[[1493-04-02 - Hour 4 - 5|<< Hour 4 - 5]] | [[1493-04-06 - Hour 6 I|Hour 6 I >>]] ## Hour 5 It's been a productive 'hour.' We got Ireena squared away on the ichor front, and she seems a lot more like herself – I only wish she wasn't feeling so poorly. Hopefully she'll start to feel better soon, or at least once we're out of this place. Ezmerelda was doing surprisingly well after her nap. I was worried that she'd be all freaked out after the talk we had earlier – but she wasn't, and when I told her that I loved her again, she only joked about it briefly before responding in kind. We took a minute to look at the orrery in the room since we forgot to check it out earlier. It was rusted all over; I'm thinking it's possible that Amelia got it out of the lake somehow. Me and Ezmerelda regrouped with the others downstairs in the lobby of the inn. I managed to get Nia and Selise away from Ireena long enough to ask them how they're doing and how Ireena's doing too. Their answers made me realize that the Ireena situation was much more pressing than I had thought. Long story short, Ireena tried to choke Nia earlier. Not enough to hurt, apparently – but the act itself was enough to put everyone on edge, Ireena included. The conversation I had with Ireena was...rough. She said that the ichor is perhaps keeping her on edge, but that she's come out of the whole experience at the pharmacy with an increased sense of clarity; she told me that she's empty and soulless and that she's "pretty much made up" by the mists. I've never seen Ireena quite so down on herself. I don't know if I was able to convince her of much, but I tried to tell her that she's a fully realized person and that she's never felt empty to me. Whether or not she believed me, I got her on board with doing something about the ichor. Her only requirement was that no surgery could be involved. The others agreed that we need to do something about Ireena's situation sooner rather than later; we didn't have much in the way of leads, though. We decided our best bet would be to return to the pharmacy and get what information we could out of Dr. Brains. We stopped by Cicero's first. He was plenty willing to watch over Ireena and Selise in exchange for the promise of a meal (courtesy of Skoll) and a repaired roof (courtesy of me). He upheld his end of the deal, so we'll have to head back that way after we're rested so that we can fulfill our end. We nearly got into a fight with like thirty giant octopi who were trying to mug us on the way to the pharmacy, so that was stupid. Two things saved us from a massive headache: Skoll's beast speech and Sackville. Where Sackville is concerned: he ate one of the octopi as it was reaching into Skoll's bag. On my suggestion, Skoll told the octopi that Sackville will eat them if they keep mugging people. Skoll suggested they should find a cause to volunteer for instead, which seemed to get through to them, for some fucking reason. Having avoided what probably would've been the stupidest fight ever, Sackville took the opportunity to demand more from us. We worked out another deal – he'll need at least one "interesting" thing an hour, and he'll leave us alone in return. I gave him some fancy slippers that I found in Nightshade's place in Prismeer. I've never worn them – didn't plan to, either, considering Nightshade probably wore them on her weird wooden feet. They were enough for Sackville – he apparently likes "imports." I'm pretty sure that anything that comes through Elysium is an import, but whatever. Soon after dealing with Sackville, we came across something else that required our attention: a shut door in the middle of the street. Nia opened the door with mage hand, and we saw a familiar sight – it was that weird staircase that we had seen back at the inn a few 'hours' ago. I was still pretty hesitant about messing with the staircase, but the others felt like we should at least check it out. And it's a good thing we did, I guess, because we found two keys while we were exploring the twisting, gravity-defying steps. We also found a lot of doors. There was one that led to the pharmacy, but no one but me could see it – and when Ezmerelda tried to go through the door, she fell straight through, like it wasn't there at all. There were other doors that everyone could see, leading off to various places: Cicero's, the inn, the auction house, and the crooked house. We didn't stick around for long after gathering the two keys. It felt like something was hiding in the dark there, and I swear that I could hear it laughing. Nia even said that she saw it when she looked through the mirror. I'm glad I didn't see it, whatever it was, because she seemed pretty shaken by what she saw. We went back out the door we came through. It wasn't much longer before we arrived at the pharmacy. Our good friend Johannes was out front, and he had something for us: another inn key, which brought the number of rooms that we need to check out to three. Johannes was there looking for one of his skorrespondent friends. We advised he stay away from the pharmacy and told him that we'd keep an eye out for his friend. Then, we went inside. Instead of fucking around with the memory-erasing fountain water this time, Skoll shaped and froze the water so that we could crawl through it like a tunnel. We were down near the operating room when I remembered something Dr. Brains said yesterday about being pissed off at "the brain." So that's how we ended up taking a brief detour to the chamber with the big, fucked up mind flayer brain in it. The big, fucked up mind flayer brain was glad to see us. Apparently it hates Dr. Brains, and it was more than willing to reason with us. In exchange for the quiet disposal of Dr. Brains, the brain would give us safe passage – free from the influence of mind flayers – for the rest of our stay in Elysium. We were already planning on killing that asshole, which is pretty much the only reason I agreed; nothing about the brain seemed particularly upstanding or trustworthy, and the pharmacy being under its control isn't going to be much of an improvement. Dr. Brains was in the operating room along with one nurse. We snuck into the room – or we at least tried to; Rictavio tripped on something on his way in. But I was still able to get the immovable rod set over the hatch in the center of the room; the brain had tipped us off to the fact that there was a fucked up dragon under Dr. Brain's control, and I had no desire to be fighting it and Dr. Brains at the same time. After setting the rod in place, I showed myself. I didn't want Rictavio getting blasted to all hell just because Dr. Brains didn't know that he had reason to be cautious. I asked Dr. Brains what he did to Ireena. He took his time with the conversation, and I had to remind him three times what I had asked him. However, he answered eventually: he performed surgical procedures on Ireena's brain, which were subsequently reversed; he replaced many of her organs with others – some natural, some lab-grown, some "technologically augmented"; he also replaced most of her blood with that damn ichor. He said that he improved her. I attacked him. We took care of him and the nurse quickly. As he was dying, his eyes flashed purple, and I could hear thumping from the trap door. But the rod stayed in place. Nia stabbed the dying Dr. Brains; he slumped over, dead. Skoll and Rictavio gathered some medical equipment scattered across the room. I made everyone wait so I could get the immovable rod back – it's saved my ass more than once since getting here, and I felt like I'd end up regretting it if I left it behind. Part of me wishes I would've left it, though. Might've stopped Rictavio from making unfortunate comments about my rod. I waited for the thumping at the trap door to stop and then I waited a couple minutes longer. Despite this, the dragon inside started pushing its way out as soon as I grabbed the immovable rod. We didn't stick around long enough to get that great of a look at it, but I can say this: it looked really, really fucked up. I'm glad that we didn't have to fight it. We went up to the holding cells to look for Johannes's fellow skorrespondent. While we were up there, I gave Skoll some rations to give to Isabella; I figured that the mind flayers aren't jumping at the opportunity to feed her. We found the skull of the skorrespondent – Porter – in one of the holding cells. He was still able to talk, and he told us that he needed his body back to avoid getting blasted by a wizard beam courtesy of Rosa. We went upstairs and looked around for a bit; we ended up finding a ton of bones in the garden, which was fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. Skoll – somehow – flawlessly reconstructed Porter's skeleton. I put Porter's head in place and he stood up. We led him outside so he could reunite with Johannes, and then we were off again. We hadn't been walking for long when Nia stopped suddenly and got out the mirror. She didn't take the time to explain herself, but the issue became clear as soon as we teleported to Cicero's: Ireena and Selise were seated together at a table with someone who looked exactly like Nia. Our Nia teleported behind the imposter. Fake 'Nia' kept trying to pretend that she was the real deal. The real Nia lunged at her. 'Nia' threw a knife at Nia, then at me; Nia returned the favor, and it stunned the imposter. I dragged 'Nia' outside so that her corpse didn't end up on the floor of Cicero's bar. Ezmerelda tied her up, and we waited for her to come to. I'm not sure if she was stupid or if she just didn't give a shit, but 'Nia' didn't try very hard to save her own life. We asked for her motives, and learned that she has all Nia's memories and that her main goal is to replace Nia. When Skoll suggested that she forge her own path in life, she didn't take to the idea. So Nia stabbed her to death. The sight was kind of upsetting, so I didn't stick around to watch. Nia ended up being the one to get the ichor out of Ireena. I'm sure that it wasn't easy for either of them, despite Ireena's insistence that the hard part with Strahd wasn't the bite itself. And while I'm sure it helped that Nia isn't a fascist dictator, I can't imagine that Nia bleeding her came without its own hang-ups. They went upstairs; by the time they came back down, we had equipment set up for a blood transfusion. It was a good thing, too, because Ireena looked pale as all hell. We started the transfusion while Nia stumbled outside to throw up ichor. I ended up being the donor, since I (probably) have human blood. The transfusion didn't take long. I asked Ireena how she was doing after the fact; she said that she feels a lot less checked out, but that she still feels pretty bad. I can't say I'm surprised that she isn't feeling 100%. Still, she does seem more like her usual self. We're getting ready to rest. It'll be nice getting to sleep next to Ezmerelda again, even if we did just finish having a somewhat awkward conversation about marriage, and even if it was entirely my fault. I really don't know what possessed me to bring it up, but I asked her how she feels about the concept. To her credit, she actually answered: she told me that she thought about it a lot when she was a kid. It turns out that she was pretty invested in fairy tales and often imagined that one day she'd end up being a knight saving a princess. I was more than charmed to hear this. She told me that she's never been in a serious relationship until now. It was surprising to hear – but I suppose it makes sense. Ezmerelda hasn't ever stuck around in one place long enough for anything like that to happen. Plus, she's always been pretty resistant to forming lasting relationships in general, at least where I was concerned. Ezmerelda said that we'd revisit the marriage conversation later. She seemed a little embarrassed about it all, not that I blame her; I was pretty embarrassed myself, and I'm the dumbass who brought it up in the first place. Again, not really sure why. This place isn't really conducive to romance – not that that's stopped the others. Skoll and Rictavio is a thing that continues to happen; when I asked Skoll about what he wants in his house (which is a topic he's seemed to come around to, at least), he started listing rooms – some of which he clearly included for the sake of others (read: Rictavio). Then there was what Rictavio said to Nia when she asked him how he was doing earlier. He said that he's been doing better, generally, having found Ezmerelda and some more keys; he also said that he's been in good spirits staying with and talking to Skoll. They've been talking about all kinds of things, according to Rictavio: Skoll's life, Rictavio's life, and even marriage – though not theirs, apparently. Skoll had to cover Rictavio's mouth just to get him to stop talking. It's kind of sweet, honestly, even if it grosses Ezmerelda out. What else? We found a delightful little man today in that crate that I picked up from Sneerian's – he's a little windup toy named Pidlwick III. No idea how he ended up here, but I'm not going to complain; like I said, he's delightful, even if he doesn't know jack or shit about Elysium. I decided that we need to rename him if we're taking him back with us, since having another Pidlwick could get confusing. Selise suggested we name him after someone; I suggested Izzy for Ismark, but Ireena shot me down. Apparently she wants to save that name for a kid someday. We ended up going with RJ, for Robi Junior. Selise is watching over him for the time being. Anyway, it's been a really fucking long day. I feel way better than I did this 'morning'; I'm hoping that our good luck continues. --- ## Page Tags/Properties **Tags:** #Journal **Category:** [[Journals and Writings.base|Journals and Writings]] **Character:** [[Krue d'Avenir|Krue]] **Campaign:** [[City of Eyes]] **Date ([[Calendar of Harptos|Harptos]]):** 04/04/1493