Above & Below

You can't find anything suspicious that isn't already obvious, Effort. The bodies seem to be hanging there by physical means.

Kurama, you cautiously step up and through the archway, on the defensive and ready for anything. The raven finishes his preening in time to look down as you do this, but otherwise seems disinterested. You turn back to the archway as you pass through, no worse for wear.

Brask, as you follow him absent-mindedly, you feel a jolt of energy go through you. It seems focused on your head, but reverberates throughout your body. Roll a Wisdom save.

Brask's WIS save:  16

As you instinctively shut your eyes from the pain, a vision enters your consciousness. You take 1 psychic damage.

Brask:

Kurama, you see Brask reopen his eyes, seemingly coming out of...whatever just happened to him. The raven quorks again, and nonchalantly flies down to the arch. It quorks again. A bit louder this time. Again. Again. And again so loudly that it seems to bring down a bolt of lighting from the dark clouds overhead. It flashes brightly, and appears to strike the bird. When your eyes readjust, however, the raven is gone. You feel a strange sensation as some of your arm hair stands up on end, but the woods and the road are silent once again.

Weird dreams and visons.  I hate this place.  Brask growls and looks around, waiting to see if the world responds to his remark.

Effort looks up from her fruitless inspection of the bodies, confused.  "What?  Did something just happen?"  She frowns and stares at Brask.  "I did check that the berries were safe.  But perhaps I was mistaken and the juices fermented."  Her tone is dry as she straightens and beckons to Pip, following after the other two. 

Quote from Billtacular >>

As you instinctively shut your eyes from the pain, a vision enters your consciousness. You take 1 psychic damage.

Brask:

You're walking up to some royal. They all look the same. Holding something in your hand, you look down to see it's the severed head of a rather nasty-looking orc. The man, flanked on both sides by guards, stands up with a smile. He claps a few times. "Well done, well done!"

He nods to one of the guards, who reveals a rather large coin purse. He holds it open, revealing an impressive amount of gold inside. You even let yourself smile and enjoy the moment as he hands it over. "Now, our trophy." The man gestures to the head. 

As you hold it up, the head is no longer that of an orc. It's a severed minotaur head. It's...your brother's head. 

A knot forms in your stomach and your whole body tenses up. Unable to move, one of the guards presents the head to the royal, who laughs and claps. The bag of gold feels heavier now, as if it's pulling you down into the earth. Darkness swarms around you, and you snap back to reality, on the other side of the archway. 

Kurama, you see Brask reopen his eyes, seemingly coming out of...whatever just happened to him. The raven quorks again, and nonchalantly flies down to the arch. It quorks again. A bit louder this time. Again. Again. And again so loudly that it seems to bring down a bolt of lighting from the dark clouds overhead. It flashes brightly, and appears to strike the bird. When your eyes readjust, however, the raven is gone. You feel a strange sensation as some of your arm hair stands up on end, but the woods and the road are silent once again.

"Ummm... I'm assuming nobody was witness what just occurred?" Kurama ventured already knowing the answer deep down.  Either someone - or something - was trying to tell him something or mess with his mind and mental state.  Though he hadn't the foggiest why, he promised himself to find the truth of the matter and of this world as a whole.

Blinking out of his mini reverie, he looked to the others and eventually said, "We should leave this place and continue on.  I do not like the feel of this archway and I'd like to find the Sisters today if at all possible."  With that, he slowly turned away from the archway and continued on down the path in front of them.

Maybe, Brask says to Effort, unconvinced.  Maybe talk later.  We sure this isn't the way to the Sister?  He points to the archway.  I dunno, I can't keep all this magic stuff straight.

"Well it feels like a gateway to something.  What, I don't know.  Cadmael can fly over it easily.  We could step around it easily rather than pass under.  But if it is a doorway to the Sister's abode, then going straight through is the option to take," Effort says, a bit redundantly, because it seems everyone has already stepped through rather than around the arch, save for Cadmael.

Effort (or anyone) can do an arcana check if she wants to try and study the archway more.

Touching her forehead, Effort looks over the archway once again, searching it this time with her senses, rather than for physical clues.

Effort Arcana with Guidance: 26 

Brask is also going to inspect the archway, employing his substantial knowledge of Arcana, just because he's beginning to get the feeling he can't keep ignoring magic as it doesn't seem to be ignoring him.

4

That went about as well as expected. :)

Brask, unfortunately you aren't quite sure what you're supposed to be doing, or looking for. You end up just scanning the archway for physical signs of magic, and turn up nothing.

Effort, on the other hand, gets a powerful sensation as she meditates on the archway. It doesn't seem to be a gateway or any kind of transportation vessel, but there is powerful magic around it. The first bit is tied to the coin pouches. It seems her instincts to leave them alone were correct. The second type of magic is broader, and darker. It seems to begin at this point, but extends further up the road and toward your destination. So while this archway wasn't a magical way to find the Sister, it seems to be the entrance to her domain. 

Brask reaches a hand towards the coin bags, stops, leans in without touching anything and whispers to nothing in particular You’re going to have to do better than that.  He walks on, whistling, as they continue their journey.

"Yes... this is definitely the entrance to the domain of the Sister.  What a welcome," Effort says, nodding at the others and continuing down the path.

The forests of the central continent have slowly turned into lower, shrub-like habitat. The tangles of vines and thin branches still stretch out ominously, but now you can see over them even more into the never-ending gray sky. The ground has become wetter, too. The road is muddy, and the sides have become swamp-like under the vegetation. As the afternoon wears on, and you begin to tire from walking, you notice the road has start to transition from dirt to sand. 

The ruins seem to sneak up on you. Maybe the monotony of the landscape put you in a bit of a trance - or maybe it was something else - but you all look up in the early evening and there it is on the horizon. Sitting up ever-so-slightly on a dune, you see the stonework. It's mostly just the foundation left - the outlines of a structure, really, although in a few places it seems the walls have remained a few feet high. Beyond, you can see the white caps of an angry ocean. 

As you take note of the strange sensation you're feeling, magic or something more, a raven quorks from the corner of the ruins. It shifts its weight a bit before flying off the gray stone and disappearing behind one of the walls.

Effort sends Cadmael to circle over the ruins.  She puts her hand on Pip's shoulder to steady herself as her eyes go white, and she looks through the owl's vision and begins to recite what she sees inside in a monotone to the others.

Cadmael takes off, flying straight up for a few seconds until he can see beyond the walls of the ruins. He begins to drift toward the stonework, and it doesn't take long for him to spot what you assume is one of the Sisters. She stands over a stone slab table. On it is a piece of parchment - Cadmael can't tell what it says from this distance - along with handfuls of various things. A pile of leaves, small stones, and so on. A single, simple dagger also sits nearby. The Sister herself wears a long brown robe. It's plain, but has bits of embroidery along the cuffs of the sleeves. Swirls of blue and green. Her hair is long and white, flowing down to the middle of her back. As Cadmael watches, it's clear she's performing some kind of magic. The raven - her raven? - sits on the edge of the room remains and stares up at Cadmael. It's clear that this was never going to be a sneak-in-and-surprise-her kind of situation. 

You hear the gentle but foreboding roar of thunder off in the distance, somewhere out over the ocean. The Sister looks up at Cadmael knowingly as the parchment sears and burns up on the table. She takes the dagger and places it in her belt as she walks over and sits on a bit of brickwork that resembles a chair.

After she finishes narrating Cadmael's adventure, Effort returns to her senses and looks at the others.  "I believe we are awaited inside," she says. 

She's here? Brask replies.  Good.  Let's go.  He stomps off briskly in the direction of the ruins, not actually intending to be the first to reach the Sister but keen to see whether Effort or Kurama run to overtake him.

"Alright then. Time to learn some truths..." Kurama replied as he took out a notebook and followed in the minotaur's wake.