~ three

Entering the keep, a woman at work dissecting the Founder, extracting.

 

('Vertigo' by Fangbanger)

Tubes run long from around the room like the vineworks outside creeping in.  The Founder's Wife extracts directly from the corpse, burners lining the room to pressurize in, fluids extracted out, she draws a large syringe.

Checking its fill by the oblong cutaway in its aged silver to the glass filled beneath it, a bile with red flowing through it, she glances up to the Learner and Explorer, a brief polite smile, then returns to work.

Behind the alchemy are the bookshelves sought, body on dining room table in the center, plates and silver shoved aside for the tools of her work.  A large circle drawn into the floor to match that in the Mortuarium of the Killer's Tale, but to a different beast.

Cutting with surgical tools otherwise for ceremony, she removes a kidney and smells it deeply before drinking with an eye on her guests.

Emptied she drops it in the medical pan and pulls the dated sternum saw.  Spiked and heavy, curved and two handled, made to crack and pry the heart's protective bone away from it.  Hers unique in it's heavier bottom handle before the simple curved leverage nub.

A strike panel on back of the blade for the hammer before the sternum's crack, the sound of a tree cracked in half by the storm, is the sound such openings make.  And she picks up the hammer.

 

Spits the kidney's blood into the Learner's face before the strike.

! Fight !

 

Nothing the player has will do her any significant harm, but the ceremonial tools around the room will.  Being a complete set for Renaissance method this includes a sword, sickle, athame and a dagger, and a magical wand which is really useful for poking things.

 

Naamah - While the Learner scrambles for useful weapons on realizing this, "This was your doing !  It was You !  You cast it all to the wind ... and when we collected back what we could ... it was jut you."

Another strike.

She fights like the mortician and like I've said, any where the Sefir ha-Razil can be found, the name Naamah will be close by, like the wife of Solomon and Noah. 

Her swings with the hammer in the right are targeted to the player's blade while the left wielded sternum cracker swings its weight locked to the player's side.

Until it's done.

Naamah kneels bled until the fangs come in and the wounds heal beneath the clothing cuts.  She stands with weapons at ready, head to the side.

Naamah - Smiles, "I can see why he likes you."  

 

She shrieks into starlings past the Learner and out the door.  

 

A moment to breathe ... the Explorer flies in as a crow with a Starling in its claw twitching hard.  If a crow could grin before a beak through a starling's heart.

A distant shriek - "You ..."

 

continued ...

________________

Among the books, Herbology and some basic Grimoires, a few classics plus a Grimm's to match the Andersen in the the Mortician's home on the overlook (Explorer's Tale), and a Marlowe to match the Shakespeare

Herbarium and Beastiary found here, the matching Anatomy section in the Mortuarium (Killer's Tale), includes the ability to enchant local plants and animals, as the Anatomy section allowed control of the human soul.

Notably a Cartography section which is actually about Demonology.  Because 'demons' were defined classically as spirits not of God, but of the Earth, the Demonology section is sorted according to maps of the world by where they rule.

As the Learner digs through the books, Grimoire pages to be collected into a Book of Names, its pages wind scattered among the house mess and into the woods.

~ gather and go ~

From its base like a gatehouse, platform like walkways worn flat with time, growing naturally and spread over and through the tall immobile trees.

Ancient wide vines worn into divoted pathways with rails grown and overgrown, many clearly tied intentionally like full sided banzai tree, beneath the walking trees pass, some with tree houses the players can use.

Teleport to one of the passing house trees if claimed but can't control where it is or where it goes.  So you could literally be anywhere when you teleport to it.

Moving around inside a walking tree-house will be weird because unlike the the smaller tree branches, one isn't technically riding it and the avatar has a tendency to resist motion of what it's standing on.

Counterbalanced by the wide lumbering steps of the tree, moving the tree-house back and forth, creating a slight tumbling effect one gets used to.

I'm thinking Baba Yaga's hut might be out there somewhere and if one can take it, can be controlled, possibly ridden like a beast from a sitting point, then wandering on it's own when not.  

~ Mini mission if you find ?

Otherwise a quiet swamp where the biospheres appear to be converging in a near peaceful balance where the aggressions are for reasons of nature alone.

Here the Founder's mind protects itself from the truths below in the swamps.  The network of pathways through the trees showing all in safety, but allowing to touch none of it without great danger.

Fear.

The vine-works spread out through small occasional connecting structures, safe above while below the biosphere continues with definitive hints of treasure and such, but only if you go down there and can survive it with no way back up to safety.  

From there the creative teams will be brilliant beyond me.  Donkey Kong Country inspired levels through the trees over extremely dangerous ground, where pages and such can be found and collected.

To where subconscious mind connects to the conscious, swamp becomes river and river becomes falls into the canyon from the opposite side of 'The Explorer's Tale'.  When the falls are found from above or below, the herds in the canyon ~

Learner - "Oh my god ..."

Explorer - "Look at the size ... of ... that ..."

The dragon sweeps over the massed herd of unicorns breathing fire across and grasping at the cooked meat in passing away back toward the opposite side of the canyon.

Explorer - "Herd."

...

Learner - Sad horrified and terrified, "The unicorns."

Killer - Standing behind them nodding at the sight in appreciation, "They're really good when they're cooked like that.  Nature's really fucking amazing sometimes.  Such balance."

They turn slowly around.

Killer - Chewing a leg of something burned ... a swallow.  "Hi."

Learner - Getting woozy, "o fuck", and drops.

(the Killer survives being an NPC by following the dragon in the same way the crow survives by following him.  Armed with an atlatl, bow and a knife unless more found on another play through).