as told by the cavalier Olmas Lurecia himself.<\/p>\n
So we traveled without incident to the kappa-uncle, but along the way we had an open and honest discussion of how best to protect Koya.\u00a0 While both Ameiko and Shalelu were trained and experienced fighters, that was not at all Koya’s strong suit.\u00a0 The difficult question was not resolved enroute.<\/p>\n
The kappa, Numataro-sama, greeted us pleasantly and told us a story and history that suggests there are familial ties at play here.\u00a0 Is O-Sayumi related to the pearl merchant, whose name we now know to be Shosaito?\u00a0 Numataro-sam suggested strongly that it might be a father-daughter relationship.\u00a0 The circumstances seem to indicate that O-Sayumi felt compelled to come, but compelled emotionally or compelled magically we cannot say at this point.\u00a0 Mysteriously, he gave us a shogi piece “for luck” and said it had the power to summon the greatest shogi player in all of Minkai.<\/p>\n
We did come to one conclusion, however.\u00a0 With Numataro-sama’s permission we will leave Koya here inside a Mage’s Private Sanctum. She should be safe from most things, including scrying.\u00a0 Long term, however, we will need to come up with another plan.<\/p>\n
The island looks dim, and seemed pervaded by gloom and doom.\u00a0 I judge this to be a way of discouraging visitors, and while that may prove true, I’d also not be surprised if it turned out to be an ominous side effect from somebody or something living here.<\/p>\n
(later)<\/p>\n
Like undead.<\/p>\n
We used fly rather than try to take a more mundane method of reaching the island.\u00a0 It has been our experience that appearing at the entrances made explicitly to greet visitors, like front doors and docks, usually are the worst way to introduce ourselves.\u00a0 Geisha houses excepted.\u00a0\u00a0 On our way in we saw what we assumed to be pearl divers at work (and they saw us).\u00a0 They stayed underwater a surprisingly long time but when they walked up on shore they were not interested in welcoming us.\u00a0 They attacked us, and while I suppose in a sense we were trespassers, I think most civilized places will agree that employing undead as laborers is the greater offense.<\/p>\n
After dispatching them (Kali said they were mastodons, I think, which I have always believed to be larger, but …) we examined their crude village.\u00a0 Surprise surprise, we found a secret door in the floor which I’d be willing to bet will lead us to our next problem.\u00a0\u00a0 By the way, both Qatana and Kali say this place is bathed in faint magic. No, really?<\/p>\n
(later)<\/p>\n
aaaand spot on.\u00a0 This time it was manangles (I think – Kali speaks so softly) masquerading as servants.<\/p>\n
We seemed to be exploring, perhaps, the basement of the only house on the island.\u00a0 We found one room\u00a0 (before we even met the manangles) that immediately drew Dasi’s attention, since it seemed to be filled with some very fine bottles of sake.\u00a0 One passage looked even more shadowy and ominous than the rest of the basement.\u00a0\u00a0 We decided to save that for last.<\/p>\n
It was about then we ran into the first manangle.\u00a0 We tried to convince her, and the rest eventually, that we were part of the security testing team. They almost bought it (we even had one in manacles “so it would look authentic”, but in the end one of them doubted it enough to attack us and that meant the others no longer cooperated.\u00a0 Ivan called out they are undead, but they seemed especially difficult to kill.\u00a0 Suishen confirmed to me, after cutting into one, that these were not oni. (I realize he only speaks telepathically but he almost sounded disappointed.)\u00a0 According to Kali, these things are really nasty at night so I’m glad we came when we did.<\/p>\n
Exploring, we found several rooms – all looked dusty like they’d not been used for a while.\u00a0 We still have no firm confirmation that O-Sayumi is even here.\u00a0 One room had a shogi game set up and apparently in progress, and Radella detected a trap of some sort, but Kali was sure it was an important clue.<\/p>\n
She was wrong.\u00a0\u00a0 Touching the board threw all of us into a sort of grid – a shadowy shogi board? – and about the time figured out how to maneuver within it, we also found we were sharing it with extra things – shadows themselves.\u00a0 I don’t know who held the lucky chess piece that Numataro-sama gave us, but they apparently activated it and a hazy figure of Hatsue, appeared and although confused by our presence in what she said was HER dream, went to work destroying shadows.<\/p>\n
Other than Hatsue, the things that helped us best was recognizing that by DISBELIEVING the grid one found oneself in, it became noncorporeal.\u00a0 The second was that Dasi had this capability he called “ghost purge” which made our weapons much more effective against the shadows.\u00a0 (I have to say, he continues to amaze me.)<\/p>\n
Having put that behind us, we regrouped to return to the shadowy pathway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
as told by the cavalier Olmas Lurecia himself. Wealday, 29 Desnus So we traveled without incident to the kappa-uncle, but along the way we had an open and honest discussion of how best to protect Koya.\u00a0 While both Ameiko and Shalelu were trained and experienced fighters, that was not at all Koya’s strong suit.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-4028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-olmas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4029,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028\/revisions\/4029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}