It doesn't pass through the old woman. However, the shock she feels at being suddenly assaulted with a stone boomerang gives one of her cohorts the opportunity to stab her in the back with a bronze bread knife. Viola catches a momentary glimpse of the triumphant look on the woman's face before she, too, catches a gruesome end at the end of a rolling pin.
This is all Viola sees as before she shuts the door.
Viola turns to her guide. "Your virgins are very silly." She opens the door again, finally unable to contain her curiosity, and waits to see what will happen.
"Before you were conceived? What does that mean?" she asks as she ambles towards the door. "It doesn't sound like you have any idea what goes on in a kitchen," she says. "I'll just have to find out myself." The moment Viola opens the door the cat squeezes through and is already in the room.
OOC: Does the cat change forms at will? I've currently been playing/visualising the cat with the restrictions of the feline form (i.e. small and lacking opposable thumbs). Is this an accurate understanding?
Viola is quickly seized by several of the old crones, who drag her into the room and deposit her on a stool by a large kitchen table near a cooking fire. There is a partially charred corpse of a crone in the fireplace. There is quite a bit of fuss surrounding a bowl of small glass orbs, until you realize that three of the orbs are eyes - and that whoever possesses an eye-orb can see.
One of the sighted crones spots that cat and rushes after her, arms outstretched. The other two eye up Viola, and seem to find her both too skinny and too fat at the same time. Everyone in the room despairs of her marriage prospects, and the only thing that they think can be done about this is to make you a light snack.
During this process, Viola notices the corpses of another half dozen Virgins lying about the kitchen.
"Nasty!" the Cat exclaims while dodging the crone and surveying all the body parts. But Mama Cat can't help herself from trying to have a look at how the magical eyeballs work and grabs for the orbs, jumping onto the bowl and holding one of the orbs in her mouth while knocking around the others with her paws.
The rules can be found under Shapeshifter in the main rulebook--the Ability, I think, though it could be the Virtue. All of the forms are natural (thus, in cat form she's a completely normal cat, but in human form she's a normal human, etc.), but it takes some time concentrating (and a die roll) to shift. In addition to Shapeshifting, she has a Power that allows her to take shadow form, more or less instantaneously.
Viola willingly accepts the light snack, though she does her best to avoid actually eating it, making use of the distraction of the cat's antics to dispose of the food. "She's a very entertaining kitty, isn't she? Please don't hurt her."
While four of the women scramble after the cat, the others all managed to get their orbs before the bowl was knocked over. One of them, Aristomache, sighs with a heavy sense of weary apathy. Hagne, on the other hand, seems to be too gleeful over the chance to cook for someone. After seeing how quickly Viola finished off her light snack, the crones all agree that she must be "simply famished, the poor dear!" and that it is "no wonder she's so thin, they barely feed her."
Several of them begin working at the large table and the hearth fire. While this is going on, Aristomache suddenly remembers that she has "the perfect dress for you, my dear" and simply insists that Viola must try it on. She begins trying to take Viola's clothes off.
While this is going on, Viola notices that her erstwhile guide has fled in a panic. While her head is turned toward the door, she hears a short death-scream behind her, but notices nothing particularly amiss by the time she reacts.
(The cat clearly sees the woman who was slicing vegetables at the table calmly reach out and slam the butcher knife across another crone's hand, cutting off three of her fingers, which get sliced up and added to a soup cauldron. As soon as this happens, another crone leaps forward with a bit of cooking twine and garrotes the recently-assaulted woman.)
Note: the eye-orb from the now dead woman pops out of her eye socket and begins rolling across the floor
Viola will accept the outfit, but barring any knowledge to the contrary, Viola will use whatever subterfuge necessary to avoid actually eating anything. If necessary, you can make a Faerie Lore for her, with Int +4 and Faerie Lore 4.
No longer quite so interested in how the eye orbs function, the cat jumps over to take a closer look at what is in the soup. At the same time, the cat loudly asks, "did you know that woman's fingers just fell into the soup?" The cat is full of questions and her mind is whirling at the barbarity of these crones. Keeping out of range of the butcher's knife, the cat looks the crone directly in the eyes and asks "how many of you are here, and why do you seem to be killing each other?"
Oooohhhhh..... I didn't quite realise that. I thought she was in cat form this entire time, even when she was talking about her feet getting wet. I guess we could just edit out all the dialogue, or just say she transformed to human form when she first entered the room. Sorry guys!
Through Second Sight, Viola can see that the dress has been glamoured into finery, but in truth it is a tattered scrap of fabric, several hundred years old. Noticing this, she notices that all of the virgin crones all similarly attired.
As the cat looks into the bowl, her second sight also sees that the "stew" consists almost entirely of body parts, glamoured to look like vegetables.
Given Viola's Faerie Lore roll, she is not certain that the virgin crones even know themselves that they're chopping up bits of each other and eating them -- the glamour seems to be affecting them, as well.
What is Viola going to do with all the food that is being presented to her, if not eat it? Does she do anything else? The crones are going to continue nattering away and fussing at her like aunts who haven't had a visitor in years, unless she tries to steer the conversation/action in some direction.
Redcat, I need you to choose one: human form, or editing out the dialogue?
I think editing out the dialogue would be best, as I've been imagining her in cat form. However, she will keep an eye out for Viola. If Viola makes any motion to eat the food (feigned or not), the cat will stop whatever she is doing and race full speed to her and knock the bowl out of her hand.
Appalled at the grotesque reality behind the virgin crones' illusion, the cat explores the room, looking at both the reality and the illusion. How many crones are there? Are there any other doors? Other than cooking (and hacking each other to pieces), what do the crones appear to be doing?
How many, including the bodies, or just the remaining living ones?
No other doors. No regio boundaries that you can see.
Right now, all the crones are entirely engrossed in entertaining Viola and you. It's almost as if you two are the most interesting thing to happen in their lives in over a century.
Looking for a way out, and a graceful exit. Viola suspects there's no easy way to get rid of these crones, and so she'll have to tolerate them in her lab, and win their...er...affection, but she's not likely to learn much useful from them. Are there any other ways out of this room? Anything of interest besides the crones?