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    1. Gordian Nought 12 yrs ago
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Sanity is not statistical.

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The ganglion of youngsters were already paring away from the myth-weaving druid, to the fruitful friction of the Halfling's viol, a melodious solo of Bhusundan intimacy. Her comforting music etched harmony into the humid void, soothing the tumor of adolescents. About-facing, the hereditary prospects of Linan and Cuth were the last to creep to Parum, also coveting ontological reassurance of a guaranteed future beyond this dark faction, leaving the elder, alone with his overbearing, disillusioned tree. Torus likewise suffered from this capriciousness of youth, many decades ago. His fickle admiration crumbled progressively as he became more and more accustomed to the frivolity of pirated wares, sluggishly reaching a nirvana of exhausted mercantilism.

“Scurry to the edge of the song, little ones. Forget not that the earth delights to caress your bare feet and the breeze yearns to play with your hair.” The wrinkled glee mirroring his Cheshire smirk, beaming from earring to earring.

Torus longed, too, for enlightened companionship, but was paradoxically vexed with Xaron’s perpetual presence. She was largely the schismatic source of his mental prowess as well as his impending hamartia, a silent vow between souls, simultaneously, spiritually, feeding and starving one another. It remained an incessant mental mutiny, a seed of discontent sprouting into a garroting vine. The murmuring tendrils ostracized him from any lasting camaraderie, lest his greatest fear be realized. That one day, Xaron’s intermittent insurgences would invariably overwhelm the throne of his paranoid psyche, transforming his ego into a demesne of greed and lust, lapsing into a graveyard spiral of depravity.

However, prayer and magic always seemed to quell the malignancy of his divided mind.

The rowdy emotions were disturbed by his programmed sleeve searching for a book encased in peppered Minotaur hide. His pursed lips hummed along, often missing the time and tune of the kender’s, as he flipped through the labyrinth of pages, inked almost entirely in sylvan script. Over the years, he was able to intuitively decipher only one spell.

An acquainted ritual of mystical rapport.

Herbs, incense and a brass brazier quickly gathered underneath a flint, fire steel and tinder ebbed in light oil. A cacophony of sparks spurred; Torus muttered as he rose and waved the pillars of smoke into a pulsating helix with his baton, conducting a makeshift orchestra of Apollyon prophecy. His musings wondered despite the emanating words and painted motions, subconsciously converging on Oghma and the tragedy of his whispering children, while the bard’s composition irked into his supplication.

Soon, the familiar became manifest.

An ashen raven ejected into the smolder. Mimicking an oracle, the druid breathed the Coronis fumes and subsequently wept tears of soot, to the living icon of Huginn and Muninn, fatefully mingling memory with thought. His glare became mesmerized by the Mórríganian crow, hovering backwards atop his silver staff.

Time stood still. It cackled at the golden-eyed warrior, “They will find you.”

The chill down the senior’s decrepit vertebral column was interrupted by an uproar amongst men and fowl alike. Its fretful screeching vacillated to match the fearful message of the dragon’s strike, signified by the glow and crash on the battlements.

No longer equivocating, the druid leaning heavily on the alcove’s left-sided partition, preached to the champion of the Ferine. “To gaze back upon one’s days in satisfaction is to live twice.” He tossed a plumed goodberry to the bird, a final Śrāddha before allowing the smut to encroach his sclera, gurgling into cobbled cataracts. Torus closed the puzzling tome of Elvish calligraphy in anticipation; his irises were shortly enveloped by the skulking slime, the cosmic eyelids shortly shutting the gaps to his tainted consciousness only to erect telepathically as earnest pupils above a grinding beak.

The white-fanged cane glimmered as wings fluttered against the current of fleeing families, to the nearest parapet, hooting at the hopeful paladin, “Quickly now. We must not tarry!”



Oops. My bad. That's an important difference, Lucius. I'll see if I can strike the humble hedgestones in another light. Potentially via Torus' Bad Reputation feature or maybe a witch hunter connection. A PM may arrive soon to pick your juicy brain. @Lucius Cypher

So excited! My fingers are primed and titillated for the future. And, I, likewise Harbinger, enjoy your gentle, but ferocious self; you all have been as sweet as apple pie with whipped cream, to me. (blushes) @The Harbinger of Ferocity

I also do enjoy solace, but [BITES THE DUST] is so friggin' amazing! @Hekazu
On point, Lucius! You possess great pupils and an even greater mind! Yoshikage Kira would be so tantalizingly proud.

As a tangent, my own irises witness that Orchid's past is rife with druids. I would be honored and flattered if you want to ever collaborate on possible backstory intersections.

Before I forget, great post, Harbinger!

My cerebrum vehemently adores everyone's digital penmanship here, ever since I commenced stalking this wonderful thread, full of undiscovered authors of vibrancy and exuberance. Thank you all for your warmth and welcoming me to your troupe, though, late to the party I may be.
Sweet new avatar, Hekazu!

Let me take a stab. Akuma?
"They will find you," Xaron’s voice bellowed a hissing hurricane, whilst Torus waded, discerning and discounting the evanescent whisper from Escobert’s ruckus at the sallyport, towards the nearest corner. The sultry silhouettes of his garb sputtered as the quarterstaff’s shadow interspersed intermittently into a growing nevus, conspiring into ephemeral fractals of a cancerous gheist, all upon the wall, trailing the elder. Ebbing and flowing with each Hessdalen torch passed, the former Mezro druid, flickering with a public allegory of the cave, finally grasped his weary destination. After brushing and imploding several barren spider webs, Torus collapsed gently into a relaxed squat, knees bent parallel to the floor, eventually facing the center of the main area, plopping his large murky net of earthly treasures, next to his frail constitution and tortoise shield.

A Heraclitean sigh wrenched from his fibrillating vocal cords.

The children of Linan and Cuth noted the somber yawn. Eager, they inched apprehensively to the geezer. Reflexively, Torus sprouted, behind his neck, a thin illusion of a Blueleaf in the Nietzschean crook; the Swift brood slowly advanced. The stable still image displayed a bulbous vine tree of artificial Bodhi graffiti on the two partitions and the ceiling of the keep, surrounding his new-found navy niche. He placed his makeshift cane in front of his lap as a façade barrier between him and the approaching progeny. The blanche wood was caked with the grime of Tethyrian sin and salvation. Digging, frantically with his ivory fingers in his cache, he produced the ambrosia of his tradition, specifically four goodberries which he offered, two in each palm as a sacrifice of manna to the younger generation.

"Here, I know you are hungry, little ones. Sustenance is required during these difficult nights."

The pubescent offspring hurriedly snatched them from the stranger, learning the lessons of survival quickly from the disaster that had befell Greenest.

"Thank you, old man," mouthed the eldest of the three.

Noting the shivering of the youngest, Torus smiled, licked his lips, disclosing an ornate tongue ring, and spindled, "Huddle together. Closer. Good. Now let me tell you a tale." He dumped a waterskin, full of loose soil, before his white-fanged baton. Molding it magically, he arranged and erected a tan castle in the midst of brown rolling hills.

"In the year of the Boiling Moats, a dying king’s domain extended south as far as the Lake of the Long Arm and west as far as the Giant’s Run Mountains. Through the staple of his acres ran a sluggish stream, called Reza."

The senior slothfully emptied a different waterskin, trickling a strand of water onto the carefully crafted earthen stage, resembling a brook upon the brow of the palace. A diaspora of adults were beginning to eavesdrop on the druid’s ancient crowing.

"It was thick with mud, where local savages would form beautiful pottery for sale to Thaamadathan merchants. Their number had swelled from Low Netheril, only to suffer on the fetid fields in exchange for regular tithes to the leprous lord. In the thick heat of the late summer, a tenday deluge caused the river to overflow the banks and flood the lands." Mingling the dirt and water, a promethean pool of clay became evident in front of the children. "When the rains finally stopped, the newly formed lake began to bubble, and the savages began to moan that the ancient god, Borem, had manifested in the kingdom, depriving them of their livelihood and food."

The vesuvian puddle mystically rippled and toiled with rebellious abandon.

"Shortly thereafter, a trio of adventurers from the north appeared." He pointed to each one of the children, "A powerful warrior who wielded a simple iron blade that crackled with arcane energy, a stealthy half-elf, and a blind necromancer with a scythe embarked upon the citadel. They arrived and prostrated themselves before the king’s throne. In exchange for passage through his court, the great three of Cormanthor offered to slay the divine interloper and bear his soul away. They were soon blessed and were off. The ground itself seemed to object in their progress towards Borem’s lair, unleashing great geysers of gushing filth in their attempted trek to the ancient planar quagmire, the center of the morass."

Playful pillars tossed and turned a floundered boat miniature, with waves of sludge afore the youths. Suddenly a tsunami of muck towered, circumvented, and ensnared the enmeshed diminutive ship.

"They were snappily engulfed by molten rock,” roared Torus, seated cross-legged, his robes coalescing with the jumble. His concentration of the tiny simulacra were interrupted by the Castellan briskly scurrying through the portal of the next room, with guards, a half-orc with a draconic hide, a curious kender, a mahogany ripped monk and a strong, young man, but with idyllic golden eyes.

The dwarf beckoned. "Well 'en, I would recommend ya get sum rest now too. I'll need ta get tha report as to how dem nasties actually got 'ere in tha first place. I trust we'll see each other soon enough."

A girl from the amassed juvenile crowd, enraptured a quick retort, "What happened next, old man?"

"Yeah,” echoed the puerile Swifts in unison.

"Oh yes," giggled the druid. "Well. Nothing stirred to the horrified savages who were looking afar from their scrying ponds. They all believed doom had come to the foreigners. One. Two. Three days went by. Still nothing. Then. The messy tomb began to err crimson, thrashing to a regular rhythm, then abruptly a lanky, springing fountain was ejected. Atop the tachycardic spout, standing on a vessel, two adventurers remained with the skewered deity’s still-beating heart." The Stygian earth was conformed once more into the conclusive instance, a geometric canopy of a ziggurat on its head, with the ferry afloat the base, bearing a rogue and a barbarian, with the impaled core of a supernatural tyrant onto a familiar sickle.

"Where was the wizard?" groaned a child.

Torus buckled precipitously the cinematic display onto itself, slithering carefully the filmic gravel back into his waterskin. The elder grinned loose and laughed capaciously, flashing once again his pirate namesake on his witty glossal muscle.

"Well, my dear, that’s for another time."

May the doors of Janus always open and never close, to all of you, henceforth and forever more!

Happy New Year!
Ditto! Speedy recovery, Hekazu!

Nothing a Goodberry and time won't fix. Hope this is not Greater Restoration worthy, especially before the holidays.
And salutations to Phoenix and Lucius, as well!

Delicious as always, Harbinger! Allow my pupils to ingest this unearthed pdf. Many novel titillating avenues for our pirate! But which to choose?

Good thing Torus has proficiency in Arcana. :)
Gracias, to all and to you, Harbinger!

I plan not to forfeit the game.
Before dragons take me out of my frame
And put my name to shame.

However, my character may have to cover up his face.
He may not be able to run the race.
The pace too fast.
Hope he just lasts.

Your welcome brings me glee.
Arigato, again, supremely.
'Ello governors!

Guess, I be the new healer to the Hoard, y'aaarrr.

Warmly,
Your friendly 5th wheel player
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