RP:Witholding Information
Part of the Agitation Arc
Summary:' Linn pays Josleen a visit to bounce ideas about the ooze off of her. After her encounter with Krice, Josleen is a bit more suspicious of Linn. But the man’s unyielding dedication to the investigation wins Josleen over and she shares with him what she learned with Hudson and Larewen.
Xalious Village (Josleen’s Flat)
The alternating steps coming up the stairs announced Linn’s presence to anyone immediately beyond the door to Josleen’s home, hard, soft, hard, soft as they progressed upwards. Those paying close attention would notice that it was twice as many steps as it should have been. A sharp rapping came from the door as he knocked with a mithril plated knuckle before his voice came through. “Is Josleen there?” It didn’t sound rushed, but there was a note of anticipation and hope that he would find her inside.
"Just a minute!" Josleen's voice calls from deep in the apartment. A few minutes later, she opens halfway and braces her body against it. Her hair is wet and combed over one shoulder. She wears a thick robe over a gown meant for lounging, and slippers. "Hello Linn. What a surprise! What can I do for you?" Her extra wide smile flashes more teeth than usual.
Linn blinked a couple times before he idly scratched the side of his head, glancing at the gown and the wet hair, evidently she just got done washing. “This a good time? I wanted to talk about what I found with the events and the ooze.”
Josleen hesitates. Her smile stays affixed as some mysterious decision-making process unfolds in her mind. "Aah.." she stalls. Though Krice advised caution, she can't bring herself to be rude, and she opens the door fully and waves him in to the living room. "Of course. Come in. Have a seat. Would you like anything to drink?" She feels confident that Linn doesn't mean her physical harm in the immediate future, whatever may come beyond that notwithstanding and still awaiting trial (by Krice, apparently).
Linn didn’t raise a brow at the hesitation, chalking it up to the potentially awkward timing of his arrival. He gave a nod and entered at her invitation. As he walked in Josleen would see a series of crystals that jutted into the gap between the plates around his previously broken ankle that weren’t there the last time they met. He made no indications of pain as he walked but it was evident in his gait that the joint was fairly stiff. “Thanks, just some water would be fine for now.” He followed her lead to one of the chairs or couches before setting down his pack and looking through it for the old sample of ooze.
Josleen leaves Linn in the living room for a moment to fetch him a glass of water, which she leaves on the coffee table before the couch where he sits. She sits in a cushioned chair near him, facing him at an angle. "How's your ankle?" She eyes the crystals, the pack, the armor, and the man himself as if looking at him for the first time. Josleen has been busy collecting clues and evidence herself, but she refrains from sharing her findings for now.
Linn looks over to Josleen for a second at the question about his ankle. “It’s been recovering pretty well, more trouble has been spent with people trying to help me with it than living with it really.” A pause as he rolled his eyes. “Three times I’ve been offered salves, several times told to keep the weight off of it… It’s a good thing people care for each other though. Just gets funny sometimes.” He missed her re-evaluation of him, too busy rummaging through his pack. “Unfortunately my sample of the ooze wasn’t good for analysis when I got to it.” Pulling out the wrapped up leather that contained the ooze he set it on the table and began to pull it open, the leather snapping back shut the moment he released it, stiffened as if boiled. He managed to keep enough of it open to get a view of the contents: just a bunch of damp, dirty grass. “It was like this when I first opened it up to examine it with the apothecary in Larket. What’s strange is the leather is hard, like it got boiled from the inside.”
Josleen smiles fondly at his fussing in spite of herself. He seems so harmless. Surely he's safe? Her head cants to the side as she inspects the boiled leather. "Strange. I kept my sample in a glass vial and it's held up as far as the naked eye can see. Do you have a theory?" She smooths her robe and dress to make sure her appearance is modest.
Linn scratched his head while looking at the contents of the package. “Nothing complete, but whatever happened it was fast. There wasn’t any remaining trace of the ooze when I opened it, not even a stain of black.” He looked back to Josleen, “you still have a good sample of your ooze? I want to see if it will burn me this time around.” Purposely burning himself? Evidently this was one answer worth quite some pain.
Josleen nods as she rises from her chair. "Yes, though I am not sure if it's still a good sample. It looks fine, but I don't know at the alchemical level. One moment." She leaves him again, this time disappearing down a hallway into another room. Upon her return she hands a leather pouch to Linn. Inside the pouch is a small glass vial full of the blank liquid.
Linn opens up the pouch and turns the vial in his hand, watching the fluid swirl as he turned it at different rates. It definitely looked like the same stuff he grabbed up back at the park. “Yeah, looks about the same as it was when we grabbed it. So something I did must have caused my sample to break down without me knowing.” He took his glass and walked his way over to the table in the kitchen before leaning over, continuing to look at the sample. “Best to have some water on hand in case this does start burning.” Glancing back over to the boiled leather satchel he furrowed his brow. “Got anything that can withstand a lot of sudden heat as well? Just in case.”
Josleen frowns at the nature of this experiment. "This sounds like lunacy, Linn. I suppose over the hearth in the kitchen... but... Why are you so deadset on solving this mystery? You owe nothing to Xalious. You don't even live here."
Linn froze, staring forward at the question. She was right about everything. He didn’t know everyone here intimately, most people he hadn’t made acquaintances with at all yet. Yet here he was risking himself so willingly to find answers to this situation. There were things he did care about from the time he has been here. Things he didn’t want to see destroyed under these events. But why the straightforward recklessness? “There are things I have seen here that are worth keeping around.” A pause before he repeated some old words he had received several times in the past, giving a small chuckle and a smile. “That and I have more curiosity than sense.”
Josleen would certainly agree with his sentiment. She herself loves Xalious with all her heart. But Krice's skepticism has crept into her mind and Linn's words sound too easy. She presses on. "Forgive me for prying, but what things specifically? What do you want to preserve?"
Linn raised a brow towards Josleen. To him it seemed so self-explanatory. “The Tree, mostly. It reminds me of an old site I would go to before I came here. It makes me feel as if I was back home.” A melancholy, nostalgic sigh escaped him before he turned more serious. “That, I don’t want to see what would happen if it was destroyed.” He shuddered. “The results would be thoroughly catastrophic.” His foot tapped as he seemed to focus on the town outside the room, regardless of if there was a window to see through. “It’s also a home to others who seek to work with the unknown. It’s rare that people will dive into such a thing willingly. I don’t want to see that lost either.” He may have not known many people in Xalious, but he felt a connection to its overarching nature.
There is a small window that overlooks the village square and the Mage's Guild Tower. Josleen seems satisfied in his answer as she nods her head and rises. "Let's move to the hearth. Should there be a fire, it will be contained there." She leads him to the kitchen where she fills a pitcher with glass via a hand-pump. A nod to the hearth indicates that Linn should process with his experiment. "Do be careful."
Linn makes his way over taking the vial, leaving his own glass at the table for now. He began to take the plates off of his arm, which was as unceremonious as just pulling them clear of the gem-studded leather underneath. No straps to be undone, no rivets to be slid apart. He rolled up the leather to bare the skin. Those same scars that covered the back of his neck were also over the underside of his arm as well. Uncorking the vial he dips his gloved finger in to grab a small bit of the ooze before positioning himself over the hearth. A glance was thrown in Josleen’s direction to make sure she was ready to douse it in case he called for it. “Here goes.” He wiped it across the top of his forearm in one tiny stroke, where it immediately began to bubble and boil and his other hand gripped onto the stone tightly, face contorting in sudden pain. “Water, water water water” he began to repeat faster and faster until Josleen doused it.
Josleen purses her lips thinly as Linn decides to go through with this experiment that will likely result in a burn similar to the one still visible on her hand, the same one clutching water to douse him. She's quick on her feet, and Linn only only manages to utter the word water twice before Josleen's dumping the water on his hand. "This is insane. I have salve for burns. Let me fetch it." Before he can protest she crosses to the linen closet in the hallway and returns with a small jar of sticky, aloe-based puddy. "Was that worth it? Did it help advance your theory?" A shake of the open jar asks if he will apply it herself, or if she should apply it to him.
Linn hadn’t shown any response as Josleen commented and went out to grab the salve. The skin was already turning red where it was marked by the ooze as he looked over the washed off substance. It took him a little bit to actually notice that she was offering a salve to him, jerking back to attention as he realized it. “I’ll do it,” he said as he washed off the ooze remaining one the tip of the finger before disengaging the glove on his opposite hand, making his way to one of the couches to apply it. He gave a sharp exhalation at the questioned worth of the little experiment before a smile began to grow. He tensed his arm a little bit as he examined the damage, blinking twice before his eyes went wide. “Yes. In fact we might just have a bit of a breakthrough.” He got back up before remembering to apply the salve, picking the vial back up and turning it again. “This stuff’s definitely magical more than it is alchemical, unless it’s that magical kind of alchemy... and I think I just found a way to break it down.”
Josleen takes extra care not to touch the black goop as she hands off the jar. At best, it will burn her too, at worse, the damage may escalate on her third encounter of the close kind. She resumes her seat in the living room and watches Linn as he applies the salve. His conclusion bring no revelation. Josleen has already figured all of this out alongside the alchemist Hudson, but she remains silent. "Break it how?"
“Magically.” Linn jested before he decided to give an actual explanation. “It’s unstable, give it just the right push and it will start reacting and breaking down. Some of that excess made in the process is what burns. The rest can keep it going once you get enough of it. The push required is just a bit of concentrated magic I think.” He began looking for a depression in the stone of the hearth to pour some of the liquid. “Mind if I keep going with this stuff on the hearth? I feel bad for using your house a bit of a lab” he ended with a self-conscious ‘heh' under his breath.
Josleen smirks at Linn's bad joke. Har har. She nods as he explains, though her understanding is superficial. Spells aren't in her skillset. The notion of her kitchen-cum-lab gives her pause. Where else could Linn go? If The Guild is involved, their lab is off limits. Her desire to solve this mystery wins out against caution. "...I suppose," she replies. "Will you need anything else in your experiment?"
He looks back to Josleen at the question of what else he might need before shaking his head. “I shouldn’t, just some of the ooze and a surface that can hold it.” Finding a suitable spot on the hearth he gives one last look to Josleen for her approval before dripping the stuff out into the depression, where it made a small pool. He pinched his fingers together before drawing them apart, a stream of white-blue energy similar to the lights from his ring flowing between them. He lowered it over the ooze before putting the black substance and white energy together. Just like that an audible bubbling and snapping came from the ooze, the energy between his fingers immediately dissolving the moment the sounds began. He backed up a bit to find it continuing to boil, in fact it looked to be boiling more vigorously, even beginning to form its own frayed strands of energy as time went on even after he released his own. Just as it looked about ready to break its confines the reaction began to die down, leaving murky grey water as its result. A grin grew across his face as he looked at the remains, breathing a sigh of relief. “Some kind of unfortunate leftovers it looks like. It’s as if they got halfway through a spell and they couldn’t run it to completion."
Josleen starts at Linn's revelation. It dovetails perfectly with what Hudson and she discovered in Frostmaw when analyzing a different sample of the ooze. "I... hm..." Surely Linn isn't faking his dedicationg to Xalious and this investigation. Trusting her instincts, which tend to the gullible sometimes, Josleen explains. "I took a a sample to an alchemist in Frostmaw. During a series of tests, a talking tree from another plane popped into existence in the laboratory. A depressive fellow, but he said three mages -- two elves and a gray elf like those who have covered up the event here -- tried to summon something from his plane, but failed." She smiles sheepishly at having witheld this discovery all this time.
Linn kept playing with the remains of the ooze, drawing the strands of energy into it again where it began to bubble in a much more controlled manner. Eventually all that was left was clear water that did nothing under the magical assault. A passive nod at the mention of the alchemical tests turned to a snap of the head towards Josleen at the mention of the extradimensional fellow. “Well then. That changes things. A summoning…” he looked up towards the ceiling, not caring for the fact there was yet another floor between him and the sky. “Would explain a lot. I’d bet the storms are its path into this world. The ooze could just be fallout from the process of the spell, or possibly some kind of effect from the other plane.” He dipped the very tip of his finger into the water remaining from the reacted ooze. Nothing. “Hmph, at least we have a solid idea of what’s going on now. Now we can begin plans to stop it.”
Josleen wrings her hands together and bites her lower lip as she wrestles whether or not to go full confession. "Have you ever heard of the Order of the Shade?" It's unlikely Linn ever has for the Order is an ancient, long forgotten, tiny sect of long dead drow necromancers. Over 2,000 years ago the drow matrons slaughtered the necromancers and did their best to erase their memory from the planet. (ooc: https://www.hollowgame.com/wiki/Crown_of_the_Shade) But, it's up to Linn's player whether or not he's heard of this sect.
Linn shakes his head, looking a little disappointed he had nothing on it. It was no surprise to him though, he came from too far away for anything but the largest of events in this region to have reached his ears. “Never heard of it, you think they are connected to this?”
Josleen feels silly now for hiding all of this information from Linn. "Well.. there's more... Aha." She rubs her collarbone nervously. "I discovered in the mountains just off the road that connects the village to Craughmoyle's Southerm Gate a firepit with a symbol painted in black on its floor, and three squirrel corpses nearby. Their throats were slashed. Here." Near the front door is a table which holds keys, mail, a male wallet, a set of screws and bolts, and Josleen's purse. From it she retrieves a notepad and shows Linn the emblem of the Order oft he Shade. "That's what it looks like. I had it identified by Lady Larewen Dragana, a powerful necromancer based in Vailkrin." Linn is free to assume this means Larewen is a vampire, or otherwise undead. "She believes these three mages are amateurs toying around with an ancient magic they cannot control."
Linn cocks a brow. Of all things to sacrifice… squirrels? If the fallout of these events wasn’t so nasty that would have made for a decent (if odd) joke. Taking a look at the symbol he activates the ring on his finger again, drawing the symbol into the space along with the notes and images of the decomposition before closing it again. He showed no personal recognition of Larewen herself, but knew Vailkrin from the one or two visits he had there. Whether or not they were amateurs didn’t matter to him much. “With something capable of causing effects like we’ve seen it doesn’t matter whether or not they can control it. The fact that they haven’t shown any signs of stopping tells me that they don’t care for their damages.” He shook his head and scowled. “We’ve got our work cut out for us”
Josleen nods solemnly. "We do. Lady Larewen will be arriving in Xalious soon to aid m--- us. You should be there when she arrives." She glances at the clock on the wall and smiles to Linn in that way women do when they have finished with a conversation. "Hopefully the next event will yield more clues, hm? I should tend to other things that call upon my attention. Take care, Linn."
Linn nods in agreement. "I'm looking forward to it." He follows her gaze to the clock before looking back and giving another nod. “We’re making progress. Here’s to hoping we can end this soon.” With that he resealed the vial with the remaining ooze (It wasn’t much at this point) to give it back to Josleen. “It’s about time I should be going as well. We have enough answers for now.” He grabbed his pack and began to make his way out, putting his glass in the sink on the way. “You take care as well!” he called as he crossed the threshold of the door.