Lost Mine of Phandelver

"Spoken like one who has never had to live outside the confines of their own mortal coil...you think me disabled, but I can assure you that I am quite the opposite. Your body is a prison, as much as this glass jar is to me, but after many decades pass, you learn to become comfortable inside the container your consciousness inhabits...I may have no hands or feet, and so I must depend on the assistance of others for transportation, but I have not completed a single day of menial, manual labor since the moment of my execution, so there's that."

Garet Insight 10

Insight: 13

Insight: 8

Ronk starts walking slowly to the other side of the room, towards the headless body. "Does the body still have to eat? Do you have to use a funnel?"

Marcon is at once both indignant and flustered from the response, and could only sputter initially trying to piece together a full sentence. Eventually, something comes together as force him to take time to breathe and calm down to some degree. "I... I ain't mean it like that, man. Implying your disabled, that is. But, that might've been... That was rude of me though, and I do apologize for that." He said, even bowing his head. Though, not so much that the walking corpse didn't get any ideas. With that, Marcon clammed up again to let some of the less tired and more clever tongue folk keep up the questioning.

Garet and Marcon seem satisfied with Malachai's explaination but Ronk and Rigel are dubious concerning the accuracy of the story of how he came to exist in his current form.

"Enough questions about me," Malachai booms "let's peer into your lives and see what secrets may surface..." (Malachai casts detect thoughts on Ronk)

"What is on your mind, bugbear?" (OOC: @Ronk see spell description)

Ronk freezes in mid-stride with a bit of a "who, me?" look on his face. "Um... Not much... Why?" On the surface of his mind, though, is a mental image of the dullahan being fed by means of a funnel  where its neck should be, and a bit of indecision that - if given voice - would be along the lines "Do I do it now? Maybe I should do it now...". Probably with a sudden topping of dread now that the brain has put him on the spot.

Marcon grimaces, but whether it was from the boom of Malachai's voice or the brain's intention is hard to say. Either which way, seeing Ronk freeze up, the more martial minded farm boy glances down to the warhammer looped to his side. But then look up to the headless man, he flinches, before nudging Vanzaren's side, hoping the half-elf might finally speak up and ... and he didn't know what to expect beyond a frayed sliver of hope the showman might have something.

Vanzaren coughs and raises two fingers at Malachi, before speaking up, "How about me first? I do love talking about myself." He stands up, "Where to start?"

((Casting counterspell for the detect thoughts))

((Also ill post something more substantial on my lunch break))

Malachai silently probes Ronk's mind further....

RONK
Wisdom (Save): 3 vs. DC 14

...but his attempts to do so are blocked by the bugbear's mental focus

(EDIT: Ronk's original roll was a critical 22, so ignore the cheat police above)

Garet grasps firmly his amulet but does nothing aggressive 

Seemingly ignoring the fact that Vanzaren had obviously countered his detect thoughts spell, Malachai then casts zone of truth and turns his attention to the wizard: "Fair enough then, my fellow practioner of arcane arts...why don't you tell me what's on your mind, and please...be candid," says Malachai.

CHARISMA SAVES vs. DC 14:
19 - VANZAREN
5 - MARCON
8 - RONK
5 - GARET
21 - HARLAN

(OOC: Rigel is outside the spell's area of affect)

Not really knowing what to do at this point, or truly understanding the magic at play apart from feeling perhaps funny, Marcon focused on mentally preparing himself to help Vanzaren out in a pinch. Although in just what way he... frankly wasn't sure off the top of his head. Fact of the matter was, most of his surface thought were a jumbled mess between yearning for sleep and to protect his fellows, despite some personal hang ups. Either way, he would try to be ready for anything.

Ronk looks over at the others, still frozen where he's standing, his eyes wide as he feels the spell settle in, then looks back to the brain. "Uuuuuhhhhhh, I... Don't know where I'm supposed to put the djinni and I really do want to know if he needs to be fed with a funnel!" The bugbear winces. Maybe he should have meditated on emptying his mind more before all this....

"Djinn? What djinn...wait just a second, is that a...ring of djinni summoning? On the finger of a bugbear? You! Where did you get that?!" snaps Malachai at Ronk, who (if he chooses to respond verbally) is compelled to answer truthfully by Malachai's spell.

(OOC: edited to clarify on the "compelled to answer" phrase above.)

"Does it really matter?" Vanzaren asks. "Come on, back to talking about me! For example, i have a tattoo that is an exact replica of a women's lips I got as part of a bet when I was young and foolish."

"I am Firbolg" says Garet slowly intrigued by the bigger urge than usually to speak truth

Marcon opens his mouth, looking about ready to chime in as well, only to stop and side-eye Vanzaren with a raised brow. If he wasn't lost on how to help before, the ex-farmhand was certainly moreso after that and Garet's exploratory sidebar. But eventually, he shakes his head curtly, clearing his train of thought, and seeing there was no real way to make things worser at this point, he silently hoped Rigel was able to get where he needed to go as he tried to chime in as well.

"My, uh... The Half-Elf may have a point." He glances back to Van. "Uh... in so far as to how is knowing where he got that supposed to help with this whole schtick ya got goin' 'bout unlocking the secrets of the cosmos for us... Or whatever it was ya said earlier. 'cause you can guess that he knows with some degree of certainty that is greater than 0 where said ring has been preported to have possibly come from, if said information is to be trusted in, uh, some form of non-standard measurements." Marcon is sweating by the end of the word soup that strained the few brain cells even still functioning at the moment.

"In fact, shouldn't you already know this information? Or should we speak to your, uh, employer about you possibly deceiving them regarding your abilities?"

Persuasion: 10.

If Malachai had eyes, they would have blinked several times as he silently stared at Garet, hoping to elicit more dialogue from the cleric. Finally, he breaks the awkwardness: "Yes, I can see that...EVERYONE sees that, because you are eight feet tall and BLUE!! Your grasp of the obvious is breathtaking...but not in the good way."

Malachai was about to form a similarly condescending response to Vanzaren's comments when Marcon chimed in. Once again, the disembodied brain's exaspiration would have been mroe evident if he still had the luxury of facial expressions and body language. The farmboy's nonsensical monologue followed up with a veiled threat to complain to the evil brain's supervisor about his business practices left Malachai so baffled and incensed that he could hardly assemble a coherent counter-argument and instead uttered a series of incredulous harrumphs and painful sighs.

Finally, after several deep breaths and some mantra repetitions, he collected his thoughts and spat out: "You...want to...REPORT ME? To...my employer!? For trying to deceive you?! Ha! HAHAHAHA!!!! You fool! Go right ahead, you insolent ignoramous! You'll not get out even half of what you just blabbered on about before Isolde cleaves your idiot head from your stooped shoulders merely to SHUT YOU UP! I should know! Just look at me! How do you think I got this way?! If it gets you and all your trivial banalities out of my sight, then you can find Isolde in the large tent going up at the northeast corner of this STUPID hick town! Go there, tell her how 'dishonest' I am and insist she issue me a stern reprimand! And demand that she compensate you for your grievances!! Good luck! HAHAHAHA!!!!"

Malachai proceeded to have a sort of melt down for a little bit, ignoring the party and instead angrily commenting aloud to himself, his severed head and his headless body about how insulting it is that an arcane master such as he is forced to interface with the "common street rabble" and their "far inferior intellect and existential enlightenment..."