Zorg's Lost Souls III

Rowan, still getting the taste of housefly out of his mouth, completely misses G'Reg's joke about giving up his voice to Mulligan. Instead he regains focus at mention of a flying balloon.

"Really, a large balloon with a basket and everything? A real airship?" Rowan says with amazement. "Is it magic that keeps it afloat or is there a fuel of some sort we need to keep track of. I hope it's magic. I'd much rather see the land as we pass over it then be stuck below deck shoveling coal into an engine. And I'd really rather there not be any fire while we're up in the sky . . ."

He stops talking when he sees the inside of Endelyn's room. The elf shivers slightly at the sight of all the hanging marionettes and the oddities littering the room.

"She slept here?" Rowan says, again a shiver runs down his spine. "No, I think this would be awful."

Rowan then gets distracted by the scissors he sees G'Reg found. "Careful. Those are probably the shadow snippers. Maybe if you get the shadow and the person close together and open the scissors instead of closing them, the two might be reattached."

The barbarian finds himself curious about the wooden chest in the alcove and heads over to check it out. He runs his hand across the surface and then tries to open it.

Rowan:

Charmay sighs a deep sigh, and her condescending tone returns as she responds to Rowan. You won't be flying the balloon. The darklings will. And did I mention that it's a cloud-balloon? No fuel... just a rain-cloud, with a basket suspended from it.

The chest seems to be locked. However Rowan does notice the collection of six toy birds around the wicker basket (which smells like cat). Three of the birds are actual stuffed birds, while the other three are clockwork, wind-up birds.

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Mulligan:

Mulligans scans the room. The chest is certainly a likely place to store valuables. The hourglasses on the walls are probably worth a decent amount of coin, and there are so many of them! But despite these, Mulligan's mind is drawn to the wardrobe. There is no bed in this room... does Endelyn sleep in the wardrobe? He opens it to find nothing inside but an oval-shaped mirror stuck to the interior back wall.

Still Mulligan feels a strong pull from this piece of furniture, and his gaze goes down to the drawers at the base of the wardrobe. Pulling them open, he finds an assortment of objects:

A toy spider
A hand puppet depicting a wizard, complete with the purple robe and pointy hat adorned with stars, and holding a wooden wand
A porcelain doll
A foot-long metal pole
...
and the most beautiful banjo Mulligan has ever seen!

"Cloud-balloon?" Rowan muses absently as he turns the chest over and shakes it. "A balloon made of clouds or a balloon that looks like clouds or a cloud that looks like a balloon."

He's talking to himself at this point while he takes out his longsword and tries to pry open the lock on the chest.

The chest has a built-in lock, so Rowan jams the sword into the place where the lid meets the frame, and leans into it. Grunting and straining, he finds no purchase, until the sword tip snaps off with a jolt, sending it clattering to the floor.

Rowan now has a "Nocked Longsword" which does 1 less damage than before.

Barria takes the horn from Charmay, a little speechless and gives the woman a little bow of thanks as Charmay tells her she's the only one she feels she can trust.  Securing it safely in her pack, she replies, "I will take this from your home and keep it safe.  Thank you for trusting me with it."

Turning to the room, she is repulsed as the others that this was the hag's bedroom.  She takes a peculiar interest in the puppets hanging from the ceiling, looking at each one in turn.  She overhears the discussion on the cloud balloon, and smiles at Rowan's questions.

Growing frustrated with the chest, which causes him to lose interest in it for the moment, he slips his damaged sword back into its scabbard, lifts up the chest and cradles it under his arm, and then Rowan looks around the room, letting his innate connection to the magic around him reveal any magic that might be in the room, wandering around as he does.

((Magic Awareness - As an action, you can open your awareness to the presence of concentrated magic. Until the end of your next turn, you know the location of any spell or magic item within 60 feet of you that isn’t behind total cover. When you sense a spell, you learn which school of magic it belongs to.))

Greg stands by the door as people start wandering around drawn to this object and that, he knows his hoe is not here but what is here is a mystery, the marionettes, the hour glasses, what are they all for. His mind wanders to the scissors as he looks in the marionette's strings, after all everything looks like a nail when one has a hammer... Rowan's words spin lazily back and forth in his mind like a fine wine breathing for a moment, opening them might reattach shadows, perhaps it makes sense in a silly kind of way, but this is a silly place, like that bare desk over there, the scripts are all over the floor but why then is the desk bare. 

Having the same idea as Rowan, Greg uses one of his last remaining spell slots to cast detect magic, hoping that maybe some arcane wisdom will shed some light upon these mysteries. Perhaps he will find something to read and study, something that will take his mind off this silly place and satiate his greed for knowledge.

Barria:
The marionettes seem inert, although Barria can also tell that they are suspended by ropes made of the same material as korred hair. Perhaps with the right fey connection, they could be animated under particular circumstances.

Rowan:
Rowan's frustration causes his senses to resonate with the presence of several instances of concentrated magic in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. If there is anything else magical in this room, then it is hidden or covered.

Rowan, mollified by the magic radiating from the bottom drawer of the wardrobe heads over to join Mulligan at the wardrobe.

"Hey, that's nicer than yours," Rowan says, gesturing at the banjo.

He reaches down and picks up the metal rod and waves it around a bit. "Wonder what this is for."

Greginald:
There's magic, and then there's wizard magic. More powerful, more sophisticated, and certainly more controlled than the elf. Greginald's arcane senses pick up what Rowan picks up, but more... there is something magical inside the locked chest too. Also, Barria now possesses an item of some magical potential that she didn't have before...

Making mental note of the powerful magic that barria seems to have summoned, G'Reg turns his attention to the locked chest. He puts his hands around it trying to feel for a latch or mechanism, he grumbles in sylvan thanks to mister light's ring and seems to be speaking to the box itself, a curious habit. "Now what are you hiding hmm? You don't want to open up for me? Let's see. Lock built in, magical or mechanical hmmm"

(Investigation 13 if applicable)

     Mulligan finds himself drawn to the banjo... Yet also wary of it.  All the items here in the wardrobe are interesting in their own right, of course, but the beautiful banjo most of all.  It is like an idealized version of the instrument he once owned before the leprechauns stole it.  His fingers itch to reach out for it but perhaps it looks too perfect?  Too much a piece of cheese just past the stick with the string tied to it..

     As he is considering it he finds his attention drawn away by the sound of Rowan's breaking sword.  Mulligan's eyes go from Rowan and his attempt to open the chest to Charmay to try to gauge her reaction and then back again.  Since Charmay does not seem to have a hostile reaction to the attempt to open it, Mulligan offers to try.

     The lock may need a more delicate touch.  I have some tools that may help me open it if you wish.

     Mulligan says this over the Group Chat.  He's not intentionally leaving Charmay out of it but he doesn't repeat the words to her either...

     In truth he is a bit happy for the delay.  Mulligan wouldn't offer the others up as guinea pigs but if they are looking to grab items and such there is no harm in letting them do so first and seeing what happens...

_____

If they want Mulligan to attempt to pick locks then Thieve's Tools roll is 26

Greginald inspects the lock, and can see that it is a fairly mundane key-operated lock. Satisfied there is nothing sinister associated with the chest, the gnome turns the task over to Mulligan, who goes to work with his lockpicking tools. Meanwhile, Greginald has noticed that something else pinged on his magical-detection spell. When the wardrobe is open, the mirror on the back interior wall resonates with the school of conjuration...

Mulligan makes short work of the lock and opens the chest, with Rowan peering in over his shoulder, and finds the following:

Mulligan

     Mulligan feels like his head is swimming.  Not a soothing lap around a pond of even a race from here to there against another.  Instead it feels as if his mind is circling some crazy whirlpool of a drain and it is struggling with all it's might to go against the tide or leapfrog across it or slip and slide away like a determined fish.  He may not know the right nautical terms or visualizations but all in all it feels like his brain wants to puke...

     Is it due to his eyes?  They keep going from here to there to everywhere.  They dart to the potential riches at hand to Charmay who he expects to object violently at any moment, back to objects and then to his companions who are all looking about as well and then back to objects and sizing up who is nearest to what and who may want what and then back to Charmay who may want all or who may just want items taken to create obligation, and then back to the others with concern but of the debt or of the taking?  And over and above and around it all the banjo...  Eyes make the mind a dizzy mess of hungry hungry hippos because they never leave the banjo yet they are always darting away hither and tither and yon.  So to speak.

Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won't you be... my banjo??

     The lyrics float through his thoughts.  They're not the right lyrics but they kind of fit.  Maybe in a bizarre and dizzy sort of way.  Not at all, but still and anyway, sure.  Because the banjo isn't a banjo.  It is a voice.  His voice.  But he cannot hold his voice.  A banjo is a thing and his voice is a thing but not all things can be held, some things only exist somewhere else... Somewhere where trouble melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops...

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow

     Mulligan can hear the chords in his head, he can see his allies peeking and poking at this and that, he can he the words as he sings them even as Charmay stands in the midst of it all but aloof and separate.  His mind flip flops and his stomach turmoils, music floats around him and lyrics try to burst out of his head to break free of their jail and telling him.. telling him...

Don't worry about a thing
'Cause every little thing gonna be alright
Singing, "Don't worry about a thing
'Cause every little thing gonna be alright

     Mulligan though, swims against the chords, fight against the chorus and struggles against the implied promise.  He trusts not this realm and it's strange rules and it's offers and deals...  And he tells himself this is not my beautiful voice... And he tells himself this is not my beautiful choice.  Things will not be the same as it ever was....Things will never be the same as it ever was...  Mulligan doesn't even really want thins to be the same as it ever was.  Things were never really that way to begin with.

     And so after squeezing his eyes tight, so tight, and mentally screaming into the void and the dots the effort creates, Mulligan stands tall, shakes himself, and demands of himself that he be himself once more and pushes all the mental nonsense away.  And it is only then that Mulligan steps away from the chest and back over to the banjo.  He reaches out towards it but pauses just before taking hold.  He glances over to Charmay and inclines his head.

     May I?

     He asks her mentally and, assuming there is no refusal from her, he picks up the instrument and lightly strums its strings.  He's prepared to adjust the tuning on it but smiles an "Of course" when he hears it is already perfectly tuned...  And so he decides the instrument is his, just as it is, and he begins to pluck out "Johnny Booger" as a way of welcoming it home.

Rowan reaches into the chest, takes out a bottle of wine, uncorks it, sniffs and takes a sip, turning to a gulp when he realizes how good it tastes.

He then looks at the hand and the ring, taking both out and looking more carefully at the ring.

”Doesn’t look like whatever the ring does that it helped whoever owned this hand very much.”

After having a private word with Barria, Charmay shows only a passing interest in the contents of the wardrobe or the chest. Perhaps she is happy to have all the trappings of the hag taken away... to have Motherhorn stripped and remade in her own image. In any case, she simply circles the room, examining its dimensions as much as its contents, lost in her own thoughts, and gives Mulligan a cursory hand-wave of approval.

Clearly the other contents of the wardrobe drawer, along with the banjo, are distinct from the contents of the chest, where Endelyn kept her true personal treasures. Perhaps the other wardrobe items are likewise created from the stolen immaterial things of other poor Carnival attendees. If so, it seems unlikely their lost things would ever be reclaimed. Who would go to the Lost Things wagon and ask for their lost height, or their lost creativity? And would they recognise it if they beheld what it had been turned into.

Perhaps. Mulligan did after all.

Greg walks quickly back and forth, chest, locked, wardrobe, magic mirror, chest is now unlocked ooh! He points out the items with magical properties to the others. "That, that and also that, those ain't just mundane crap if we take them with us I can identify their magical properties before we rest next, but be careful, hag stuff may be cursed, in fact is likely cursed. I wanna take ten minutes with this mirror though I have a feeling we've see one of these before. Oh! And I'll happily receive any of those books there, even an insight into the scribblings of Endelyn might help us a little with the other sisters." He thinks for a moment before turning to Barria, and Mulligan in quick succession. "I can also identify both of your newly acquired items, figure out what they can do, just to be safe"

Before starting the ritual, G'Reg decides to check out the mirror in the closet, pondering whether it too could act as a portal to the next fey place. He glances down at The Weasel and mentally gives it a command, The Weasel in response hesitantly but dutifully hops up into G'Reg's arms and G'Reg presses the creatures nose against the glass.

Greg presses the weasel's nose to the mirror. Nothing happens. He presses harder. Nothing continues to happen. The gnome fairly smooshes the poor creature's face onto the glass. Suddenly, more nothing happens. The mirror continues to act like a mirror. Though Greg is certain is has magical properties, it is likely they are unlocked with some kind of key... a magical ritual of some kind, or a pass-phrase perhaps. The gnome recalls the mirrors at the Carnival, and how they were activated with a poem of sorts. Nothing short of a divination spell such as Identify could reveal the secrets of this wondrous magical item.

Rowan sees G'Reg preparing some sort of spell that might identify what is special about a lot of the items in here. So, he begins gathering pretty much everything and dumps them in a pile in front of the gnome to make it easier for him.

"We should maybe get some sleep here tonight before going in the balloon cloud," Rowan says before wondering. "Unless there's room to sleep in the balloon. Is it like an airship attached to a cloud?"