[Game Thread] Wherein Plots are Schemed

[Fragmaster01]

The trip is boring and uneventful. This is for the best, you suppose: no sense getting eaten by whatever bizarre critters are out there. At the very least, whenever you saw one, they seemed intimidated by your Guard Ponies with their Pronged Shootsticks. And so, you came at last to Great Falahm. A massive, walled fortress town, housing tens of thousands of adorable peoples, all kept safe within a sandy white granite shell.

It was a grand city, though with far too many guards running about for it to be just a "Pleasant Day". Bunnies and bugbears and all sorts of fluffy folk scurrying about, preparing for the next incursion of violence. This sort of thing needed to be stopped post haste. Oddly enough, you seemed to be the ones ready to do something about it, even if you really weren't the first picks. What happened to the agents of the king? The dastardly mages of the academy?!

Ah, that might have something to do with it. The palace, and its adjoining buildings as well, are nowhere to be seen. In its place on the hill overlooking town is a large transparent magical bubble, slightly distorting the sunlight as it passes through. It would seem that whomever performed the ritual absconded with the palace. Very tricksy, and not at all reeking of good intentions. You shall have to investigate.

Locations of Note The Palace: Currently vanished into thin air, from the looks of it. This might explain the lack of proper disaster relief coming from the capital. There was also a grand Magic Academy and Library of Research, though they have run away with the palace. The Bastion: A massive 10-story fortress near the Palace, though it appears to be still here. Originally just a tiny little soldier house, it was expanded when the nation finally accepted that to be a Modern Country, you needed an airship dock for the nobles of richer nations to park in. They weren't going to walk to your dirty hole in the ground, you see. Great Falahm has no airship of its own, though, so the dock at the top of the Bastion is currently empty. The Market: Food and implements of violence. You imagine they're running short on supplies, what with the guard scurrying about with freshly purchased gear to ensure their safety. Still, they might have a few things for sale in the antique shops, or that were too pricy for even the richest officers. You do seem to be mildly rich now, you recall. The Reclamation Zone: Saline regails you with tales of this place in the East Side of town, where a large sinkhole opened up and ate a good bit of the crafting sector. While the town now has a bit of a river flowing through that side, it's not been heavily built in as of late, since they want to make sure it won't sink again before putting up new workshops. Given the state of town, you imagine that there's probably Darklings lurking around there, since the guards are too busy prepping the walls to clear it out themselves.

[Caput]

Tasha tracks down the darkling guy. "Hey. What's the plan now? Do you have a plan? Are you heading off to do something terrible?" Her tone is one of interest, not accusation. There's an unspoken "Can I come?" lurking there, its presence betrayed by her steepled bearfingers.

[Fragmaster01]

He appears to have slipped off while you were dreaming about food. Devious one, this scamp. He's probably up to no good.

[Caput]

"Aha! Your absence condemns you, rabbit man. The hunt is on!" Tasha plods off to see what the others are up to, hoping to gather them into a hunting party.

[Moridain]

The Pony looks at the bubble and says, a little dejected "The plan is to go to the castle and ask pointed questions. With pointed objects if necessary. ... That appears to be quite a bit harder to do than I thought it would be."

After a moment of thought she sighs "Well then, perhaps we should try the Bastion? Maybe they have heard where the Palace went off to. I doubt it was destroyed, I was kind of hoping that if whatever focus they made for this spell was destroyed this would end and that would kind of kill that... And even if they don't I am sure they have things we can do. Apparently I am now homeless and almost everyone I know has vanished into nothingness, and I rather feel a need for more cash."

She smiles warmly at Tasha "Coming?"

Looking around at the rest of their group, she counts heads, curious who else seems to have faded away now that they are here. They hadn't promised a life long partnership or anything but she still feels a little abandoned at the lack of goodbyes.

ooc Ninjaed!

Seeing Tasha head off she blinks her big pony eyes "Hey, wait up!"

[Aethera]

Billy trails along, wide-eyed... he has never seen the impressiveness that is Great Falahm. Just the size of it surprises the lad, and by the time he realizes his comrades aren't beside him, he needs to run as fast as his short little legs will go to catch up. "Saliiiiiiine!" he wails. "Wait for meeeeeee!"

[PresN]

Shash trods along with the rest of the group, eyes wide at the massive city in front of him. He's never seen so many people in one place! He's never seen anything this big before! He hurries along to stay with the others- if he got lost here he'd never find his way again.

[Fragmaster01]

You arrive at the fort. It's quite large, resembling a beige-white stone stockade or olden-time castle, though far larger in scope. It's easily the size of a city block, and the airship-dock dangling off the 10th floor casts a shadow over the street. You spy a tower going up one or two more stories past that, presumably for someone to yell at the drunk pilots that come in once in a while.

A few guards are being ordered around outside. A brown Pony in blue wizards robes(with a delectable blue wizard hat) is chattering with the soldiers, while a Fluffy in plate mail and holding a delightfully massive falchion is barking orders to various troops.

"Oh goodness. Even more arrivals, excellent. If you could just... stand over there... yes quite. We'll be with you in a moment."

Saline: You recognize this voice. It is one Tialur Silverion, mage esquire of the Royal Academy. Also your host and teacher. A dependable chap, though not much disposed to the violent magical arts. Most likely he's delegating battlemages for the guards while the palace has run away.

[Moridain]

Her eyes tearing, she rushes forward to hug him! At first she sort of stops, not sure how one hugs without arms, then rears up on her hind legs and sort of glomphs over him with her front hooves.

"Master! Oh Master! You are alright! I-I thought something must have happened to you during the ritual! Oh Master!" She bawls, her mask of strength she had held since the transformation crumbling a bit in the arms of the man who had raised her for the last several years.

[Fragmaster01]

The pony is visibly shocked, and it takes him a second before he decides to return the glomp. "Ah, Saline! Apologies, I did not recognize you. We've... been having a lot of that lately..."

"But really, you came all this way just to check on me? My dear, you are so sentimental. Regardless, it is good to see you are well. And it seems you've made quite the collection of friends while you were away! I hope she hasn't been too much of a bother?" The pony chortles, and seems to be asking for you to introduce yourself, in a bold and hard-boiled manner.

The guard Fluffy backs away with his troops, so as to give your Heartfelt Greetings some space. He's not the sort for those sorts of things, you suspect.

[Caput]

"Oh, she's ok. Useful, even. Almost died one time but we fixed that. I'm Tasha Booga, big hairy bad influence." She holds out a paw for him to hoofshake.

[Aethera]

Arriving belatedly just in time to see the end of the strange pony hugging, Billy pants his way over to Tasha to provide her with a quick kick. "Ok, huh? Big meanie. Saline's great!" he informs her master, smiling a toothy grin. "She helped a lot with the gloopy things, and... the other gloopy things..." Yeah, this new world requires some new vocabulary.

[Caput]

The fluffy rolls her eyes and sighs in exasperation before chiding him in her loudest whisper. "SSSSHHH! I'm trying to be a curmudgeonly cynic here!"

[Aethera]

Yes, new vocabulary incoming. Billy's eyebrows would be raised... if he had any. All that comes of the expressive gesture is a little rise in the ridges above his eyes. Whatever a 'curmudgeonly cynic' was, he still thought she was being a big meanie.

[Caput]

Seeing the boy's expression, Tasha leans back, puts her hand over her heart and adopts an expression of ridiculous mock shock, silently asking "Who, me?"