RP:Search for the Master Potion
Summary: Couple of potion-seekers collect ingredients and test potions
Characters: Hector, Dyzz, Eboric, Ezekiel, Braker, Steadman
Locations: Xalious Mountains, Kelay Tavern, Hanging Corpse Tavern, Fermin Laboratory
XALIOUS MOUNTAINS-hunting rocs
~
Dyzz comes diving out of the underbrush, a rabbit racing out of reach from the same bush way too quickly for the goblin to have any chance of catching it. She falls on her face in front of Hector, but rises, wiping a sweaty arm on her dirt smeared face, turning it into mud and smearing it around further. She turned to hector, a tiny blue goblin with strangely cute features, huge ears, sharp red hair and eyes... and a lot of stringy, hidden muscle. "What're ya lookin at, ya weirdo peeper? Ya gots anythang ta eat, huh?" She talked fast, witha lot of energy, and a croaky, high pitched voice.
Hector blinks and loses his train of thought, not that the train was on the rails to begin with. "Er, Roc feathers. . ." He trails off having forgotten the rest. Hector looks down at his pale, shaking hands. "I have roc feathers, but I need them for something. Something. . ."His eyes glaze over even further as he finishes breathily. "Good. Very good stuff, but not strong enough." A few feathers fall from his hands as he babbles on, trying to remember what he needed to make the 'medicinal' potion. The rocs are long gone, and he's losing the feathers from his uncoordinated hands. Even should the pale unwell man remember the ingredients, it seems unlikely he'd be able to procure them. His eyes reconnect with the blue goblin. "Whoa!!" He jumps back. "Where'd you pop out of?" The twitchy being that Hector is seems to have forgotten that Dyzzy has been standing there for his entire incomprehensible monologue.
Dyzz stares at the shaky man, up until the point he jumps, and asks her where she popped outta. She was already thinking about what he was saying by then, though, and just pointed blankly at the bush she had popped out of. "You's gots roc feathers? Them's rare stuffs. With scorpion bile, and dragons blood, sounds like some mad juju potions' be brewing in yer mind. Ya gots the shakes real bad, like a rat in about to feel the teeths. Whatsya tryin to make, anywho?" Dyzz was actually a very intelligent goblin... in her own right. "I never made nuttin usin dragon blood before... mad juju."
Hector nods with way too much enthusiasm. "Good stuffs, very good stuffs. Make me feel all warm all over. Yes, scorpion bile, dragon blood, roc tail feathers, and unicorn tears. Thank you." Hector spins around, finally noticing that there are no rocs here anymore. His eyes dart around quickly, taking nothing in, before staring intently at Dyzzy, or it should be 'dizzily at Dyzzy'. "You have a great memory. You make potions of good stuffs? I teach, and we drink them together sevety, thirty." He cackles madly, a sure indication that he'd sampled a few too many of his own failed potions.
Dyzz nods proudly. "I'm a shaman, I do mad juju, make lotsa potions, drinks em all the times. Makes me really really strong! Feels great. You gots foods? I really hungry, ain't caughts no foods today. Need good eats.
Hector quickly digs in his pockets, afraid that the goblin will run away if he doesn't feed her, and even more afriad that he'll forget the ingredients again when she leaves. "Here, have these, pickled rats, glazed in pixie honey with a dash of radish-pepper." He hands them over before he drops them. You gave 2 dead rat to Dyzz.
Dyzz tried to take the rats, but the man dropped them with his shaky hands. Not bothered in the least, she picked up the rats, and bit one in cleanly in half, swallowing without hardly even chewing. Within moments the rats were gone. "Mhmm, you makes good eats, ya? Thank you, dems good eats. She looks up at him brightly, smiling. She would eat rancid meat and not know the difference... various potions and horrific foods had burnt any semblance of rational taste from her... though her strongest sense was that of taste, able to tell all sorts of whacky things from a flavor. She could probably sense where this man has been for the last few days from what clung to the rats, as well as what he had used in them. "You making potions, ya? You need stir stir? I be good stir stir. Stir's with the best of emm, sirs."
Hector agrees enthusiastically. "Yes, stir. And memory. We remember ingredients and we can make more good potions." He glances at the sky to see if the rocs had returned, but his unforgiving attention span gets him again, and he forgets what he was doing, and that he was talking to someone. Marks on his arms and legs give strong indication that this isn't the first time he'd lost track of things, and quitre often in hazardous environs. "Pretty clouds."
Dyzz looks up at teh sky curiously. "Ya, very pretty.. Hey, you need to focus, mister! You softskins not tough like us, can't afford to be happy and go easy like us." She grabs his hand, and starts pulling him through the forest, seemingly headed for somewhere random. "We find roc feathers, yeah? Enough for potions, then i stir stir. Maybe one for necklace, cuz is oh-so pretty~"
Hector shouted, "Potions!" Hector said, "Yes, we need more roc feathers for potions." Hector totally goes with the goblin.
Dyzz wanders around, using her incredible lack of hunting instinct to track down rocs... not the shiny kind, but the ones that fly. She thinks. She grabs a few shiny ones on the way, to throw at things later for food. Eventually, they happen upon another Roc nest, and Dyzz speaks to him while chewing on one of her shiny new rocks, "I can go get feather, rocs ain't so tough. You want I go? I gots mad juju." She was grinning madly, ready to show off to her new friend.
Hector staggers along behind, nodding at everything Dyzz says. "Yes, feathers." He sits down and stares off into space, scratching idly at his arm.
Dyzz looks at him, and sees him scratching. Must be itchy. But he'd totally watch her when she went and got the feather. Creeping quietly as a bull in a field of roden'ts of unusual size, she drew up beside the rocs nest, the mother roc of which was eyeing her stealthy, creeping form in total obliviousness to the danger her feathers were in from Dyzz, knower of a dozen unknowable things, and so on... But through some stroke of sheer luck, the roc reached out and plucked Dyzz up in its beak, shaking her ruthlessly, the hapless goblin screaming wildly.
Hector snaps back into the present with brilliant focus. "I'll save you!!" He leaps to his feet, and runs in a perfectly straight zig-zag toward his eiditic associate. He raises his stirring spoon and. . . "Tail feather!!" He immediately grabs the feathers from the mother-roc's tail and yanks them out, causing the bird to yelp louder than Dyzz. Hector is oblivious to the trouble he caused. "We got the feathers. Now we can go get the other things. Stir?" The roc glares at him. With darkening eyes she stalks forward, her intent less than friendly.
Dyzz manages to whoop for joy as her deviously brilliant companion grabs the feathers. She promptly pokes the roc in the eye, and when it drops her, picks up an egg and tosses it as hard as she can... she is pretty good at shotput. Her crushed midsection is already mostly healed, her intestines pulling back into her as she clambers out of the nest, chasing after hector. "You is mad smarts! You should be clan shaman, mad smarts!" She was yelling breathlessly as they ran, having forgotten already all about the rock she had accidentally swallowed.
Hector sprints after Dyzz, not because he wants to get away, but because he's forgotten the ingredients again. "Wait up!!" He clutches the feathers to his chest so that he won't drop them this time.
Dyzz races through the forest, stopping when she trips over a root. Luckily, this is long after the roc had given up the chase. She rose, only to find a scorpion tail sticking out of her face... the poison couldn't make its way through her strong, sticky blood. "Hey, looks, we is so lucky! A whole nest of scorpions! Here, I can even wear em... they stick right on ya! Wonder how they taste..."
Hector excitedly begins picking up scorpions and shoving them into a jar, followed by the feathers, then more scorpions. Dozens of the critters sting his fingers, but Hector continues to collect until his hands and arms have swollen so badly that he can't pick anymore up. The poison flows through is veins and finds no purchase. Every nerve in the man's body has fried and hardened from over-exposure to various chemical reagents. It's small wonder he can barely function. "I can't collect any more for a while. My arms are fluffy, and I feel a little tired."
Dyzz looks at the mans arms. "Hmm. Looks like swellings, mh-m-m. usually goblins that get the swellings dies. I hopes you doesn't die, you mad smart, know good juju." She nodded, affirming this as truth. "We need unicorn tears, and dragon blood. Those two is tricky. How's we gonna get stuffs that doesn't exists, again?" She had never before seen a dragon, nor a unicorn, which to the goblin was incontrovertible proof that they did not exist... at least, not until she saw one.
Hector mumbles and gets to his feet. "No dying, nope. We can buy the dragon blood from the dead man, and unicorn tears. . .um. Not sure, but we need them. Think." He loses his thoughts even faster while his body processes the fatal dose of scorpion venom. "Person with unicorn on a leash in Kelay? They might have some?"
Dyzz said, "There's a person with one on a leash? This good juju!" *She grabs his arm, ignoring the swelling, and pulls him along, racing for kelay.* "We gon get that potions made, yes we is!"
Hector barely registers what should be excruciating pain. "Yes, Kelay, for unicorn." He stumbles to his feet, already running a dangerously high temperature that can't fail to fry the already burnt neurons in his cracked skull. "Stir-memory, yes. Unicorn." He follows behind as they head toward civilization.
~
KELAY TAVERN
~
Dyzz looks around. "I dun see unicorn on a leash. You sure exists?"
Hector sees an animal on a leash, and concludes that since it is on a leash, it must be a unicorn.
Dyzz said, "is that it?"
Hector said to Eboric, "Can I collect tears from your unicorn?"
Dyzz said, "Does I milk it?" Dyzz starts circling the bear. "Where does I milk it from?"
Eboric said to you, "Is that what you call it? No...no, only women are allowed to collect tears from my unicorn." The big man grins at his own joke. "Now run along, and flirt with someone else."
Dyzz makes a grab at what she assumes is the bears udder... though she is udderly wrong. Get it? She wonders if the animal is docile, briefly. Dyzz sticks her tongue out at Ezekiel.
Hector watches his associate circling the unicorn. "He says only women can, so you better hurry before he changes his mind." Noticing the goblin's confusion. "You might need to poke it in the eye to get the tears flowing."
Ezekiel blinked a few times, even rubbed at the dark circles under his eyes, before shaking his head. "Right." Back to work he went, a mechanical tool in one hand- the compass in the other.
Dyzz said, "Ah! You is not smart, you is genius man! You be shaman one day, me know it!" WIth that, she proceeded to poke the bear... in the eye... smiling happily now that everything was working out right."
Hector calmly hands his blue associate a vial for collection, while ignoring the increasingly angry growls from the creature.
Dyzz takes the vial, shoving it unceremoniously into the bear's face. "You cry in it, pretty unincorn, so genius man can make potions. I get to stir!" She was happy as could be.
Hector pokes his arms to gauge how far they've swollen or calmed. "Still puffy, sure makes me glad we can buy the last ingredient. Collection could prove difficult."
Braker pours oil all over the tavern and set it ablaze with a torch, before steping out to watch it burn.
Dyzz grabs Hector's arm upon getting the tear, running wildly with him as the bear starts roaring. "Now, we go buy the blood! Let's hurry genius man, you's not gonna be able to make good potions if you dies from them stings, ya?"
Hector shakes his head, and loses all equilibrium. "Yes, go we must." He raises one badly inflamed arm, shouting his warcry upon leaving. "Potions!!!"
~
VAILKRIN
~
Dyzz rushes, holding up the larger man effortlessly, letting him lead to the seller. "C'mon's, we gots ta hurry! Ya may die any minutes now, we gotta make potions firsts!"
Hector solemnly shakes the dandy's hand upon entry. Neither one of them is coordinated, but neither is in any state to complain. The severely poisoned man ambles to the bar. "Deadman!! I need some dragon blood." Steadman steps over to the counter, bringing his good eye to bear. "How many times to I hafta tell you, it's Steadman. Not Deadman." The testy barkeep slams the vial down nonetheless and accepts payment.
Dyzz said, "oooh! Let's make it now, I wanna stir it!"
Hector bought 2 dragon blood.
Hector said to Steadman, "Can we borrow your bucket, sir?" Curious now, since the bucket in question is filled with wash water, Steadman hands it over. Hector drinks some to make room for the ingredients, before handing it to Dyzz. "Feathers, check; bile, check; tears, check; blood, check. Stirrer, check." He dumps it all into the bucket, spilling quite a bit with his bulky fingers. He gives the nod to Dyzz and watches.
Dyzz leaps for jow, grabbing up a spoon off a table. She won't let him down! She lets it spill everywhere, all wishy washy, and wildly stirs it as fast as her long, lanky arms will allow. She works furiously, Grinning the whole time. "Ima real shaman now, ya? Makin mad juju!"
Hector grins weakly, losing eyesight from time to time. Some droplets flung by the ambitious goblin add pockmarks to the already roughened floor. Once it is all combined, a thin mist rises off the glassy surface. "Good stuffs." The mad apothecary raises one pain-wracked arm and coughs out. "Potions!"
Dyzz looks up as he calls out, as though in awe. "He taken by juju gods!" her eyes sparkled, glowing ruby in the tavern light.
Hector crawls to the bucket and drinks as much as he can before he tips over and falls to the floor. His skin begins to frost over and a thick coating of ice covers his flesh, even the engorged arms. On the bright side, the swelling goes down.
Dyzz watches in fascination as he drinks, and his body changes rapidly. She is awed, and sucks a bit of potion out of her rags for a tunic. It tastes weird, but doesn't affect her much... she drinks too much of the stuff already.
Hector sits up, cracking through the ice. "Good s-stuff. P-p-potions." He coughs up some black phlegm. The threat of poison is gone, but now a severe case of hypothermia hangs over his head. The man's smile for the goblin is warm, despite the frost. "We make very good team. Potions." Dyzz whoops for joy. "We make good team! He said it! I'm useful stirrer, the bestest shaman!" The deterioration of his body doesn't seem to affect her at all, she has little real concept of death. In her mind, friends don't die, that's fate for food.
Hector cleans up the mess they made and hands the bucket back to Steadman with a few silver for his troubles. "Many thanks. We couldn't have done it without your bucket."
Dyzz nods with Hector, and echoes his words. "Many thanks, your bucket." She follows him around like a loving puppy, wondering if she would get to stir more potions, and watching him to see what else would happen.
Hector shivers on the floor, and allows other patrons to place drinks on his head for easy refrigeration. "Need better potion recipe. Who has the recipe? Which chemist has it?" He mumbles and raves under his breath continuosly, oblivious to the other patrons. The aforementioned patrons pay him no mind. The vampires can't drink his blood because of the dragon blood and other toxins hiding therein, the undead don't care, and everyone else is either too bad-ass to be bothered or else they're just as fried as Hector.
Dyzz pokes hector with her spoon, adjusting cups on his head so they get chilled best. She even got a thank you for bringing someone's drink to them.
A cloaked figure in the corner slides off his chair to stalk unobtrusively through the bar to stop in offensively close proximity to the nerve damaged apothecary. "Ssir, I couldn't help but hear. You search for a potion? A recipe? I think I can help you." The hood falls back revealing a mousey nose and twitching whiskers. The grin on the rodent's face stretches from ear to ear: he'd found another candidate for testing. Perhaps this one would last longer than the others. "Perhaps you are interested?"
Dyzz climbs on top of Hector to get a better look at the fermin. "You's a weird thing, aintcha? You's some mad juju. We is interested, very interested! Big boss man love potions, he take anything!"
Hector's reply is predictably, "Potions?" He stands up, shaky but completely unsteady.
The fermin heads to the door, turning the one time to make sure they are following.
Dyzz practically drags Hector out after the fermin. "C'mon boss, man! The weirdo's got even more potions! Probably all the potions you can drink! Let's go!"
Hector follows close behind, but makes sure to shake Cornelius' hand upon leaving. "It's been a pleasure but we must skedaddle. Addle."
~
FERMIN LABS
~
This room is cold...damp...and smells rotten. Mildew grows upon the dull grey stone walls. Yet despite the room's unsavoury appearance something interesting sits in the centre of the room. A large contraption made from metal pipes, orbs of light and what seem to be rather large vital organs all connected to two large podiums, gently hums and glows with strange mystical energies. Atop each podium is small silver dish filled with blood that seems to bubble and ooze unnaturally as if it were alive. The entire miss match of parts and organs are connected to a human sized chrysalis formed into a rounded oblong, the connection is made by several tendrils of glowing energy that crackle and fizz lighting the room in hues of pink and blue. It is evident that some unusual activity is under way here.
~
Dyzz is dragging hector however much she needs too, "Potions! Potions!" She seems to be singing a potion song, off key and shrill.
Upon entry, the fermin takes off the cloak and heads to a locked cabinet. "Lessee, we have viable survivors for all of the animal samples, but no conclusive change. We need to up the stakes a bit, even if the survival rate seems infinitismal." Hector runs up behind him, grabbing for the vials. "Potions, need potions!!" The sound of shattering glass reverberates around the room.
Dyzz screams with glee, "Drink em all! Potions is magic, and magic is god!" She is laughing, and skipping, and joining in the disarray by tossing vials around, even going so far as to eat one, crunching mouthfuls of glass, barely bleeding from it and not bleeding long. She swallowed, her system powerful enough to kick back broken glass. It might be used with that rock later to teach someone a valuable lesson... her poop was often used for projectile weaponry. Not to mention whatever fizzled in that potion vial.
The fermin alchemist goes from glee to abject horror. The destruction is beyond anything he could have planned for. In desperate haste, he saves a single vial: the deadlist decoction. He backs into a corner, keeping the vial hidden behind his back so that the potion addicts never realize what he is doing. He works a hypodermic needle over the top, and sneaks up behind Hector, the mad apothecary. A single side-armed swing lands the needle with professional precision, and unprofessional force. The potent magicks worked into the viscous green syringe flow ominously into Hector's body, and he drops, unconscious. His part in the destruction over.
Dyzz stops as the fermin stabs hector with the needle. She quietly, by her definition of quiet, creeps over to look at him, lying still on the floor. "Is the potions making him stronger?" She asked the fermin, more awe in her voice. "That looks some mad juju..."
His intent no longer to test his subject but to kill him, the fermin nods and lies through his teeth. . .like a rat. "Yes, he'll be stronger than ever." The combined blood of tortured dryads, corrupted druids, and various poisonous plants would prove a slow, irreversible death to anyone who so much as touches it. The fermin's toxin works it's magic, stripping all previous potions from Hector's system. Black spots rise to the surface of Hector's skin, leaving bruise-like marks. His heartbeat slows, a continuous deceleration that must end in death. The bags under the madman's eyes fill with toxic sludge and black tears seep from his blankly open eyes like a leaking oil vein. All color fades from Hectors skin, save for the black bruises. Hector's body sinks into itself, slowly eroding from the inside. His heart stops.
Dyzz stares, watching the ominous desecration of Hector's body. "He looks like he... melting. He be re-incarnated, mad juju, mad, mad juju." Her voice trailed off, foreboding in it's own right. She never unglued her eyes from Hector.
The nervous fermin alchemist says, "He needs rest, now. I'll go find something for him to drink when he awakens." He begins backing away from the blue goblin, sure that she would take revenge when she discovers his ill-wrought fabrication and assassination of her associate. He trips over Hector, forgetting about the corpse pale man. He places his uncovered hand on Hector's clammy flesh to lift himself up. Unfortunately, every conclusion he had made hinged on the one assumption a potion must never have when it comes to Hector: the potion is fatal to all takers. But those other takers weren't Hector. The bonding had succeeded where it had always failed. The fermin's hand began to darken and bruise, the toxins of the ill-wrought dryad seeping into his creator's flesh even while Hector was unable to defend himself. The fermin made it to the door, before falling over dead. Eventually, Hector sneezed and sat up. "What happened?"
Dyzz watched the fermin die, out of her periphery, barely registering it while she tasted the air which seeped hector's essence. it was so different... when he sat up and asked what happened, she was still gawking. She reached out a hand, touching the powerful toxins, which couldn't find purchase in the warped and resistant anatomy of the troll goblin, and brought the finger to her lips, tasting it. It was a taste she'd never forget... one of mad, bad juju. Hector was something else entirely now, she knew, and she gaped at him in shock and awe. "Mad, mad juju. Like forests, wilted and writhing in agony... leaves, dried and brittle, poisons in the hearts-of-things, seeping from everything." The goblin troll truly had the spirit of a shaman, which she now displayed, such a rare thing. "Big boss man is not man anymore. He is wild juju, angry, dark, wild juju. Wild juju." Her voice trailed off again, and she stared, wondering just what exactly she was looking at. A spirit? A... god?
Hector takes in everything Dyzz says, not moving from his supine position. "I see." The newly made dryad rises from the floor and licks his fingers. "Hmm, ashes and ivy, but my taste buds aren't what they were. I'll take your word on the rest." He searches for an unbroken potion so sate his parched throat, and drown his psychological addiction. He eventually finds one and downs it, but his new form transmutes it before he can feel the effects. "Damn." Something else occurs to Hector. Something the blue goblin had said. "Wait, not a man. . ." He quickly darts a glance down his armoured leggings. Let's just say he wasn't happy with what he didn't find.
Dyzz nods again as he looks down. "Not man anymore. Have no manhood. The roots are your manhood now... ashes and ivy..." She was shivering a bit, thinking rapidly, for her at least. "Big boss man... want any potions?"
Hector said to Dyzz, "I would, but it seems they have no effect anymore. That last one, it truly was the Master Potion." He looks around, noticing how clear everything was now. He'd not felt so healthy in what seemed like forever, and he hated it. "I can't even undo it, because the bastard didn't have the decency to write down the recipe before he died."
Dyzz frowned. "Well, big boss man... if you no wants potions... yer stronger, thats a good thing!.. But if you no wants potions, what we gonna do now?' She looked at him imploringly, wondering what was next. She seemed to have become attached to him in their short time together. She did have a very short memory, though.
Hector locks eyes with Dyzz. "We simply need to find an even stronger potion. That was always the goal. It's just that now, the stakes are higher. Temperature simples won't cut it anymore. We need to collect all the notes from this lab and study them. Then we'll know where to find a stronger potion."
Dyzz starting flurrying around frantically, once she realized what he was saying. "Notes, notes, I'll get all the notes! Got to make even stronger potion! Big boss man gotta be a man again, mad juju!" She would work tirelessly to gather the notes, as if it were the very reason for her existence.
Hector begins collecting notes himself, finding arcane scribbling that depicting gut-wrenching practices that surpassed the profane and obscene, made sadism appear as pacifism, and broke every law of Ascendii and man.
Dyzz stands around, notes in hand, looking for more. "I think we gots it all, boss. She hands it all to him, looking at him with wide eyes. "Anything you need, I'll gets it, I'll gets it! But... uhh... all this runnin about.. 's made me really hungry." She gave a little yawn, that turned into a big yawn. "Sleepy, too."
Hector packs away some sample potions and all the notes he could find. Despite not finding the recipe for the Master Potion, he departs. After he and the goblin leave, a faint glow remains. Lauria of the Grove demands a balance, and the dryads lost in this lab were now revenged, by the creation of a new type. Satisfied that dryads would no longer die in this laboratory, she leaves, taking the last glow of light with her.
In the corner, a neglected plant takes on a healthier glow. The potted henbane begins to thrive in the dank cold of the lab, forgotten for now, but not forever.