Online Forum Mage Game: The Continuing

I'd like to either continue playing or see this story through to a final conclusion.  either way is fine with me.  I just don't want to leave it hanging.

OK. I will keep playing , at least until we draw to a satisfactory conclusion. Here we go again. It has been a while since we heard from the other players so I will start out NPCing them. Also if anyone else wants to join, I have space for one or two more player characters.

IC  (@ everyone): Your stomach turns, you feel light headed, the room spins. You fall into the pools of water that make up the Hallow. You sink further and further, too deep. You can't breath, the pressure builds until it squeezes all traces of air from your lungs. Even the bubbles sink. Deeper and deeper, way down. You are never going to hit bottom. You are going to drown. You are going to die.  and he will make a fiddle from your bones.

Then you see light toward the bottom. You feel hope, like a dose of ex after a long withdrawal. The light pulls you into it and suddenly you are falling out of the water.

(@ Qadesh)  Air rushes past and then you hit something solid. You stop. No moist impact, no crackled bones, you just stop. You are flat on your back in your Hallow. No one else is there, no sign of your cabal-mates, no sign of the fiddler. Cold droplets of water fall on you from one of the many leaky pipes.              

Brushing at the water droplets, Qadesh gets up and  looks around the Hallow.

"Hello?  Is anyone there?" he called out softly.

Not finding anyone, he crept up the stairs and opened the door as quietly as he could.

As you brush the droplets away, you feel something tucked behind your ear. A black feather. The same one you pulled from the fiddler. You pocket it and head upstairs.

As you approach the ground floor, you hear movement and cursing coming from the living room.  Peaking through the door way you see a man struggling in front of a fire place.

He is a bit older, late forties, early fifties maybe. Enough to have some gray in his stubble. His clothing could be as old or older. He strives uselessly to light a fire.

"Light, damn it! Make a fucking spark that takes the fucking kindling and starts the fucking fire." You hear the thunk of something being thrown to the ground in disgust. "Can't even make the tea, Christ things have gone to hell."            

Staying quiet and still, Qadesh watches the man and scans to surroundings for clues as to what was going on.

The fire place is new, not something you remember being in the house's living room, yet it seems some how familiar. Otherwise everything seems to be fairly similar.

The man is a complete stranger. You are certain that you have never spoken to him before.   

Coming all at once to a decision, Qadesh moves silently out into the room, placing the front exit at his back.  Turning back toward the stranger, he says, "Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"  At the same time, he reaches out with his senses, trying to get a feel of the man.  Was he another mage or a Sleeper?

He starts, turns, and catches his breath. "Don't do that."  He takes a few deep breaths, "I go by Feste, and this isn't your house."

You activate the mage sight, and most of the house seems to fade. It seems unimportant, uninteresting. The man becomes the focus of your attention. In contrast with the house, he is practically glowing. You are overcome by the feeling that you are being watched, and realize that he is probably looking at you in exactly the same way that you are looking at him.

    

"What do you mean?" Qadesh stares suspiciously at Feste, scrutinizing the house now.

The house becomes flimsy and fake under your sight, resembling one of the cheap movie sets you remember from your days of staring in Kerwin's Films.

Feste looks a little irritated, as if he has had to explain this many times. "You people have been dropping in like rain. It gets a bit difficult to prepare for all of you, sorry can't give you any tea at the moment. Welcome to Mr. Fiddler's soul. You don't seem have the Aphasia, so who are you and what are you doing here?             

Qadesh peered closely at Feste for a moment, trying to read him.

OOC: Wits + Empathy - 2 successes

"The Fiddler snuck into my Sanctum and was messing with my Hallow.  My cabal and I warned him off, but he didn't leave, so we tried to force him out.  Things got heated and then ... I'm here."

You've never tried to read a construct before. He slumps and his hands hang relaxed as he speaks. He looks down as he talks. When he does shoot a glance up at you you notice that his eyes are ringed by deep creased worry lines. Tired, perhaps defeated.

"Probably tried to infect you. Everyone he infects gets dropped in here. Don't know why you didn't get hit with the worst of it though."

He stares at you, puzzled for a second. Then his eyes go wide. "Got yourself an angel's feather, don't you boy?"      

Keeping his face and body from betraying him, Qadesh asked, "What's an angel's feather?"

Responding a little to the defeat he could read in Feste's face and body, Qqdesh softened his tone and continues, "And how long have you been here exactly?"

"I've been here a good long while. Can't really remember not being here, ya know. It used to be different though, before Mr. Fid made his deal with the Dark Angel. I told him it was a bad idea." He shakes his head "Anyways, angel feathers are the remains of the fiddler's infected dreams. I am betting you've got one, if so have been exposing yourself to a weakened version of the Aphasia for as long as you've had that feather. Not really surprising that you have a moderate resistance to infection."  

Your mind goes back to when you got the feather, you pulled it off of the Fiddler when he invaded your dreams. Then you remember the cloudy gray residue that you purged from your mind after waking.             

Sighing in frustration, Qadesh crosses his arms and looks around.

"Any chance you know of a way to get out of here?"