Session 88b

## Gar & Leshrac

**Setting:**  Village of Renewal, The Mistlands

**When:** In-between other activities

**The Scene:**

Leshrac is rummaging through his packs and pouches and taking inventory in their quarters.  Several small satchels are laid aside on a larger leather wrap.  Carefully opening one at a time, inspecting their contents for weathering, water damage and such.  A couple of bags result in the large red-furred rakshasa swearing in the language of Al-Kalim and tossing them to the side.

"...And only a weeks worth of smoke? Unacceptable," he scoffs to the room itself, a note of bemused disdain.

He hears an amused snort behind him.

"You only packed a weeks worth?"

A small rummage later, and Gar hands over a small pouch of some variety of smoking leaf.

"Oh. Gar."  Leshrac pauses for a moment at the voice, looks down across his bags and pouches.

"I had closer to two... maybe three... years worth of smoke packed. However, with Gorbmor there's always a small chance he decides to eat something he is minding.  Particularly if neglected or left hungry for a time,"  A half-smirk turned grimace, and he reaches up to take the pouch, "Thanks."

Pulling out a new pipe of his own, Gar waits to pack. "Been practicing... I'm shit at smoke rings. Seems tusks don't help...and don't even ask about reptilian attempts.

"And you," with a grin, he pokes at Gorbmor with one long-nailed finger, "You'll get fat."

The odd tuxedo with the slightly demonic yellow eyes half rolls onto a side to look at Gar, and fixes him with a long blank look.  "Purr." it says, seeming somehow proud of itself.

"That's gonna be a problem, if amusing,"  Leshrac shakes his head.  Packing his pipe, then passing the pouch to Gar.  "You might," he remarked idly, "be able to blow rings with your nostrils."

Snorting with amusment, Gar winks at the..ca..a...t? "I'm totally convinced, kitty-katmor. Wonder where that pouch Gorbmor went?" He settled himself down on a chair with at least 2 well attached legs as Leshrac's word finally penetrate his skull, "..What?" he chuckles, "Nose smoke...? huh. Yes... I suppose. That'd have to look pretty excellent when I'm scaly."

Leshrac regards the 'cat'. "I might need to get a leash for him, now that I think of it.  Easier to pass off than the pseudopod and eye-spawning backpack was going to be... but.. yes.  I can definitely see new problems, now."  He watches as as Gorbkat... (Katamore? Morecat?) makes it's way across to circle Gar's foot and one leg of the chair before slumping down with a huff on its side, that belly fluff only slightly concealing the maw that runs from sternum down past it's naval.

"Yes," he mutters, "scales and all... might be kinda unique."

"Implies fire breathing..." murmured Gar, warming to the idea, "a nice subtle threat. I'm going to give it a go in a bit." He considers trying to scratch Kittymors belly but a small hint of anticipation from Fluffy gives him pause.

"About our little friend here - You think turning into some sort of doorway is going to be a problem soon... or so much later we can pretend its not a 'probably should sort' thing?"

"My current plan is to consider it the same way I would a child or a family pet."  Leshrac offers thoughtfully, after a long puff on his pipe, "If Gorb can learn, then he can be taught... and so far, signs look good."

Gar considers that for a bit.

"Yeah... if it doesn't actively do untenable evil things... everything deserves a chance. A lot of early evil is born from blah blah blah legends pretty much have the thing that becomes the Big Evil Monster has something that pisses it off first..even our unnamed nasty mastermind dead not-dead thing didn't start out barkingly evil."

He looks down at the 'purring' kittymor, "Nice kittymor. Eat approved snacks only, and we can get you a pretty necklace thingy to impress the other Mor's."

Leshrac sniffed. "I still need to find someone that has more specific lore to work out what *exactly* our friend here is." He paused, idly regarding the creature in question. "I am inclined to think that perhaps this is what all magical bags of holding type things actually are... something may just have sparked sentience in this one.  Perhaps an artifact it was fed, before I found it.  I learned fairly early on that the more magic it is allowed to consume, the more it grows, and the more... intellect, and responsiveness, it's shown.  Like calling me 'daddy'... I've never even *used* that word near it... at least that I am aware."

Leshrac shakes his head, somewhat bemused.  "I even wondered perhaps if it had not manifested that power until its time with me, as my ability to fundamentally tear magic apart at it's most primal level is not dissimilar to how Gorb devours magic from items." Gorbkat lifts one of it's forepaws and puts it neatly atop Gar's own foot.

"Really?" He looks at Leshrac curiously, but less alarmed than he thinks he should be. And doesnt move his foot away.

"Do you think it..she's..agreeing to a bargain, or asking for a tasty Fluffy flavoured treat?"

Leshrac shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine, if you are asking about Gorb's newfound behaviours.  I imagine it's quite novel having a body... you know, not being a pouch or a backpack," he waved a hand lazily in Gar's direction, "What about Fluffy, has he always looked as he does now?"

GorbKatmore seems docile at this time, content to just linger there with it's perfectly normal looking cat's paw on Gar's own foot. Gar looks down at the transformed pouch beast.

"Ok then..its a deal. When we get back to a nice place, Uncle Gar will get you a nice necklace, if you eat well."

Letting the ynfernael thing amuse itself, he takes the scabbarded sword and places it on the table next to them, mostly avoiding the damp ale spots.

"Well... its always looked the same, at least according to family stories. Just hanging on the wall, mostly ignored." He gives the sword a slight shove. "But... I think... inside... it's... changed? I'm not sure that's the word for it. But, close enough."

Leshrac inclined his head, deciding that that's cause enough for a real slow and long draw on the pipe, the weed flaring into a bright cherry with the inhalation. "Haven't we all?" He grinned his wide, rakshasa grin, allowing tendrils of smoke to rise up between his teeth.

"I mean... who would have thought that when I spent a year chasing your little band halfway around Terrinoth that I'd finally find Azrah through our journeys? And now, months later, her and I have barely even had a chance to talk despite the fact that I've been chasing *her* for over twenty years, across Al-kalim, Zanaga, and Terrinoth!"

"Mow," Gorbcatmore announces, by way of punctuation.

Gar narrows his eyes. "You'd almost think that it was arranged so that you and her would met again...when you're so much closer to answers."

"The point that it tied in was when we were all on our way to Conclave.  I had a vision, she was on the same airship as *this fellow*." Leshrac taps the vial of ashes he wears around his neck, containing the remains of the former Lord of Bilehall. "It's all a bit on the nose, don't you think?"

Glancing over, he watched as Gar idly poked at Gorb-cat-more-thing with his toe. "You know, I wonder... I've not looked to see if I can find anything tying her to the Prophecy specifically, only the tie that her and I share from our childhood and the eyes of the totem." He blew a lazy smoke-ring. "Maybe she's a *me-*problem... or maybe she's an *us-*problem..."

Reaching behind him, Gar pulls out a battered notebook and begins flipping through pages. "Wait a minute. It's somewhere... mmm... here." He tapped the page with a fingernail and turned it to show Leshrac a hastily sketched image of some kind of circlet or crown.

"Azrah turned up and was crowned, remember? It seems to have some sort of candle or light..perhaps..maybe..its not a literal crown. We might need the three things..or perhaps..people..to succeed.."

"Well, I sure hope it wasn't that elven lich crown." Leshrac snorts, "There's likely not much left of *that*. Things which I feed to Gorbmore tend to get consumed pretty rapidly... even the more powerful magical items don't last too long." he continues, looking across at his CatPouchDoorChild curiously.  "I've mused over those other items a lot, in the last few months.  I also wondered if the leap of faith could refer to that inverted fort, given the odd name, the dwarven runes, and such."

"I was more thinking it was symbolic..she *Is* the crown..not the lich crown itself..any crown would have done. Just as long as it picked her head, and tied her to us even more...." He pauses and looks at the sketch in the book, "...plus..the light might symbolize what she means to you..."

"Hrm, you know I had always thought of it as rather literal rather than symbolic - which I give you is strange, given that we are dealing with prophecy and dreamings and such."  The rakshasa stares off into the mid distance for awhile.  "I guess that would be a strong starting block, no.  If we want to unravel this mystery, and learn what the seals actually are... we need to know what, if any of them, are references to actual physical objects - and which are more broad, metaphoric things."

Gar shrugs. "That's all very well, but, we're hardly going to find out here..so..another back pocket thing we maybe really shouldn't backpocket?"

Digging around, he finds a small bit of crystal on a cheap chain. Then he dangles it in front of the rolling catastrophe, "Here..to seal it..a little antismell trinket. Charmed to make you smell less sweaty. It cant really cut giant monster spider ichor or ferrox dens anyway."

"I do get a little nervous just trusting that these back pocket things will just work out. As I see it, the whole prophecy business is just gods and similar powers playing chess... I figure if the pieces don't show some initiative, they probably cannot do it all by happenstance.  I hope we aren't missing the clues.  This hellhole mistland seems like the sort of place we would have to scrounge for such things, were they physical artifacts, to me."

Another bright red cherry blaze, and Leshrac puffs several slowly expanding smoke rings.

One. Two. Three. And then shoots five small rapidly exhaled ones through the slower moving large ones, causing them to puff out and expand dramatically while coiling on themselves.

"MORE?!" Gorbcat chimes in, the four-way split of it's mouth opening to reveal that hellishly toothed maw enthusiastically interested in what Gar is holding before it.

"Just this for n.....wow!" He drops the chain into Kitgor absently, as he stares at the smoke show.

ike some kind of carnivorous plant snapping shut, the mouth clamps down on the offered bauble, the jaws seamlessly realigning in a moment such that you would barely realisze the horrors they concealed if you didn't already know.  The chain protrudes from the cat's lips for a moment, and then with an audible rattle and slurp, Katgor draws chain and all into it's mouth and the trinket is gone.

Katgor lazily rolls back onto its feet and wanders across to where Leshrac sits, throwing itself down bodily against one giant red furred thigh.  "Purr," it proclaims.

Idly, Leshrac reaches down and runs thick fingers through the entity's black fur along it's back.

"I am quietly hoping that if we can save Chance, he can help us put more of this all together.  We also really do need to come up with some backup plans for what we do if that bitch with the scythe catches up to us."

"Run away?" suggests Gar.

Leshrac waves his hand dismissively. "I know, I know... that's plan 'Nothing Else Worked And We're All Half Dead'. Pity the basic plan isn't plan enough to call it plan 1... I *do* have one other far fetched idea for how to deal with her." He pauses, contemplating, drawing it out with small puffs on the pipe

Twisting his face Gar attempts to twist smoke on the exhale. And glares through the failure, waiting for the older man to continue.

"Well...,"  Leshrac watches Gar puff the slightly warped cloud of smoke without reaction, "What if we put together a ward... specifically designed to keep *him* from scrying a certain region?  We could find enough elven and dwarvish lore, we could get the appropriate runes, probably, to build a rather powerful single-target ward.  We power it with the star, if we have to..." Trailing off, there's a good ten seconds of silence before Leshrac comes to the crunch of his theory, "If we can bring her to us, to a place of our choosing, prepared... We could have her walk into somewhere that *he* cannot reach.  At which point, she is no longer under his protection... at which point," he shrugs, "Noddy gets his scythe back."

"Huh," Gar considers the idea, "...It *seems* to hold together. You and... um...," He groans, "...*Goldie* again... Hells blast it! Well, you and whatever Azrah and Dandy know about that sort of thing... I believe you can make it work... at least until the shit hits the waterwheel..."

"Wait... Goldie."

"What about that temple?"

"That could be the *exact* spot for such a thing."

Leshrac actually looks genuinely excited, not an expression familiar to his features.

Gar blinks, then joins Leshrac in looking uncharacteristically keen, "Yeah! Now *that's* actually what I would call a good Plan One!"

"So, we find out something we can offer for barter or trade or bargain with the creepy woman and her pet dragon... We have her do something socially, politically, to influence the random vampires and liches of the mistlands to make them more... difficult, for the elf-bitch to find, to persuade or kill... Then, we take our newfound Cursed allies from here, and with as minimal tragedy as possible, find our way to Bilehall *before* it has a new ruler.  Time sensitive as hell, and we really have no idea how far along said elf-bitch is... Nearly every time I've scried her, she has been able to perceive me too... We get Chance, we then take Chance back to Goldie... and maybe, see if we cannot take out the elf-bitch on our terms, and recover the scythe... which means no new lord of bilehall for Mr. W... and we buy the whole realm a bunch of time to progress without him pulling the world apart at the seams as enthusiastically."  That's all in one breath.  Surely, with that stature, the rakshasa has big lungs... but damn.

Gar rubs his head, resentfully thankful for the curse of memory, yet again, "Yeah... I'm pretty sure we can knock that all off tomorrow, if we get an early start."

Leshrac snorts and flashes a wry grin, "Should be back in plenty of time for supper, hey?"

He reaches to his side and unclasps the ancient elven blade, drawing it around and laying it across the leather apron in front of him where Gar can see it.  "You know, this thing really *does* have hundreds of souls inside of it.  I've managed to catch whispers, brief snippits of intentions more than anything else.  I suspect that, if pressed, I could draw them forth to change the tide of a battle for us."

"Oh..Shit!" Gar shouts, "I forgot!" He grabs Fluffy off the table and shoves it under his pack and pushes it all a bit away before leaning over conspiratorially. "First," he whispered, "*Please* do not talk about that sort of thing if *that's* just lying there." He paused, "Second, think Fluffy's got that whole 'possessed by a soul' thing going on as well. A stupidly old one, and I don't think I want to remind it that a corporeal form is possibly on the table again."

"Did you say something before about Fluffy having been here, in the woods, back then? ...or am I misremembering that?"  Leshrac muses, running an idle hand along the blade's scabbard, "You know, since I felt myself link to this blade when I brandished it against the Banshee?  I've discovered I can read ancient elvish like it's written in Common.  No mysterious link or connection I was aware of, for that one, just rummaging through scraps of my notes looking for clues the other night, and found myself suddenly able to read stuff that might as well have been scribbles to me before.  Took a moment, for me to put it together."

"You what? No..I dont get anything useful like that. But... it was definitely Fluffy way back when. And Full of whoever or whatever it is already. No feeling of myriad souls or anything. Just one gore and murder obsessed one. Bellarus calmed that down a bit, so its stopped infecting me with that need. Mostly it feels like a quiet half heard chat behind my back, when its communicating... Mostly."

"Fascinating.  We should probably make sure these blades never cross, even in sparring."  Leshrac draws the elven blade an inch, looking at the gleam on the thousand year old steel, "The spirits in it yearn to smite the Ynfernal.  I suspect for how dormant and distant they have been, when I have attempted to communicate with them, that will all dramatically change when they are face to face with a genuine Ynfernal threat."  Drifting off into silence, a while later Leshrac adds,  "Should think about rest soon. You might be able to help me at some point, going through all of our notes.  Azrah revealed earlier that she thought the being that wiped out our people was Ynfernal - all of my research had been trying to determine the nature of the statue that had saved my people, and the paths had pointed toward *him*, out here.  We know he deals in Ynfernal matters, we saw that with his underling -" Tap, tap on the vial around the neck, "- and his gnome minion...  What if all of this...  the whole mess, at least my involvement in it... started from then, when I was but a child?  None of this would have come to pass, if that sickness had not come upon my people."

Gar groans, "Alright already..I give up!" He sighs, stands up and picks up a heavy leather bag and his sharp, nasty friend, ""Its All Meant to be! We have no freedom in the end, except to decide when to go find somewhere warm to sleep! And I think that's now!" He begins to stalk off, and then turns, knowing he's ruining the dramatic exit, but cant help the curiosity.

"I'm definitely going to need to hear about Azrah's Ynfernael funtimes. If things go as they so often bloody tend to... its going to end up being an important piece of the whole rotten puzzle..."

He yawns, "...and after all that... Warm Sleeping Place! Now! G'night."

"Rest well, Gar," Leshrac smiles, indulgently, "It might be our last good sleep for awhile."  Leshrac reclines back in his seat, propelling a dragnet of interwoven smoke rings at the departing dragonkin's back.

"MOW.  MORE," rumbles the black and white katapouch, nonchalantly... and then belches, a vague pleasant odour.

With a final parting rude gesture, Gar pushes his way out of the room.