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 Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:40 am
Quote: The local dragonseer (that's a fancy word for someone who rides on a balloon and stares at the fog from above) wants your help in locating potential signs of danger and sand whales. You are to ride the balloon up and take a look. You must first assemble the balloon. Pick any two items from the list below to make the basket of your balloon out of. Rp accordingly: - Snake leather - Thick rope - Flaming carpet - A basket of foxfires - A white cloth - Carved sand whale bone - A net - A table - A door - Five golden rings - A pine tree - A trash can - A really really really really big bottle - Next, to ascend, roll 1d100. This is the number of feet that your balloon launches to the sky. If you roll a 1... you kind of suck. Maybe you're really bad with balloons. Maybe youre too heavy. Maybe your buddy should get off. Who knows. If your character is lucky and manages to roll above 50 feet, they will get to see the town below them. You notice that the town is shaped like an S. You can also see clearly the town below you. If your character rolls above 80 feet, you end up going too high into the highest miasma clouds. The thin air makes exposure to miasma easily and you gain +5 miasma. As long as you roll over 50 feet you succeed in this venture.
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Smerdle rolled 1 100-sided dice:
2
Total: 2 (1-100)
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Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:42 am
attempt one
Brenley was wary of this Dragonseer. The title implied seeing dragons, which he had encountered none of, nor did he want to. Not that he had a problem with the civilized sort, but he hadn't had a problem with sand whales before this trip either and now he kinda did. Surely if he spent time with a damned Dragonseer, he would wind up seeing some dragons. He sighed. He supposed he should get this over with.
He hadn't taken three more steps before he was directed to a gargantuan pile of random items and asked to choose some. He picked some leather and a trash can because they were closest, but when the Dragonseer started fashioning them into a crude balloon basket, Brenley was horrified. Luckily, the thing gave out a whopping two feet off of the ground and he landed with little more than a mild jolt.
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Smerdle rolled 1 100-sided dice:
37
Total: 37 (1-100)
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Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:43 am
attempt two
He chose a ridiculously large bottle and some rope the second time he approached, and though it got him and the Dragonseer higher, it was nowhere near the distance he needed to see anything.
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Smerdle rolled 1 100-sided dice:
40
Total: 40 (1-100)
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Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:45 am
attempt three
Since the more solid, basketlike items had failed, he chose several he would have normally avoided in the hopes that they might surprise him. The cloth suspended by its five golden rings lasted longer than the bottle and rope, but not by much.
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Smerdle rolled 1 100-sided dice:
14
Total: 14 (1-100)
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Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:49 am
attempt four
In an act of desperation, Brenley chose a flaming carpet and jacking tree next, as if that wouldn't be a disaster.
It was a total disaster.
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Smerdle rolled 1 100-sided dice:
80
Total: 80 (1-100)
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Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:50 am
attempt five
It was a last ditch effort, this "net and table" fiasco. Brenley pointed them out reluctantly, expecting a disapproving glare from the Dragonseer, and as such he was already backing away when he heard it: a thin, wavering, female voice issuing from the villager's cowl.
"Finally."
"What?"
"You finally chose something that isn't stupid."
He cringed slightly at the word stupid, but managed to shake off the accompanying flare of irritation, smearing it with manufactured politeness. "Thank you. Does that mean you believe this balloon will work?"
"Yes, I know it will. Now come here and learn."
After a bit of hesitation, Brenley moved closer to the diminutive woman, then behind her, positioning himself so that he could see over her shoulder.
"We're not making pottery, boil. Come around front and sit down."
She didn't shout or even sound menacing at all, but Bren felt suitably chastened anyway, just as he had at Cloverhorn's. He nodded and took a seat as instructed, prepared to learn the hell out of balloon making.
The Dragonseer began by loosening the corners of the net until she had a handful of smaller ropes woven into the original sturdy, intersecting pattern. Then she turned the table over while looping the net underneath in such a way that if she tied the ropes to something at a certain height, they would lift the table off of the ground.
"Hop on," she said,
Brenley shook his head faintly as he rose and did what she asked. Once he had done so, he found he was trapped in a little net pouch, unable to easily get free once she tied his basket to a balloon and began to inflate it.
"Are you sure this is safe?" he asked, but beyond a sarcastic glare, barely visible beyond her hood, the woman didn't answer. The contraption began to rise and Brenley hooked his fingers through the netting that surrounded him, concluding almost immediately that it was a bad idea to do so but seeing no other course of action. The Dragonseer did so too, hanging onto the outside of the basket as they took to the air.
"What are we looking for?" Maybe if he gave himself a brave and necessary task it would take his mind off of the danger he was in.
"Sand whales. Dragons. Anything that seems wrong."
This whole place seemed wrong to the boil, but he admirably kept his mouth shut on that front. Instead of complaining, he took up his temporary duties, squinting through the fog around them and looking for anything that wasn't... covered in fog. The world beyond was a mass of grey with the occasional purple smudge, but he could make out nothing besides...
An entire village.
One moment the balloon was winding through swirling fog and the next Brenley could see the whole of the town, mountains and sand and volcano clear as day. It was shaped like an S, a serpent slithering through the countryside in a portion of Halloween he had never heard of before today. They rode together in silence, and even though the situation was strange for the boil, the trip was peaceful... until they floated too high. It was a near-instantaneous change, the sky's purple bits turning violent and alive with an anger he had only seen in a handful of the animals here.
"What happened?" he shouted, knuckles white where he held the net. The wind was louder too, whipping his question away from the Dragonseer and eating it alive.
She didn't answer at first, concentrating as she used her meager weight to tug them below whatever line they had crossed. When Brenley could hear again, she said, "Almost crossed into the miasma. We should go back. There's nothing to see."
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