watch for that and draw conclusions on it's progress."
Ingram yawns hoping to wrap this up soon. Before Ginro gives Elthana a nod and gives her and Gewyn some privacy by turning to the others. "The box itself was cuboid, exactly 10ft in each dimension. The blueprints are waiting for you." And with that Ginro unlatches the orb from his staff and holds it out in front of him offering any of the group to put their hand upon it
Vin shrugs and walks forward with Neferox. He puts one hand on Neferox and reaches out the other to touch the orb, hoping he and Neferox will get transported together. Assuming that is what the orb does, of course.
"I'm uh... I'm good," Sam says as he dismissively waves the orb away and takes a couple steps back. "I rested already, I'm good to go and don't need to be part of any experimenting. Thanks, but no thanks..." It's possible Sam had to stifle a yawn in the middle of saying all that but he does his best to hide it if so.
Instead of volunteering for Half-Orcan experimentation, Sam wanders away from the group and back towards the little gravestone things, one eye towards the Xorn to make sure they are behaving. "I should probably tend to Timmy and Tommy anyhoo..."
"They're all going to go sleep in the Orb or something," Sam says when he gets close to Muir. "You might want to join them if you're sleepy or such." Sam says it in his best practiced even and cordial tone. Almost as if he means it. Sm then squats down by the Chwinga to get a better look at them and try to see just what these little stone things are... Without touching or disturbing them, for now. (Investigation: 2 Though if it should be Perception then it would jump to a whopping 8.)
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"They already know something happened," Sam replies to Paul. "Luckily they don't seem to understand what. I was guessing some kind of explosion... Turbine, you say? Would that be somehow able to turn something into a lot of various bits of the thing?" ((Not thinking Sam would know quite what a turbine is. Large fan, maybe, but not turbine?))
"But yeah, unless these things reproduce by breaking up into tiny bits I think we've rounded up all we need to... Now, are you saying you have a safe place to keep them? Or you want to lead us to this turbine?? If keeping them, I'd suggest you not talk too much about it being for experiments. I'm not sure how smart they are but most things don't cotton to being experimented on..."
"imagine a pipe with a hole through it" Paul begins to explain, "within that pipe are diamond edged blades curved around a rotational point like one of those flower things, it's designed to catch wind turning the blades very fast and then turn that movement into power... That's one of the things I actually did pay attention to, because it sounds as dangerous as the hells!" Turning to Muir the guard shrugs, "you were interested in seeing it though, these things seem to phase through the walls maybe a change in materials might hold them, I'll get ginro to meet us there..." As he makes the suggestion he speaks into a speaking stone and then leads on.
Hearing that it is just other shadow-born people, Elthana looks relieved. She isn't sure what else to ask to find out if Nivara had infiltrated this isle as well, but she sees Muir's logic. Nothing they could really do other than gather these creatures up and get some sleep. She yawns as she thinks about it and then follows the rest of the group.
With neither Ingram nor Paul seeming to be interested in what he said about items being the magical glue that keeps Nivara's followers hidden, rather than specific people, Vin shrugs and gets ready to follow along. Obviously everyone showing up to a meeting is enough to be absolutely certain that they haven't been infiltrated by the spies of an entity with centuries and more to plan.
Muir will follow to the tree room keeping his eyes opened for anything suspicious or any suspicious smells that would be familiar from the last isle (18)
"imagine a pipe with a hole through it" Sam translates in real time into Orcish for Timmy and Tommy. "Within that pipe are diamond edged blades curved around a rotational point like one of those flower things, it's designed to catch wind turning the blades very fast and then turn that movement into power... That's... errr..." Sam suddenly realizes just what Paul is explaining and how that explains what happened to the third creature. Sam decides it is maybe best not to continue translating for them.
"But, errr... yes! Diamonds. You will LOVE diamonds. They'll feed you them with your gold and silver and all... But first we'll show you where you will stay while they bring this to you," Sam adds as cover. "Come along now, no dawdling..."
"It might actually be best to turbine them," Sam offers to Paul and the others in Common. "We have no proof they cannot move through wood and even if they cannot it'll still cost you an arm and a leg to keep these things fed..." Sam isn't generally for slaughter for slaughter's sake but he was a pragmatist at heart. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
The monsters seem eager by what Sam promises, not reading into whether he believes his own words or not.
Muir keeps a nose out bit senses no undead, and despite the lack of acknowledgement of Vin's warning, Paul seems confident in his other guards having not been corrupted or changed.
The walk to the bio lab is not too long, when the group stops it is outside of a room with large wooden doors, in sharp contrast to the rest of the crystal isle that the group has observed so far. Muir sees the sign, repeating the words that Paul showed him before 'cyclical ecosystem biome lab: floral growth'.
Through the doors the group enter a small room with nothing in it, but another set of wooden doors, Paul explains that the scientists set it up like this so that only one set of doors open at once, "something about keeping the climate steady?" He muses with a general lack of knowledge on the why.
Upon entering the room proper the first thing the group sees is a massive tree standing in the center, at least 150ft tall and radiant green in it's foliage. The walls are indeed clad in large wooden panels which look old and are protected by a glass screen sitting about 5ft in front of them and extending half way up the room. The humidity in here too is hard to ignore, it condenses upon the glass screens and makes the soil underfoot springy with moss and growth, patches of flowers and vegetables and tubers thrive here and there and there seems to be at least 20 something scientists taking samples and notes and measurements throughout this cavernous high ceilinged room. "Well this is it, mind the Chwingas" paul says pointing to a small circle of stones arranges upright as of having some kind of tiny meeting.
The monsters appear perplexed by their surroundings, but don't seem to mind the heat, and the group does spot Ginro half way into the room at the base of the tree talking to a scientist, the orb back in his staff.
"Alrighty boys, in you go!" Sam says with vim and enthusiasm, in Orcish, and points the two creatures inside with a dramatic flourish of his arm. "This is where you'll be staying for the next... " The next what? Few days? Weeks? Forever? Sam really had no clue despite taking all of a second to think about it. "Yeah, this'll be where you are staying. Nice, eh? Just watch the... whatchamacallit's there, for some reason, and everything will be grand. Just grand!"
"What's up with the rocks?" Sam asks curiously in Common as he encourages the Xorns inside further. "They like tiny Stonehenge or something?" If he was closer he would be tempted to pick one up and give it a look but he's deliberately ushering the creatures in away from what they were told to avoid. "It something I need to try to convince these two to not eat?"
Vin and Neferox enter the room but stay by the entrance, surveying the scene from there.
Vin has no idea why they are meeting Ginro here, having assumed they would just drop off the creatures Sam summoned. It certainly is a different environment to the rest of the isle. He looks across to Muir, expecting the druid to feel a little more at home, although possibly disturbed by the scientists.
Elthana also follows everyone into the wooden room, and heads over to Ginro. "Well, we have the two remaining creatures, the third seems to have unfortunately found a turbine? I hope this satisfies your request and we can finally get some rest."
Muir uncaring about the creature situation approaches the trees and the stones. He inspects both closely. He turns around to Ginro but sees that Elthana has caught his ear and waits patiently.
"Ah, they are either Graves of Chwingas or actual petrified Chwingas, I'm not actually 100% sure but probably best that the monster things don't eat them" Paul answers in regards to Sam's question. The monsters hesitantly at first but seemingly too stupid to truly care, take to their new environment and begin sniffing around, despite their general lack of visible nose.
Ginro finishes talking to the scientist and regards the group, listening intently to elthana he gives her a smile back to his normal self after the unpleasantness of the situation in the vault. "Yes I have preliminary status reports on something having been caught in the turbines, as well as one of these having been able to access the treasury." Seeing Vin waiting by the entrance Ginro nods for Elthana to follow toward the doors so that the entire group can hear, before continuing "It is a shame only two survived, but we will make do with what we have, I'm sure we can provide for these creatures and eventually return them home. Though, I do want to observe the effects of the items that the large one ate, if the creature remains unaffected by -and can break down the magical items, then it is truly a marvel and may be the key solution to a problem that your group brought to me to think about. It'll take some testing to verify but it is possible that these creatures could eat the very container that you believe is being used as a phylactery!" He grins turning to the group to gauge their reaction to his hypothesis, "oh also the test on the dimensional pocket was a success, the time dilation in contrast to personally perceived time passing was large enough that with enough distance you can all get enough rest in less time! It's ready when you are, though as expected there will be a little teleportation involved, though you shouldn't feel the nauseating effects of it this time"
"And what is a Chwinga?" Sam asks, intrigued but confused. Just how does this guy not know if it is the thing or the thing's grave?
Once the Timmy and Tommy have had a moment or three to check out their new surroundings, Sam calls them over to himself to huddle up with them for a minute. "Listen guys," he says in Orcish in his best Coach in Charge voice. "You will have a very easy, comfortable time here if you follow some simple rules. Rule 1 - Only eat what you are told you can eat! Everyone is promising to keep you well fed but they are also afraid of you... So you need to behave and not give them reason to think you may eat them, understood?"
"Rule 2 - These little stone things here?" Sam says, pointing to the Chwinga things. "Be very, very careful of them. Do not eat them! Do not step on them! Probably best if you don't get closer to them than you are right now, ok? Disturbing the Chwinga could threaten your food supply... So don't!"
"So only eat what you are provided, not hurting or scaring the providers and be very, very careful of the Chwingas there... Can you two do that? Because in exchange you will be well fed and taken care of..." Sam has to cut himself off before he says he promises, because he doesn't. He can't. He doesn't trust these Djinn or these scientists or any of them so he really doesn't feel he can promise a thing at all to the Xorn...
"Ok then, you two behave, eh? I'll be back to visit soon..." Yeah, maybe. Maybe not.
Heading towards the door, pausing to make sure the Xorn aren't following him out of habit, Sam makes a bit of an "eek" face when he hears Ginro talking about one of them getting caught in the turbine thing. "Maybe a bit quiet on the details, eh?" he suggests, looking back to the surviving two as he does. "So far I know they speak Orcish and Dwarvish but who knows what else they understand... Or how fast they learn?"
Sam then listens and mostly just nods along. He does chime in again though when what Timmy ate is mentioned. "You mean the axe that the professor said was cursed?" he asks. "Now that you mention it, I did notice Timmy's eye flash a deep, full black. It was creepy but only lasted a moment. You think it was the curse? I just figured it was what they did... But I only saw it the once, and not at all from Tommy..."
"So you want to feed it the phylactery and hope it doesn't crap out evil??" Sam ponders aloud, amused...
Sam falls silent when discussion goes to the pocket dimension experiment. Sam still feels very NOPE about that and so stays quiet about it altogether.
Elthana doesn't know what to think about feeding the phylactory to this beast. She honestly would rather have a more tried and true method of destroying it rather than one that has no real base other than it ate a cursed axe. But she smiles back at Ginro, doing her best to appear happy at the suggestion, "Hey, that could work!" she adds.
As for the rest, she's ready to try it. She is honestly scared to go to sleep but knows that her body needs it. "That sounds good, the less time I'm asleep, the better. Couple of requests... I need to sleep alone and," she then remembers what Gewyn said and looks at him but turns back to Ginro, "I need to confer with Gewyn before I do anything."
Muir continues to wait to speak about the tree
Vin also listens to Ginro's potential plan for using the creatures as a means to destroy the phylactery.
"How big was the box that you created?", he asks Ginro. He can't remember if it was ever mentioned. Was it something they could steal and return back here, or was Ginro suggesting they take the creatures with them?
As for resting, he was ready and willing to make use of the dimensional pocket, as long as the teleporting doesn't make him feel even worse.
"I certainly hope it doesn't crap out evil" Ginro chuckles, "but the theory needs testing, and since it ate both a cursed battle axe and an enchanted amulet, it has already introduced items into it's system which we can observe. The blackness in the eyes is good information, we can watch for that and draw conclusions on it's progress."
Ingram yawns hoping to wrap this up soon. Before Ginro gives Elthana a nod and gives her and Gewyn some privacy by turning to the others. "The box itself was cuboid, exactly 10ft in each dimension. The blueprints are waiting for you." And with that Ginro unlatches the orb from his staff and holds it out in front of him offering any of the group to put their hand upon it
Vin shrugs and walks forward with Neferox. He puts one hand on Neferox and reaches out the other to touch the orb, hoping he and Neferox will get transported together. Assuming that is what the orb does, of course.
Muir watches Vin touch the orb and waits to see who else touches the orb. He continues to wait.
"I'm uh... I'm good," Sam says as he dismissively waves the orb away and takes a couple steps back. "I rested already, I'm good to go and don't need to be part of any experimenting. Thanks, but no thanks..." It's possible Sam had to stifle a yawn in the middle of saying all that but he does his best to hide it if so.
Instead of volunteering for Half-Orcan experimentation, Sam wanders away from the group and back towards the little gravestone things, one eye towards the Xorn to make sure they are behaving. "I should probably tend to Timmy and Tommy anyhoo..."
"They're all going to go sleep in the Orb or something," Sam says when he gets close to Muir. "You might want to join them if you're sleepy or such." Sam says it in his best practiced even and cordial tone. Almost as if he means it. Sm then squats down by the Chwinga to get a better look at them and try to see just what these little stone things are... Without touching or disturbing them, for now. (Investigation: 2 Though if it should be Perception then it would jump to a whopping 8.)