Kaldmont 14^th – “Day 35” From De’Ath’s Notes.

I write “day 35” tentatively. Days are non-existent in this frustrating, and yet fascinating Inn. Unfortunately, I still need my Kariwa¹ regularly, and I do sleep, but the waking hours appear no different than the resting hours. This keeps me sane and mostly content.

It is amazing how quiet it has been since half the team left. I finally got to spend time exploring the rooms of the inn and have made a few discoveries that the less intelligent had missed. Of course, the owner of the inn, the most annoying Fredigar Crisp has joined me. He whines and cries about everything. “What happened to my Inn?” and “Holy Immortals, Why?” all the time. I think I liked him better drunk. At least he was quiet.

With the whining man following, I have discovered a couple of hidden rooms that did not exist in “his time.” I discovered them by noticing that the paintings that had changed all had these odd-looking metallic corner pieces. I asked the Half-Gnome what she thought.

Her, I don’t mind, for a gnome. She hides away tinkering and testing the cocoons with the “dead” oard for days on end, and gives me peace and quiet. Or she disappears with her husband. Either way she doesn’t bother me. When asked, she was able to de-activate one of the metal corners, which turned out to be an illusion device, probably Oard machinery.

Anyways, one of the rooms are filled with strange black glass windows that flicker sometimes with lights. I like it here, it’s dark, and “Crying Crisps” as I have come to call him, avoids it. Too dark in his mind. Sometimes these windows display a text from a language I have yet to decipher. So I enjoy sitting and making notes of the language, I may learn to read it yet. If I had my Large spellbook from Serraine I would cast Read Languages, but I will have to do this the old fashioned way, which is more fun anyways.

Another room is filled with mirrors, disturbing things. Who wants to look at themselves from 30 different angles? Such vain creatures. Each mirror is about 7 feet tall, and 4 feet wide and shows your whole body. They all have a writing around the frame in different magical languages. Some of them I can read, others I cannot. Yet….

It appears that these rooms, while the illusion is up, are unable to be entered. Other rooms have been discovered, but we cannot enter yet, as Adriana cannot shut off the devices yet, two days ago she got an electric shock. It was fun to watch, her hair stood up like a thistle bush for 8 hours. Yes I timed it with her chronograph she keeps leaving around. I have resorted to using it to keep track of Kariwa¹ time.

I have been, of course cataloging everything. I have also spent hours using the Giant Mirror in the Lounge to watch the adventures of Ko’ar and the rest since they left again. It is interesting that when the left here, it took a week for them to arrive in the new land from my perspective. It is also extremely amusing to see how they mess up each time. But after a few hours on the first day, I realized that I see things that they don’t, and so I have decided to make notes.

Unfortunately, I cannot hear what they hear.

My notes from today include:

The portal opened on the side of a giant tree. I watched as My “friends” appeared one by one. The first thing I noticed was that Bella, our giant four armed lady friend was an oard. She was covered from head to foot with mechanical thingamajigs, and doohickeys. These are the terms used by our local specialist, the half-gnome.

The team then wandered aimlessly around a forest for a long time, so I went to make notes on the language on the black windows. When I returned they were in some elven village guided by what looked like a very tasty looking fairy.

They discussed things, and went to sleep. So I took that time to enter my Kariwa¹. My dreams were disturbing. I ponder sometimes, how can I remember a past life, that may not have happened, in this new time-line? the fact that I dream of days before the Nagpa Curse² gives hope that our time-line still exists, but it could just lead to paradox…

When I returned to the big screen, I brought snacks. Adriana didn’t mind me cutting off a few fingers from the “dead” Oard, and leaving the rest in the pantry. Or maybe she just hasn’t discovered the body parts yet…

I know Crying Crisps would have a fit, if he opened the box I have on the shelf marked “De’ath – open at your own peril” But you know he MAY be stupid enough…

Anyways today the team found themselves in a cave, and I watched as they wandered, again aimlessly, through the cave. I also watched as the green one, the one they called “Beef” snuck away from them. He was fun to watch. He went the opposite direction from them, then pried some gems from the eye-sockets of various statue. The statues then came to life, and he had to “pop” away.

I guess the statues shut down when the gems are too far away…

Then the man found a river, a little goblin like creature had a raft there. Had is the operative word, Beef shoved the little guys head underwater and held it here until he stopped thrashing… Like I said, he is so much more interesting than the rest of them.

When he re-joined the team, I enjoyed watching Fang, the Tiniest Orc hallucinate in different rooms, and vomit everywhere. Ahhh fun.

Ah frackle-snap. I can hear a scream, someone opened my box in the pantry and discovered Oard legs and arms…. I will have to go save my dinner. Stupid humans and their sensitive stomachs….

Kaldmont 21^st – Adriana’s Notes

Since my husband has returned to the Inn, I have had the chance to find a few things out. Since I was not present, I can only relate what I have pried from him.

When my beloved Julius left here with the rest of them, through the strange portal in the basement of the Inn, he was apparently sent to a strange world where food-stuffs were the makings of everything.

He described strange lakes of chocolate, and hills of bread. He had to fight off monster made of fried potatoes, and mini-warriors made of dinner rolls.

They were tasked with saving a festival from something called a “Hunger”, then they were sent by the queen to save a trade route from an enemy nation known as the “Deep Freeze”. They fought a giant ice creature, and an ugly, and infuriating man called the “Beef Bandit” Whom I met very shortly.

Why they let him go on their travels with them is not clear.

On the way back they met an envoy from the queen who redirected them to “Fort Beefinator” to find their amulet piece.

I cannot say how much I laughed as my husband relayed all of this too me with a straight face. He was absolutely serious. But I cannot seem to figure out where Galladin got his “Bacon Armor”. My husband refuses to talk about the strange armor and weapons they had to use. and apparently the rest of the team embraced full-heartedly.

So anyways, Fort Beefinator apparently was a full children’s fun house, filled with maniacal sandwich people, Cat-oards, and mimics in the shape of children’s take-out boxes.

There is something about dropping an oard into a pit filled with rainbow colored balls. Ohhh my father would love this world, and its craziness. But alas I may never see the great Bran Skywratchet again….

The “Beef Bandit” followed my husband here when they finally returned with their pendant piece, and instead of killing him, the team felt pity on him and took him with them to the next land. I am glad my Julius stayed.

De’ath then quickly snuck the Oard body from one of the coffins to the larder, and we all agree now that the far left corner is his. Unfortunately, nobody thought to tell Mr. Crisps, and he found out the hard way. (By finding oard body parts there for De’ath to eat.)

A full week later, De’ath mentioned something about seeing the team finally arrive in a forest through the Lounge mirror. I decided to watch as he wandered off to analyze some of the rooms we had discovered.

It was amusing and strange to watch my friends on this screen as they traveled through forests, tried to hide Fang as an elf, by using make-up. By the way, his teeth were still visible, but otherwise he looked like a handsome Elf.

They traveled through the forest with a guide, and nearly died in a batch of quick sand. But they bravely continued to a cave in the mountains. Unfortunately, once they entered the cave, I could no longer watch. It was De’ath’s turn to watch, and I needed both sleep, and to go back to work on the oard things.

After they left, Julius became obsessed with keeping the Inn safe from outside. Something about the “Crystal”. So he paced the inn cleaning and searching the tool sheds. He re-forged some of the spare metal from the broken furniture into weapons. He and Fulric began talking about defense. Fulric mentioned something about being disconnected from the Fey, and that scared him.

During the following week, I realized that the frames for the paintings were different from before. So I asked the owner, Mr. Crisps, who confirmed that these were not his frames. So I checked and the frame in Bella’s old room was connected to her “Coffin” that I woke her from. When I tried to tinker with it, I got a very bad electrical shock. When I woke up, All the men were standing around me. De’ath was laughing in his menacing way.

The benefit was I apparently shorted out that coffin’s power supply, and a room was revealed behind the painting, that was no longer there. Inside was a lot of black windows. They blinked with an inner light that showed characters from a language I had never seen before.

Julius had. He said that the characters resembled those from the metallic city. the ones that Dentiata had died at.

We have found 6 rooms with these frames so far, all connected to the coffins, and I realize that these coffins are not deactivated, they are active. These Oard COULD wake up any time. and that is terrifying, as I cannot disconnect them and survive another shock like that. I did manage to short out one other room’s coffin by prodding the wires with pieces of the odd plant outside. but that also nearly killed me with shock.

Kaldmont 27^th – Fool’s Day

Immortals Help us. De’ath has learned about Fool’s Day. He has pulled no less than 7 pranks on us so far. Including animating the disembodied hand of one of the Oard he had for food. It jumped on Adriana earlier. And started a panic. We all thought the Oard parts were re-animating until we heard his cackling-laughter.

He made Fredigar look like a Zombie for the day. That amused me, but Mr. Crisps was not amused. His most recent one was to claim he had found a way back to Serraine. This one nobody found funny. Poor Adriana was in tears at the thought she would never see her city or family again.

---

¹ The Nagpa have to enter a trance called a Kariwa each day. This helps center themselves, as they try to recall their past lives. If they do not, they get cranky, and they start to suffer from various Mental illnesses and insanity eventually.

² Thousands of Years ago (Relatively speaking), the Nagpa had a thriving human civilization, They were cursed by the Immortals to be reborn as their vulture-people forms every time they die. Supposedly, the curse will be lifted when the royal family (from the original time), remembers what they did to offend the Immortals, and finds a way to make amends.

The Picture of Hyrule Castle at the top is a Screen cap I found on tigagame.com If there an objection to me using it I will remove it, and replace it with some more personalized art.