Game: In the Spire's Shadow

Kadar spots his friends as he wanders down Gear street. Smiling at the familiar faces he takes a seat and gives a friendly, if curious nod to Aloric.

"Hello all," he turns to Aloric "My name is Kadar," he offers a hand to the dwarf "What's yours cutter?"

Zhegre hears Hilren's tone and decides not to press the issue. "'A stern lesson,' eh? Well, any lesson you walk away from..." He finishes up. "At any rate, hopefully in few minutes we will be finding you portal back home. Although," he adds with a gesture, "if we do find stable portal is listed in Log you could always spend some time here taking in new experiences. It would be shame to encounter wider world and return with only a short glance. At least, some might think." He adds cautiously, "You should also at least brace yourself for possibility no such portal is known. Or that known portal has closed due to expansion of Spirelight -- this is recent phenomenon that has been resulting in closings of portals, areas without magic, that sort of thing. We are in middle of attempting to do something about that now, is another reason we are coming here. Your way home may lie at end of long detour."

He cheers up. "Or it could be walk across park. Let us find out when it is time to find out, yes?"

He hears the Elysium bell for peak, and looks around. "Wery strange for modron to be late... is not like their race at all. I wonder what could be keeping him. Maybe he has gone ahead... should we go? Hands of Time is right over there."

May I join ye? I'm curious about this whole spirelight business, and I've got little else to do today."

Polp tags along, completely alien to the procedure that is set underway. While Zhegre makes arrangements, the shad goggles at a rogue quadrone modron going about its business.

"Thought that was Mr Peep for a moment, there. Those cube people really look nearly indistinguishable. Just like my two twin cousins, except less hairy and more polyhedral."

And the great plot hunt moves to Gear Street. (Isn't that where we're on?) If the portal's not obvious, or it's key isn't, ask a watchman, nearby merchant, or passing tout. Assuming this goes off easily and we reach the Fortress, settle in with the necessary paperwork to arrange everything required. I'm not really concerned with RPing anything up until something surprising happens, which will presumably be (a) Hilaren learning that he's SOL on a way home (or not, but one way or another becoming a permanent member of the party), and (b) us learning something useful about the Hissing Prophet. Alter this if anything out of the expected happens on the way, of course.

The shad gazes in amazement at the sight and experience of Mechanus, taking it all in while the group goes about its business. When they arrive at the front desk, Polp steps up with anticipation and enthusiasm, little else but his ears rising over desk-level.

“Well, hello there Mister Clerk! Wow, this is some place you’ve got here, so much space and openness, and everything seems so tidy and neat.”

“We have quite a bit of business here, if I’ve understood correctly, but first I’d like to ask if this mighty fine floating isle of yours has something resembling a public garden?”

While speaking the last bit, Polp absentmindedly strokes his earrings, leaving a musical tingling in the air.

Zhegre realizes, as he steps through the portal, that we have just arrived in a world made almost entirely of metal, and keeps a very close eye on Hilaren, who may well suspect that we have happily gallivanted into Hell. Zhegre himself is rather happy here; people think the best artwork gets done on the other side of the Great Ring, but over here there's some fine forging, including of societies.

He switches to a polite form of Rodinan Dwarvish, knowing that Mechanus translates all languages. It's a lovely, rich tongue, you know, and his friends ought to hear it in its full, sonorous depth. "If you've never been here before, just remember the cardinal rule of Mechanus: the rules are cardinal. If you're in doubt about what to do, look around for a sign, a manual, or someone who looks like they're in charge, and there's probably a procedure to handle your problem. Follow it. The people who live around here give short shrift to ignorance of the law, but they'll handle that far better than breaking it."

He comes up to the clerk and awaits his turn after Polp. . o O (Is that a rakshasa? Even if he is, I imagine one in a sweater vest will behave as long as we don't break any rules. Although there are a lot of rules to worry about breaking....) He discreetly checks out the palms of the tiger-man's hands.

Regardless of the result of that, it never hurts to be polite. "Esteemed Functionary, we wish to obtain the necessary permissions to examine the publically-available historical record concerning Fraternity observations of events of a religious or prophetic nature, along with the services of one of the Order's consultants in the field to more efficiently direct our search through the quantity of data available. We would also like to examine the Portal Log for a known portal to a world referenced by name or major unusual features. A schedule of fees and paperwork to inaugurate these requests, if any, would be appreciated." Tell you one thing about Rodina... they may not be as good as natives of Mechanus at filling out paperwork and waiting in line, but they'd make it to the finals in a competition. ^_^

Polp turns quite heartbroken as he hears the words of “fail” and “competency” being applied to him, the context blurring out in his mind. Turning to his companions with hanging ears, the shad tries to pull himself together to address the issue at hand.

“Ow, my hand is sore with writing... So I guess we split up then? Hilaren, Aloric, and I visit the Hall of Prophecy, while you three “corrupted” folks search the Portal Directory? We could rendezvous in the sculpture garden of the main legal library, I would want to do a little planting there, anyway.”

"I wouldn't count on it." replies Kadar as he shakes the cramp out of his own hand. I'm also not sure that we'll be allowed into the portal directory so we should be very careful to ask the guards on the way in."

Kadar prepares to set off to the Portal Directory before turning to Polp, "Make sure you're allowed to plant your seed before you try to do so. I'd hate for them to set an inevitable on you for littering or vandalism my little friend."

"Wonderful," Zhegre mutters. "Exactly the opposite of who needed to go where."

He turns to Aloric. "It looks like you will be the glue holding us together for a while, Aloric, since you're able to access both venues. Let's talk for a bit about the details we'll each need to be researching..."

Finding a quiet corner, he tries to get Aloric up to speed on the information they're looking for -- the who, where, and when of the Hissing Prophet, so they can track him down and throw him in a privy. He also plumbs Hilaren for details on Avliss' proper names, major geographical features, famous figures, any history of interaction with the planes, and the like, to use as reference points.

{And I'm off for the week. See you Sunday.}

"And hello to ye as well," says Aloric. "We were looking for information on the Hissing Prophet. Don't worry, none of us are Doomguard."

"Oh. That would be great."

"Now don't be touching anything, Polp," warns Aloric, adressing the potential problem before it might arise, "The guvners like to keep thier records in order. The poor goblin might have a heart-attack."

“Fascinating, almost as good as one of the bedtime stories my Ma Hyulie used to tell me, except with even more mysticism and less speculation. Perhaps we ought to contact Duckluck when we return to Sigil. Oh, but he would want that his name to be updated to “ex-factor” in the report, I’ll tell you that.”

Polp pulls out a sheet of parchment and his quill and ink, stopping halfway as he remembers the need to follow protocol in this place.

“Oh, pardon me, but would you mind if I copied this text?”

Polp feels a bit guilty for doing so, but he doesn’t hesitate for too long before starting to copy over anyway. The shad writes quickly and keeps his ears peeled for when the goblin will return, speaking softly to Aloric in the meantime.

“I’m sorry about having to go about it like this, but we really need to show this to the rest of the group, and I’m not sure I can stand filling out more forms! After all, Zhegre, Kadar, and M’rek aren’t really “unathorized” as they were forced to swear that oath of entropy.”

After he’s done, the tunnelrunner folds the parchment and slips it inside his clothes to hide it, then puts on his best behaviour to appear innocent as ever.

OOC: Well, he’s not Lawful after all.

(Checks)

“That’s alright Mister Librarian, we’re running late and I think we’ve learned what we need from the prophecy. Thanks a lot for all your help and sorry about the inconvenience.”

Unless Aloric and Hilaren have something they need to do before leaving, Polp would politely depart with the goblin and lead the trio out of the Hall of Prophecy, then seek out the garden where they agreed to rendezvous with the rest of the party.

"I think we should probably sign the forms," says Aloric.

Zhegre says calmly, "We have received permission to access the directory," and hands over the relevant chit. "We are searching for a stable portal with known key to a world for which we have some identifying information..." and he produces a list. "We would appreciate some training on the cross-reference system, unless you would care to run the search yourself -- which would perform the task faster, but disengage us while costing you the time involved. The assessment of which option better serves your time value is up to you."

He treats her to a pleasant smile. "The sweater coordinates well with your skin, by the way. What species was your axiomatic ancestor?"

Zhegre nods. Doesn't know too much about erinyes beyond the "smiting" phase, but given their usual role in the infernal hierarchy, he figures they would be one of the more common axiomatic ancestors, at that. Naturally, no reflection on her; any proper system of morals allows someone to be judged on their own merits, not their parents'. "Avliss," he says. "The local cultures should be extremely low-tech, at least in some regions."

"Could I observe the search? I'm no arcanist, but I have heard about this development of True Names in recent magical research and it sounds philosophically interesting." If allowed, he'll watch, if not, he'll wait and ponder:

As the zenthyri -- whom he supposes must also qualify as a tiefling -- goes about her business, he muses on the interface of passion, motherhood, social norms and laws. The nobler side of the dwarven pantheon doesn't have much truck with sex, nor do many of the other pantheons in that region of the Great Ring. Are the gods simply missing a trick? No, parenting is a vital and well-covered area of responsibility, and more importantly, the fleshy parts of the process have very badly confused and led astray more than one righteous young soul. If it means that Dwarven love poetry lacks a certain multiversal fame, that's a small price to pay for a stable, caring environment in which to raise your kids. Continues musing in this vein as he awaits the response.

"That's the one. You can name it Avliss, and the ranger with us can provide you with more details on why the natives reacted poorly to wood."

He pauses.

"Or stone."

He thinks.

"Or metal."

He chews it over for a moment. "... Yes, I think that's it. At any rate, it's good to know that he'll be able to get back home, if by a somewhat indirect route. At least, I don't recall any report of spelljamming failing along with all the portals and such. If you could give us whatever directions a spelljammer would need to get there, that will suffice for what what we came here to do."

"Thank you for the quick work. It is an impressive system you've got here. I may have to look in to learning a bit about truenaming myself; any force that helps keep the universe this well-organized must be a boon to decent folk on the whole."

When the trio has located the sculpture garden, Polp will look for someone seeming to be local authority and ask permission for planting one of his Shad seed.

EDIT: Hooray, the game has reached a thousand posts!