Interlude
Subject: Testing, Testing...
Hello everyone,
If you are receiving this email, it means that the sakeriver mailing lists are now up and running. Game on!
-Mike
From: Raja
Subject: Testing, Testing...
Loud and clear!
From: Ty
Subject: so.....
What's up?
From: Dan
Subject: Re: The Mountain; Five hours...
"Show us the door, Cadfael."
Cadfael continues his gentle rocking and gives no answer.
OOC: I mean, really, what more were you expecting?
From: Raja
Subject: Re: The Mountain; Five hours...
Let Mission fume while we wait for noon, says me.
From: Ty
Subject: Re: The Mountain; Five hours...
If that's cool, lemme know and I will right up next turn. I just need a check in from scott, karl, matt, and mike.
Thanks.
From: Karl
Subject: Re: The Mountain; Five hours...
Farron sits and lets loose a long sigh. He is tired but, oddly, he feels safer in this room than he has since the pre-Anileth moments back in the Inn. (And that seems like years ago rather than just a few days. In the quiet of the few hours before noon, he spends most of his time looking down into the chamber where the dark rite supposedly will take place. He wonders at the power and skill that has build such a place as this temple, such skill as he has not seen before and wonders if it has vanished from the knowledge of men entirely.
(Farron will pace, sit, stand, stare out into the chamber, etc, and think these things until something else happens.)
From: Ty
Subject: In the waiting room; Interlude
OODM: Just some stuff to pass the time?
IDM:
The room grows quiet.
The last week of inhuman effort required just to get to this point takes its toll. Farron stares out the window, and occasionally walks around the room to stretch his legs. Sa'id sits in a corner, with a melancholy expression on his face. He has worn it ever since the embalming room. Garyth lies on the floor, and looks like he is actually asleep. Soldiers learn to sleep anywhere. Garyth and Mission started out talking quietly about escape plans, but even they have grown quiet. Rennik chews on the shortened haft of his makeshift halberd, looking like he really misses his well chewed axe handle. Only Cadfael speaks, but his words are a steady mumbled stream, and no one listens.
After a few hours, the light in the room grows brighter. Standing at the window, Farron says a quiet, "Oh!" At the same time, a quiet music begins. The rest of the group moves over to the window, and stares up in awe.
The ceiling of the room is now totally translucent. The sun has risen high enough in the sky that golden light shines down through the shaft cut in the mountain. Above the glass ceiling, previously hidden by the obsidian's smoky opacity, is a huge golden orrery. This massive, yet delicate looking construct is anchored into the walls of the shaft on some sort of sockets, and when the light hits it, it begins to rotate in an incredibly complex motion.
In the center sits the motionless golden sphere representing the sun, the icon of Pelor. All around it the seven known planets dance. Mirene. Helcene. Agea on which you live. Giant and colorful Gamese ,Portua, and Callua. And tiny Fanos, the most distant moving light in the night sky. All suspended on delicate golden circles, and whirling around the center at their own speed and distance.
As they turn, a gentle chiming music is heard. It seems to be coming from the orrery itself. The music is constantly changing, almost randomly it seems. But it is never harsh, or clashing. It is rather delicate, and almost sad. Farron, who has been watching the longest, says, "A giant music box, to honor Pelor?"
Behind, he hears a sob. Turning, he sees Cadfael, who had walked up silently behind the group, and is staring at the orrery with wide tear filled eyes.
From: Matt
Subject: Re: In the waiting room; Interlude
Checking in:
Rennik looks up at the giant sun sphere and can't help but be impressed. The wise ones of the tribes halflings studied the stars and planets and tried to tell the young ones of their significance... it was all lost on Rennik. Perhaps what those elders knew was akin to what these ancients had discovered - but to recreate the natural world in artificial gold and crafted metal twisted a knot in his stomach.
They might as well have crafted a tree of gold, emeralds, and bronze. It was a mockery of the world, twisted by a people who thought they controlled nature and even the heavens. But nature reclaimed its own, tearing down the cities built in their hubris and making what the foolhardy had called "civilized" the most inhospitable place on the island.
The humor of the gods of wood and leaf.
Rennik turns away from the spectacle disgusted, and wraps the handle of the halberd with the strips of well-chewed leather from his axe. He will double check all his equipment and spend these last hours with Tichenor.