Chapter 1a: A Faerie Regio in the Temple of Neptune

Viola is flummoxed, not sure what to do next. As she ponders the quandary, she decides the might as well ask about the dripping:

"What's the dripping? And have you got any idea where my cat went?"

Scott

Your guide is too deeply troubled by the sound of his mother's sobbing to consider other noises.

Viola tries to think like a cat, and decides that a cat, being curious, would be attracted to the sound it doesn't know the source of, rather than the sound whose sources is known--a case of curiosity not killing the cat, as it were. She therefore lets the spell on her sleeve expire for the moment, and tugs the guide toward the dripping water.

Scott

Viola quickly finds herself in a maze of passages, all alike.

The cat, climbing up over and along the spikey walls, finds a stagnant pool of water in a wide stone-tiled room, with a mossy altar rising up out of the center. Overhead, in the clear sky, the cat sees a single storm cloud, raining lightly upon courtyard. Rainwater does not land in the pool, but some falls upon an overhanging stone spike, and occasionally drips into the pool.

After a few seconds observation, the cat also notices that all of the water landing in the courtyard flows away from the pool, even though it is the lowest point.

The cat is cautious around this strange phenomenon, yet is extremely curious. She dodges around the water flowing upward, and careful not to touch the water with her paws, she dips the grotty (still glamoured, or no?) scrap of cloth in the pool to see if it does anything. She'll hold it there for about half a minute. If nothing happens, she'll jump up to the mossy altar and see if she can recognise it or find anything.

The glamoured scrap of cloth gets wet. And then it starts absorbing water. [OOC: I used to have a cat that was obsessed with absorption. She constantly dropped things into her water bowl and then sat there and watched it absorb water for hours.] The process, however fascinating to The Cat, doesn't seem particularly mystical.

The altar is covered in moss, but after a bit of digging and sniffing around, she finds a statue of a naked man, phallus erect, chained face-up on the altar.

Viola, after much wandering, arrives around the point at which the Cat makes this discovery. About two hours have passed since she called out after the cat.

She whips out her cheat guide to Adventure. :stuck_out_tongue:

Once she arrives in the grotto, she questions the Cat about what she's found. Hopefully the Cat transforms into human shape before answering. Viola is certainly intrigued by the upward-flowing water, much more so than by Ma's apparent strange sexual obsessions.

What's the guide's reaction to all this?

Scott

He's reacting about how you'd expect for a person visiting the wreckage of the avalanche which destroyed his family.

In many ways, the Greco-Roman sidhe are more emotional than the Western-European animus-style spirits of the land, water and sky. Those latter seem to feel emotions in inverse proportion to their power: dew drop spirits are volatile and quick to feel while the Queens of Winter and Summer feel little beyond hubris. Posiedon, Neptune, and those entwined in their stories, react in exaggeration, always.

"What happened here?"

Scott

"It's been like this for as long as I've existed," tells the guide.

The cat notices a flicker of movement in under the stagnant mossy film on the surface of the water which the other two miss.

The cat stalks up towards the water and bats at any movement. If nothing happens, she is quite willing to wait silently at the water's edge until she sees any movement, and then ... pounce! (not so much to attack anything as to find out/play with whatever it is.)

Viola watches this warily from a close distance, ready to grab the overly curious cat if necessary.

Scott

There is no sign of movement in the stillness. Distantly, the sobbing takes a turn, not growing stronger or weaker, but only as if some new facet of grief was being grieved over.

When nothing moves in the water, the cat gets interested in the sobbibg again. With a graceful leap, the cat jumps out of Viola's arms and slowly walks in the direction of the sobbing. This time she does wait for Viola to catch up as she walks.

Viola makes a note to come back here--it merits investigation at the very least, and might possibly be a vis source. I'm guessing it's pretty easy to find simply by following the sound of dripping water?

She follows the Cat, making ready to cast the spont to make her cloak reflective again.

Scott

This place is a maze, a labyrinth. It took Viola several hours of lost wandering to find this pool, and now she is not sure how to get back to the exit. While the cat is leaping and climbing up the stone spikes that form the walls of the maze-like canyon, Viola is restricted to walking the paths wide enough for a human to cross, even more so by the masculine girth of her guide's shoulders.

Seeing Viola struggle with the maze, the cat scouts likely routes that would accomodate Viola's girth, and leads her gently, meowing until she follows.

Viola follows, more grateful for that cat's sticking close than for the clear path, but hopefully this will help.

"Cat, whatever you do, don't look at her--unless you want to be a statue."

Scott

After much traveling, the trio find a large room, empty but for dozens of statue-corpses. Some look like warriors frozen mid attack, others terrified peasants in retreat, still others kneeling in supplication. One stands out in particular, a minstrel sitting on a chair, a serene smile on his face, lute frozen forever in his hands. He looks to be of same tribe as the small boy the covenant has recently been ministering to.

What about the sobbing? Is it still evident?

Scott