Felix says Hey, tell me if the card changes, then turns his head toward the position of the card's presumed viewer.  Arnie watches the card carefully to see what happens.

Zar's head rears back as he registers the last card, instantly suspecting that they have been lured into a trap. He coughs to clear his throat and looks hectically around, ready to dodge any incoming attack. He refrains from attacking the Fool though - Zar is not a man of brawn, to be honest, and will always seek to settle a riddle or a conflict in a brainy way.

Sidd just gawks and grips his crozier.

Leaning too, too close to Zar's ear, the lord of the flies whispers, "There can be truth without fact; fact without truth can be as well." As the heat of putrefaction emanates from the shut-in's corpse in August, so does the breath from the lord's lips.

Omm leaned in to hear the Lord of Flies whisper and feels dumber for the effort, "What a load of horse manure!. Always with the riddles in this cursed place! It's no wonder the Gods have seen fit to wipe this realm from the heavens. Good riddance, I say! The hell with this place and its people!"

Omm's heartbeat is now beating rapidly and the voices around him become thin and cavernous: the sound he hears before entering battle. The warrior's left eye begins twitching and he feels a warmth course through his body as he grips his sword ever tighter.

For the moment, he restrains his base instinct and doesn't attempt to decapitate the riddling fool on the spot.

''It's all lies!'' Zar cries out in indignation. ''Lies and illusion! I refuse to believe anything of it!''
''There is no foul water. No reeking stench. No flies. There's not even this cave!''

As if to prove his point he closes his eyes and sits down, right into the disgusting brine they are standing in. He completly ignores his senses, shutting their input out, and wills it all away.

What about this guy?, Felix asks.  Is there this guy?  As he says it he pokes the jester to be sure of whether or not he is really there.

By the way, did the card change at all when Arnie was watching it?

Felix regrets poking the man of mystery (imagine poking an eel's crevice), but far, far less than Zar regrets his sit.

Responding warmly to Omm's heated expostulations, the mysterious man shares his wisdom, this time, with him. If the ratio of drool to wisdom is unbalanced, so be it.

"There is strength in calm but no calm in strength."
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:20, Mon 19 Oct 2015.

Omm is at the end of his rope now, "I have no worldly idea what you are blabbering about! How about telling us something we can act upon, instead of just flapping your fool gums to hear the sound it makes when you force air out of your hole?!"

"How the hell do we get more cards so we can go home!?" he asks in frustration.

Omm looks at the jester and then turns to his companions, as if to say, 'what next guys'? all the while, firmly gripping his sword, ready to strike as the moment strikes him.

Sidd takes a step forward. ''Oh, puh-lease. I can get that Omm is about strength, ok. But that doddering old codger being about truth and facts? Ha! Ok, spill it. What kind of riddle do you want to give me?''

Arnie had opened his mouth to say something (wise and/or inspiring, no doubt), but with the others taking over him shady he decides not to bother for the moment.  Better to see what the damnable jester has to say first.

If Sidd had hoped for a private audience, as it were, the Duke of Decomposition chants to himself a refrain about a chicken and its bits, before coming to a sense about what he wants to say.

"When the guests become the host, upon what shall the flies feed?"

Given the fool's tinkling yet moist tones, it's difficult to tell where he has placed the stress.

You are all still in a rather festering place, another part of the subterranean manor chambers, still buzzy, still stinky, still shitty. A wall of the same stretches across the chamber some distance beyond the koan-prone bro.

Sidd rears back. ''I do NOT want to become the host of this place. No way! Keep your flies to yourself.''

Sidd walks away from the Fool and circles the room instead, checking every foot of the wall for further exits.

Zar dawns that he might have made an error of judgment, but on the other hand he is way too proud to easily admit to that. He continues to sit in the vile water and tries to wish it all away by sheer concentration. After all he is sure that they are fooled in some way.

At this point Arnie has lost much of his patience (although that's okay, as patience probably isn't one of those things his patron deity values).  He looks the jester dead in the face and says Look, what do you actually want?  Not just from us, but at all?  Surely you must want more from life than to sit in this dank pit giving riddles to strangers.

"If I understand things right, not going to be many strangers soon, anyways. The whole place is going to pot and Mister Cryptic will be left here with just himself," Omm grumbles.

"We'll see how you like that!"

Sidd scrutinizes the wall of maggots, wondering if there might be a crevice into which he might squeeze, leading to ... a greater hall of maggots -- although as far as maggot-themed domiciles go, this one's pretty great. He does spot a depression in a particular area of the wall, into which he might he might stick an entire arm. But only Zar, he thinks, would be crazy enough to do that.

"I'm the Lord of this Pit. What are you the lord of, shit-tosser?" the lord of this pit fires back at Arnie. It's unclear if, as the lord of excretion and flies, he should be more careful about the denigration of shit.

"What, do you think you're going somewhere, card-tosser?" he tosses back at Omm.

Whirling to face his wall, his bells all a tinkle, he shouts at Sidd, "Unhand my wall."

It's a loud shout, even deafening. You seem to have alarmed him.

Summoning all the bravery he has ever had, and probably the next year's reserves as well, Arnie strides over to stand by Sidd and defiantly say to the jester Or what, bub?

Felix, on the other hand, decides that this would be a great time to get out of the jester's line of sight.  He cautiously edges around until he is completely behind the motley man (assuming that he's facing Sidd and Arnie at this point).

"Wall of flies...Wall of lies" Omm says lowly. Without another word, Omm walks to Sidd and begins tearing at the depression. He hopes to bring this place down by destroying the wall.

Sidd looks hopefully at Arnie - but no, the priest is not putting his arm into the hole. Then Omm comes up, and he tears at the wall. Which is great if it works - but he is not putting his arm into that hole either.

Damn.

Sidd realizes that it is left to him. Oh well. He has two arms anyway, he can probably do without one.
He puts his arm into the maggoty crevice, as far as it goes, and gropes around with his fingers in the hope of finding something. You never know, anything might be inside it. An exit. A key. Even a card with the Fool on it.

Zar notices that something more important as his own deliberations is going on, and begrudgingly he swallows his pride and ceases his attempts on meditation. Egad, that water is really awful anyway. He quickly rises to his feet.

Praying to all past and future deities that the maggots are not the burrowing sort, (but, his rational side protests, aren't all maggots of the burrowing sort?) Sidd (and his arm) take the plunge. In a rushing second, his arm reaches its fullest extension, touching nothing but grub, save for the tip of his forefinger which pushes against a rigidity. As exciting as this is, Sidd knows he can't extract the hard thing with a fingertip. He'll have to do more.

The jester's plea whines from afar, "Unhand my box, I said."

"Pay no attention to the Jester," Omm commands. Omm will assist Sidd in any way he can, even if it means shoving him aside to muscle the rigidity free using brute force.

"We are well past negotiations..." he mutters angrily.

It's unlikely that more people will fit in that tight spot, so Felix and Arnie both hold their positions while they await the outcome of Omm's action.

The jester's plea is so blatantly reminiscent of reverse psychology that Sidd nearly withdraws his hand from the hole. Or maybe it is just his dislike of maggots. Either way, it cannot be helped, he has to see this through.

''Gyaaah!'' With a gurgle of utter disgust Sidd gives it all to reach and grab that thing he feels, presumably a box. His shoulder vanishes inside the winding maggots and he takes a deep breath to follow with his upper body and even head if need be.

''Why isn't the idiot simply using his crozier?'' Zar asks and shakes his head.

Like a farmer delivering an albino calf from the straitened canal of a heifer, Sidd extrudes the jester's treasure from his wall of maggots, launching a tremendous spray of the same with the final, super-grunty extrusion. At the end of his extrusion he has his prize: a grub-smeared box. He wipes away the great gobs of grubs (in for a penny, in for a pound). It's a diabolical container with obscene carvings celebrating the debased themes of decomposition, limericks, and whist. It has three key holes: copper, silver, and gold.

From what seems to be a remote corner of the cavern, you think you can make out the mewling of a spoilt child who has just been thrown by his favorite rocking horse.

OOC Edited color of bronze key to copper. thank nothing of it.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:58, Sun 15 Nov 2015.

"We found a set of silver keys, right?" Omm asks. "Not sure about the others..."

''We had a whole set,'' Zar comments. ''Won them from the Ladies and used them to open... I think something in the Stargazer's abode. Do we still have them?''
''Though, no. One of those keys was copper, not bronze...''
This message was last edited by the player at 22:58, Sun 15 Nov 2015.