A brief time passes, then the Crystal Ball that Star is holding comes to life again and she talks with someone through it.
The first time the Crystal Ball cast an image of a tiny Hobbit woman in a prim business suit, sitting at a big polished wooden desk, short stacks of papers piled neatly around her, a breakfast tray with a gold trimmed crystal water pitcher and a large gold trimmed mug partly filled with orange juice, a few rolls and muffins, and four empty pie plates on it nearby, all in a large handsome room covered in wood panels. Star called her June.
This time the Crystal Ball casts an image of a larger Hobbit man in overalls, standing in a large empty space inside a vast building with tall shelves extending up out of view and out to the sides in all directions, piled high with all manner of goods. Star calls him Goldenseal. He asks if she is ready, and as she starts Casting a spell, she nods, and the image of his hand looms up and gets large as if he was reaching for the Ball himself, from the inside.
Many things happen quickly, all at once. Star casts ShipShape again and Halfaz’s ship shrinks rapidly underfoot, bringing the three of them together, Halfaz, Ptolemaeus, and Star. Star reaches down, snatches up the ship before it can slip away from their feet, and as it gets tiny, stuffs it back into Halfaz’s pocket where it was before. She gathers a hand from each of them into her left hand, which involves just a little milling about, but she has a firm grip on them and gives them an “if it pleases you…….. hold tight!!!” look.
At the same time, she keeps a firm grip on the Crystal Ball with her right hand, and nestles the Ball into the crook of her arm, pressing it against her side so that it can’t easily jar loose. She seems quite practiced in all these gyrations.
Suddenly things seem to turn inside out. The globe of crystal surrounds them, but it curves away from them in all directions rather than enclosing them, like a snowglobe gone awry.
In the next moment they are standing next to Goldenseal in the warehouse. Both he and Star are holding two Crystal Balls pressed against both of their right hands and each other, their fingers locked together in a strongly intertwined grip. She still has Halfaz and Ptolemaeus gripped tightly by her left hand. Star’s Crystal Ball has gone dark. She exhales a heavy breath as she lets go of everyone, and puts the Ball away in a pouch on her belt. Then she thanks Ptolemaeus, Halfaz, and especially Goldenseal for the wonderful job they did in making the transit go perfectly; she remarks that Goldenseal’s practiced hand in pulling through the Ball is very appreciated. She bends down to give him a happy hug of greeting.
The warehouse is simply vast. The ceiling is so far above that Ptolemaeus might even be seeing clouds obscuring it. The walls are distant in the haze. Shelves pile up to dizzying heights, all crammed with boxes, sacks, barrels, huge jars, cans, tubs, and large items standing on their own. A cow moos in the far distance, and chickens cluck nearby, in another section that seems brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables.
Halfaz sees that the area directly around them is empty of shelving, a bare floor extending behind them in green glass about three to four hundred feet and a hundred feet wide. Other Hobbits in overalls are pulling equipment into the space from the far end; it all moves easily. He notices that the equipment is not touching the floor, suspended just above it.
Star reaches toward Halfaz’s pocket and at his nod, takes out the ship and hands it to Goldenseal, and as he leads the three of them across the warehouse floor, she explains to him what is to be done with the Forge and Artifurnace Helms, and which Ioun Crystals are to be included. If it pleases him and the Helm installation team.
Goldenseal leads them through the warehouse through several turns along broad aisles. Down some aisles, pallets hover in mid-air, with teams of Hobbits loading or unloading them onto upper shelves.
For the first time since Ptolemaeus crashed into Star, he now has the opportunity to see her at close range as she moves over a longer distance in a Prime Plane; previously, on Halfaz’s ship, she was only moving very short distances or just gesturing as she stood. In his normal vision he simply sees her floating ahead, but he clearly sees in his Timesight that her motion is a tightly packed series of blue-gray images, nearly continuous, or perhaps completely so. It’s not the blue-gray trail of afterimages that Temporal momentum leaves behind, it’s as if her motion across the Prime Plane is also motion across Time.
Star is a bit ahead of him, talking to Goldenseal about the Helm installations, so he has several minutes of opportunity to observe closely from behind her, and by the time they get to where they are going and Goldenseal stops, Ptolemaeus has the distinct impression that the blue-gray images that he sees with Timesight are even running a little ahead of where he sees her position to be with his normal sight.
Thinking back to the ship, he realizes that she may have looked like this all along; it was just not nearly so noticeable as it is now when she is moving longer.
D20 roll, please, plus applicable modifiers, to recall a match of this phenomenon with something he has seen before in his travels. Or feel free to just take a guess from the clues.
Goldenseal takes them toward what may be the center of the warehouse, to an archway of stone, about twenty-five feet across and twenty feet high. It is braced with metal; the deep silvery color looks like Mithril. Looking through the archway, the view is simply more of the warehouse. Pallets of goods are carefully stacked in a long line leading up to the archway, and more Hobbits with clipboards are inspecting and checking off the items carefully.
Spare empty pallets are in neat stacks to one side. Hobbits in a small team with brooms and other clean-up equipment are waiting, watching the operation, and look ready to handle spills instantly. Goldenseal explains that when the Portal opens in a few minutes, there is only a short time to move all of this cargo from this side, the main warehouse, into the warehouse in Sigil, and receive the cargo queued for them on the other side that is destined to come in here. He says he expects that on the other side there is a similarly prepared scene also counting down the seconds, since he just set up that team and left them in that warehouse and walked through the Portal to this one when it opened very briefly, just after Star contacted June to find out if it would please him to go there to pull her and her friends through.
Goldenseal picks out a pallet near the head of the queue, and ushers Ptolemaeus, Halfaz, and Star onto it, seating them on crates. Goldenseal puts a pad underneath Halfaz, that he explains is fireproof, just as a safety precaution.
Suddenly a different image is in the Portal, though not very different: more Hobbits in overalls, another queue of pallets, and a sudden flurry of activity. In a rush, the queues of pallets start passing each other in the narrow archway. The one that Ptolemaeus, Halfaz, and Star are riding passes through; there is no sense of dislocation, it’s just as if they were out for a ride on a cart trundling down the street.
June is waiting for them on the other side, gesturing to them to stay seated until their pallet is pushed off to the side in its place in the holding area that has been set aside for the incoming goods. One of the crew in overalls helps them climb back over the loaded pallets to the end of the holding area and out the rear to where June is standing, so that they don’t get in the way of the busy scene. A minor mishap directly in the Portal archway sets the cleanup teams on both sides into a flurry of motion and in seconds, the flow of pallets resumes.
On this side, this warehouse is much smaller, but still a very large interior space. The ceiling is some two hundred feet above, with shelves going nearly to the top, and the back and side walls look to be as much as a quarter-mile away. The Portal arch itself is also braced all around with Mithril, but the stone looks ancient, pitted and blackened.
As June leads them through the broad aisles, Star explains that soon after she bought the inn across the street from the warehouse where they are now, she began to explore the oft-ruined rubble of the townhouse across the street. It had a very poor reputation as a location, most said it was haunted, cursed, or both, and no one would buy it, so of course she did. That was because she had discovered the reason for the problem: this Portal, hidden beneath the rubble in a sealed-off room that her study showed had been broken open and re-sealed over and over again, each owner trying to hide it from the next buyer because it could not be controlled and sometimes let very destructive creatures in, mostly from the Lower Planes. She was delighted; she had just bought her very own Portal!
The reason owning the site of a Portal was so valuable was because it was not possible to Plane Shift into Sigil; the only way into the City of Doors was through a Portal. Star tells them briefly about the story of The Lady of Pain:
The Lady of Pain, the Divine Power who controlled and probably created Sigil, and who was all-powerful within it, did not allow entry other than through the Portals she created, some fixed, some variable, all over the city, leading to everywhere. It was said that you could get to anywhere from somewhere in Sigil. Very occasionally other individuals or groups had gotten control of a Portal or a device that allowed transit into Sigil, and were suffered this ability by The Lady of Pain if they did not abuse it, but that was so rare Star said she could count them on one hand, and the only functional one right now was in the Temple of Wee Jas, and carefully controlled by the ArchPriest of Prime, which they used for the sole purpose of transporting those of the Temple to and from other Temples around the Multiverse. The Lady of Pain simply exiled anyone who opposed her; they would turn a corner in their own home in Sigil and realize that they were lost, suddenly in a Maze of The Lady’s construction, hidden deep in the Ethereal Plane with all Extraplanar travel blocked to leave it; they had to find their way out by walking… but somewhere, there was always just one exit, for mercy, emotional torture, or both. Divine beings of sufficient power to challenge The Lady of Pain were not able to pass through her Portals at all; only minor Divinities could get into Sigil, and only by physically passing through a Portal. The Portals were her first line of defense and perhaps the only one she needed. As an important aside, Star added that none were to worship her as a Deity, either; that was a ticket for a quick trip into a Maze.
So Star bought the ruin for next to nothing, re-sealed the room and put it aside while she thought about how to use it… especially how to close it so that dangerous creatures could not come through and destroy the building, or that part of the city. She experimented with various ways to seal it off, with some success, but always something eventually broke through, and she learned a little bit more about what to add next. When MetroMagic began, her friend and business partner Glom had gone through the hidden Portal with each shift of location to find out where it went, and to convince the creatures on the other side, if any, that they did not really want to attack the other side any more. Glom was very convincing.
Meanwhile, the Hobbit staff from the inn, who were also managing her real estate for her while she was off on other adventures, filled journals with notes about Glom’s adventures and reports, and eventually established the timetable the Portal followed. Like almost all variable Portals in Sigil, it was not random as the previous owners thought; it just had a long and complex schedule, as Star had expected. One of the locations was the world where the main warehouse was located. It was perfect. Temperate, pleasant, and occupied by lots of plant and animal life but no intelligent species trying to transform the world to their own liking; it was simply a pastoral paradise. So they built a warehouse that was miles in all dimensions, protected the world from settlement and colonization from the outside, and kept it otherwise as it was for its inhabitants… other than the warehouse location, which conveniently was near two large lakes that could serve as landing areas for Spelljammer ships.
Besides The Lady’s Portal, to Sigil, Winston set up permanent Gates, in effect their own system of Portals, from the main warehouse to other MetroMagic locations, and their shipping and distribution company was reborn on a huge scale. They could even move cargo from Bral to Sigil, through the main warehouse, or to many of their chain of inns.
Winston also helped to Ward the Portal in Sigil. All of the organized attacks had stopped after Glom took care of them. The only creatures they still had problems with now were the occasional ones who were very mobile and who had very high resistance to the Magical Wards.
Star says she speculates that The Lady of Pain has suffered her to keep ownership of the Portal because Star has helped to keep out the things that were attacking the city. The Lady of Pain cares nothing for the commercial uses of the Portal that MetroMagic has done; She has no interest in such things. She only cares about threats to Her city, and they have helped to reduce them, while still using the Portal for transit. So Star is helping to fulfill The Lady’s purpose, even better than the Portal was when it fell into disuse inside a sealed bunker…. Star speculates that perhaps it was The Lady of Pain who led her to the ruin to buy it, foreseeing that she would put it back into safe operation; she often felt her actions were pulled in directions by the thoughts of the Deities, cast into the Multiverse like fishermens’ nets.
Star concludes by explaining to Halfaz and Ptolemaeus that she didn’t say so before, but now they could understand the reason she did not use the Crystal Ball to get pulled through directly into the warehouse in Sigil, or to June’s desk, for that matter, and had to follow a more complicated route involving getting Goldenseal into the main warehouse. While the Ball could have worked to get them directly to the Sigil warehouse, The Lady of Pain would not like such a circumvention of Her Portals, and might have taken all three of them into a Maze instead of into the warehouse… then it wouldn’t have worked. A bad idea, to anger The Lady of Pain, especially when they could go to the main warehouse instead and use a Portal into Sigil as they were supposed to do.
By the time Star finishes the story, Ptolemaeus, Halfaz, June, and Star have passed through huge double doors that sealed behind them, walked down a broad hallway and turned right at its end into an anteroom, the one where they had seen June sitting at her desk when Star contacted her through the Crystal Ball about twenty or thirty minutes ago.
As they go around the end of the broad hallway which opens out to the right, almost directly ahead in the anteroom is June’s large, polished wood desk with papers in neat piles, her breakfast tray sitting on it now empty of food. The orange juice glass is empty too. June goes to her desk, climbs up into the chair, and picks up the water carafe. She pours, and her glass fills with orange juice again, not water. She takes a sip, and tells them that their breakfast awaits them inside the conference room.
To the left of the desk against the far wall from the side corridor, there are comfortable upholstered couches behind a low table, and other seating in different shapes to accommodate different creatures. A crystal carafe and a tray with crystalware, all gold-trimmed, sits on the table. On the right a row of filing cabinets is in an alcove next to her desk, against the side wall of the wide corridor they just walked, that leads back into the warehouse. Just behind her desk is a broad expanse of blank oak paneled wall.
Star floats toward the broad, empty wall behind June’s desk. Just before she touches it, an archway appears. The sudden entryway is near the rear right-hand corner of the room, just beyond June’s desk, and passes into the front right-hand corner of the room beyond, on its shorter wall. The room is a rectangular conference room, about thirty feet by forty-five or fifty feet, and fifteen to twenty feet high. The room is otherwise plain, with no apparent door or other architectural feature. It is lit to a comfortably bright reading level for human eyes, by soft light from everywhere; there are no shadows in the room, not even under the large conference table in the center of the room.
The walls and ceiling are covered in a repeated pattern of large, square, polished wood panels, with raised centers and gently scrolled edges, a medium-light oak colored wood with a complex darker grain. A long woodgrain tabletop stretches away from the entrance across the polished floor. The floor and table are in a slightly darker wood that matches the grain of the walls; both floor and table have a lighter grain highlight that matches the lighter wood coloring of the walls. They are an elegant inverse coloration of each other, floor and table against walls and ceiling.
The table is about ten feet by twenty-five feet, oriented the same way the room is: its long dimension runs with the room's longest side. It is almost centered in the room from side to side, perhaps a couple of feet closer to the lefthand wall than the righthand wall. It is not centered in the room from front to back. Its foot is at the end of the room where the entryway was, and is about fifteen feet from the wall. Its head end is closer to the wall at the other end of the room, about ten feet from the wall.
There are a variety of armchairs and stools around the table and along the walls, in many combinations of shapes, sizes, and coverings, upholstered, leather, stone, and a few in metal, designed for the comfort of many shapes and sizes of creatures, though most of the furnishings are in medium to small sizes from Halfaz’s and Ptolemaeus’ size, to June’s.
Along the walls, there are smaller tables, trays, crystal and gold, pitchers and goblets, gold-trimmed carafes filled with a clear colorless liquid, and other simple but elegant furnishings. The three serving tables nearest the wall have well-stocked breakfast trays on them, with meat and fruit pies, breakfast rolls and muffins, breads, cheeses, flavored butters.
Conversation is underway but stops.
A very pretty Tiefling woman with a curly tail and spiky, revealing armor is in the corner of the room nearest the archway talking quietly to a human in a cloak, pointing at the tabletop of the conference room table; a large map with lettered markings on it hovers above the table. She has one hand on a gold-topped crystal stool, that she is holding next to her as if she is about to sit on it. She has a gold-trimmed crystal mug of ale in her hand.
Around the room are a hugely broad and powerful looking short Dwarven male with an equally huge beard, holding a mug with only ale suds at the bottom (yes, again), another large Tiefling female creature with black, feathery wings, a Pixie bristling with swords sitting on her shoulder; an elegant weasel-looking creature standing on two legs; and a somewhat human looking creature with pasty skin, wearing a suit of brilliantly polished gold armor, studying the room with sunken, shadowed eyes.
Halfaz can easily sense both Negative and Positive Energy in the creature wearing the gold armor.
Halfaz has been a sailor most of his life, and has heard sailors’ songs from all over the Planes and worlds. Ptolemaeus has been wandering everywhere for most of his life, and has picked up at least a little knowledge about practically everything.
Both Halfaz and Ptolemaeus, for their own different reasons, recognize the Pixie, Halfaz instantly, and Ptolemaeus after a moment.
He is the exact image of Captain Vir, the Merciful, Captain of the Resolute and King of the Unclaimed Sea. For Halfaz, a snatch of song even passes through his memory.
One other person is in the room, also the exact image of someone they know.
A glowing Elven woman who looks exactly like Star Feather is sitting in a blue armchair near the head of the table on the righthand side. A glittering glass staff, that looks kaleidoscopic with planes and colors of light packed throughout its interior, is resting against the side of the armchair. She is sitting as if she was talking with the creature in gold armor, but is turned to face the group at large.
CONTINUED ON THE “With Janis” THREAD!!
PLEASE CONTINUE POSTING THERE!
