Nyroth Update 18: Kibu

Previous Update: Lack of Jurisdiction
== Kibu ==
by CupcakeTrap
=== Introduction ===
The island of Kibu, to the northwest of Nyroth, was found to be saturated with wild cosmic energy. Those Summoners who tried to reach out to it with their arcane senses have suffered psychic backlash, though no permanent damage has been done—and a couple of them fell into an apparently blissful state that lasted for days. A visual inspection indicated strangely varied terrain: forests, deserts, snowy tundra, and more varieties still, in quite improbable juxtaposition.
Pleased with the latest shipment of Marai pearls, Desmeya was happy to offer her guidance. She told them that Kibu’s nexus was linked to a dimensional rift, but laughed at the Summoners’ alarmed questions regarding the Void—while all interdimensional links have some contact with the Void, she explained, the Kibu nexus connects to a different cosmic space altogether. She cautioned Bilgewater that Kibu was inhabited by fae creatures with exceedingly unpredictable tendencies, and could be (often quite obliviously) dangerous to mortal life. She marked the location of the nexus on their map. Though unsure how the cataclysm might have affected that nexus, she indicated some reason to suspect that it had dampened the rift and reduced the total energy transfer from the extradimensional space to Kibu.
As for the creatures themselves, Desmeya explained they were extradimensional beings that had corporeated in the physical realm. Physical or arcane force would destroy their forms and banish them back whence they came, though one could not properly speak of “killing” them, and they themselves had no such concept.
Desmeya adds a final warning: the wild energy of the island is potentially dangerous, and may have deleterious (though temporary) effects on the minds of those exploring it. She recommends no more than a few days’ exposure.
Bilgewater’s scouts found it essentially as Desmeya had said. They were swiftly set upon by a flurry of small winged humanoids, barely palm-sized, wielding tiny spears and luminescent nets. The scouts slew some of them; when struck by musket-fire, the pixies burst into clouds of glittering light and vanished. Their nets trapped the scouts, and they began stabbing and biting them, doing some significant injury before another cloud of pixies arrived and shooed the others away. These pixies seemed to take great pleasure in doting upon the wounded scouts, and soon had them restored to health.
Although vaguely humanoid, the pixies seemed almost crystalline, and their touch was cold and sharp with a peculiarly electric sensation. They were able to speak fluently with the scouts, though their thoughts were exceedingly hard to follow. For the most part, they were happy to feed the scouts morsels of food and otherwise play with them as one would pets, prompting more than a few jests about how (after Aeaea) it seemed that Nyroth was paying Bilgewater back for its kindness.
The evening took an abrupt turn when two of the pixies decided that a Bilgewater Summoner had “pretty eyes! shiny eyes!” and declared that they would “take care of pretty eyes”. They dove down with spears at the ready, apparently intent on prying the hapless Summoner’s eyes out of their sockets. The Summoner swatted them away in a panic, and two of the scouts opened fire, blasting the pixies to dust. Remarkably, the others appeared only momentarily distracted, seeming mostly interested in the bright flash of the guns and asking for them to do it again.
It was at about this point that the leader of the scout expedition determined that sleeping on Kibu that evening would be unwise, and led the team back to the fleet to report. They met up with a team of Marai scouts who had explored underwater and encountered similarly bizarre sights beneath the waves, including pulsing conduits of rainbow-colored energy surging up from the sea floor into the island, subliming the dull rock into enormous gemstones.
=== Resolution ===
View the complete GDoc here.
They kidnapped some violent pixies for research, mined some sparkly rainbow gems for cash, and dialed down the magnitude of energy coming out of the nexus, making Kibu a bit safer. Meanwhile, pixies infected Bilgewater Summoners with “hilarious” arcano-memes, causing some serious problems when they got back to the Institute. (They suffered a random Summoner Spell ban in each Featured Match that weekend.) Other pixies swiped a hexgraph camera and took some compromising photos of three randomly selected Champions (Kat, Miss Fortune, and Nautilus), then put the camera back where they found it. The photos weren’t discovered until they were developed, at which point they circulated around the Institute, costing Bilgewater 5 Favor from embarrassment.
Lulu showed up and scared the bejeezus out of the Summoners. They were afraid they were going to get in trouble for her coming to Nyroth without authorization; Nami was able to pull some strings and get them to overlook that irregularity by retroactively classifying her as a special consultant brought to Nyroth for an initial assessment of a Class IX extradimensional phenomenon under some obscure regulation.
Next Update: Scheria