"I would say the S.S. Grey runs on fairy dust and wishes, but here, you might take that literally," says Sal. "She has no crew, nor does she, in her current state, function. You may have noticed that none of her guns fired on you. She worked on principles which I don't even begin to understand. She's so large because she was created for adults by someone the size of a child, who overcompensated. Don't even ask why she's bright green! As for the name of our employer, how can we be sure our enemy won't be tipped off if we speak it? The laws of magic seem to be different here, yet the power of names still holds, does it not?" He looks at Noah. "Is it safe to speak his name here?"

A nondescript figure hardly distinguishable from the tavern scenery spoke up in a French-accented woman’s voice, “Appelez-moi Mistral.”  Even those nearest might have forgotten she was present, but there she was.  Mistral answered Sal’s question, but directed the answer toward Captain Hook, “We ought not give a name, but he is known to the supernal realms as Apocalypse, the End of All Things.  I do not give this name as a threat, but as context for whom the doctor is important to.  We come in peace, and seek only Doctor Lennis and a cure to Bandersnatch venom.  We would welcome peaceable trade or terms in exchange.”

With that said, Mistral gave voice to a curiosity that was bothering her, in typically blunt fashion, “You are an Englishman, Capitaine, but yet you affect stylings of old French aristocratie.  I find this curious.”

Noah inclined his head to Mistral, "She has it. Titles not names. But if an animal fea asks about your name, don't even address the question." Noah was looking around at the various odds and inns as pirates had always been a pack of superstitions through and through. This was the realm of the Hook after all. "Grey is a good girl..." was all he would add to the comment of the ship.

Argentus smiled.  His first genuine one since his outburst on the ship.  He doubted that - given his hair - anyone could miss his lineage, so he wasn't exactly giving away any secrets when he put on his mother's family's accent to hazard his guess.  "Ach!" He declared, "I kinnae imagine if ah wahr tah be cahst as a villain by a reelm of fayit, dat I would do other than put on a redcoat meself!"

In his normal voice, he added, "If I were placed by fate into a role I did not naturally aspire to, I would very likely put on the garb of another to do it."

 Hook pondered for a moment. "So you're piloting green a magic ship created by a child, come here in service to the End of the World to rescue a doctor?"

 He blinked a few times and shrugged. "That's not even the strangest thing I have heard today and I don't judge any of you to be lying. As for the reason I dress in French attire, I am a pirate, m'lady. It is much easier to ambush a French vessel disguised as a Frenchman."

 He pulled a small, tarnished bell from his coat and rang it. A young boy came up and Hook patted him on the head. "Go fetch the red fruit, the white leafed plant, some rum from my still, and one of my full pixie shakers."

 The boy nodded and ran off as Hook sat back down. "If you've come here in service to such a powerful lord, then might you have a way to leave this island? As you can see, I currently find myself caring for a rather large group of children who want nothing more than to go home."

Mistral turned Argentus a quizzical glance at the sudden outburst of Scottish, but did not remark upon it.

When Captain Hook claimed to be in the care of children who wish to go home, Mistral looked over the many morose young waifs in the tavern.  Had all of them been kidnapped from the Fallen World to be stranded in this place?  The young woman had claimed that most here were former prisoners of Pan, which gave her cause to wonder how they came to be free.  She may have misjudged the Captain, though she still begrudged him the unprovoked attack on the S.S. Grey.

Mistral spoke plainly, "Oui.  We do have means to escape le île, to destinations near or far.  If you can offer significatif assistance to reclaim the doctor and find l'antidote to Bandersnatch venom, perhaps we may come to an accord."

 Hook nodded. "I am in the process of procuring the ingredients for the antidote as we speak. The real question is by what means can you escape? Naturally, I have tried to ferry the children from this island by boat, back when my crew were still men and the children here were few. Once we exited the fog, time stopped as though the world itself were a portrait that we could only view.

 The children tell me tales of who they think I am from their stories, a boogeyman to foil a heroic boy."

 His tone turned bitter. "So afraid are many that they flee from me back to their captor. I served queen and country on the high seas for a decade. Yes, I was a pirate, but it served to cut the supplies of our enemy during war. I found myself lost in the fog one day when I came to this island. It was there that I met the first of the children.

 He had been carved, stretched, and twisted, hunted down by those twinkling devil bugs to be dragged back... and I've been fighting that elfin devil ever since."

To the question of how the means of escape, Mistral answered succinctly, "Doors."  Seeing that the Captain didn't find this word sufficiently explanatory, she elaborated, "Doorways from where one is, to elsewhere.  Distance is no object, but some correspondency to la destination is needed."  She paused and calmly paced the room, then stopped near Noah and said, "Yet it seems that transport is not la difficulté primaire.  When you return to the world, you find it in stasis.  Or rather, perhaps, it is you who are in stasis?  Très intrigante."  She tapped her chin and considered, "Have you investigated the cause?  Is it a property of this realm, or a curse bestowed by your... adversaire?"

Captain Hook then bemoaned being misrepresented and misunderstood as a boogeyman, when it was in fact the 'heroic boy' who was more to be feared.  Mistral replied to this with typical placid demeanor and tone, "Legends may hold a thread of truth, but are never true in whole.  Speaking for moi, any initial animosity I held toward you was due to the cannonballs more than the tales."

 Hook raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. "It seems apologies for that are in order. I was perhaps rash in my conclusions, but it is often gut instinct that saves a pirate from the noose. Giant warships are not generally known to be rescue vessels.

 With regards to our predicament, I must confess that I have learned little. Our opponent has not been forthcoming about it. The mermaids made promises to my men and the young men who escaped captivity to return their time but none of us have seen them again. Smee was the last to agree to the mermaids' bargain, having hoped to learn their secret and return. However, he did not and none of us are any wiser for his loss. Now only girls and young boys remain.

 I dare not accept their offer, tempting though it may be. I have no reason to believe any who went with them remain alive."


 Soon, the young boy came back with the items Hook had requested, flowers, fruit, and a pixie trapped in what looked like a lantern repurposed into a salt shaker. He mixed the fruit and leaves into a paste and violently shook the pixie, sifting the dust into the mixture. He handed Mistral the paste and a cloth. "Put this into the bite wound and seal it with cloth. When the cloth begins to turn green and rot, replace it. The paste will draw the venom from the wound and the cloth will absorb it. He should be cleansed of poison in roughly three days."
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:46, Sat 18 Apr 2020.

When Mistral came near him Noah arched his head over hers and took a breath. He exhaled a bit of sand in a temporal working. He stuck his head into the little cloud of sand and started looking around as if he was Periscope into or out of something. "An Ark." He even looked over each of the group. "Grey isn't a Warship, she is an Ark. She was retrofitted to be a warship later."

Time sight, feeding the info to Mistral.

 Hook quirked an eyebrow at the Dragon before him. "Are you telling me that you are Noah now?"

 It seems he had meant it in jest because he didn't wait for an answer. "You can consider this medicine my apology for opening fire on you without provocation."

 He glanced back at Noah. "Still, an ark is most fitting for our situation."
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:19, Sat 18 Apr 2020.

As soon as Noah’s temporal sands wafted over Mistral, she reeled.  Her eyes began to twitch erratically and she swayed on her feet, staggering unwittingly against Argentus and grabbing his arm in a steadying grip.  She knew that her eyes ought to have opened to the inexorable flow of time were it not impossible in this timeless realm, akin to dividing by zero.

Teetering with eyes shut tight, Mistral gasped quietly, “End the spell, s’il vous plaît...”

Noah promptly fell over as he shut the flow of information off to Mistral. "Didn't expect that, sorry." Once he was down he exhaled another cloud to mix with the sand, a blue mist this time before it settled over his head like a divers bell. "I may need a mechanical clock, something with gears in it."

Now for prime:
11:44, Today: Noah rolled 1 success using 6d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s ((6,1,6,6,8,4)).

"The center of the effect is likely its source. Tie a clock to its source and you may end up with a way to make a hole in the middle of it. Time the clock to an atomic clock in the world back home and it should match up." He smiled in spite of the fact he was on the ground, living with teleportation vertigo meant he was used to the world spinning on him."You won't be cured, but with a drop of time from this place matched to time in the normal world it would be a bandage on a wound. You would have to keep winding the watch but even enough time to enjoy a glass of wine, a conversation, or to let a kid tell their parents they love them and will be back soon... Well, the worth of all the world in a drop of time."

"A bandage until a remedy is found if it works." He didn't look at mistrals and his eyes independently rolled about from the time vertigo. "It's gonna need a test. If I make the thread and hold it, think you could give it a rhythm? If the thread maintains resonance then we may be able to give them hope."

  Hook stared at Noah blankly for a minute. "I only understood half of that. What is an 'atomic clock'? Also I'm afraid there is only one mechanical clock on this island, that little brat destroyed all of the others."

"Of course there is. I suppose that means one of us is going to have find a way past a rather large set of teeth in the near future."

Mistral steadied herself after Noah shut off the incomprehensible temporal sight, and took several deep breaths before opening her eyes again.  She ran a hand along Noah's scaled neck, giving him a small nod to confirm that there were no hard feelings for the mishap.


Mistral glanced to the men in her company and asked them, "Is that the offer les néréides made to you?  To return you to our world and time?"


The conversation turned to a potential remedy offered by Noah for the curse of timelessness.  Noah's methods were near-inexplicable at the best of times, and hearing his idea in goblin-market speech didn't help.  She answered the dragon's request quietly, "I cannot sing les résonances near so well as Grey, but I can try."

While Noah readied his experiment, Mistral turned to Captain Hook and asked, "How might one make contact with l'adversaire?  He is the one we must deal with in order to rescue the Doctor."

OOC: no offers were made to anyone but Argentus (since he resisted their song)

 Hook pointed up toward the mountain with his good hand. "There, at the base of the mountain on the innermost part of the island. Sadly, I have never made it quite so far myself, but that is where the children say they fled from. There are many traps in the forest protecting the place. Also..."

 He motions to the young boy who had brought the herbs. "This one told me a story of a doctor here on the island. Apparently, she sacrificed herself to help him escape."

 The little boy, who was far less "transformed" than the rest, lowered his head in shame. He seemed to be no more than eight. "She was a nice lady. She said her boyfriend would come and save us all."

 Hook ruffled the boy's hair. "Then you all came along, geared for war, piloting an ark, and apparently serving Apocalypse itself... which begs the question, Who is this Doctor?"

Noah did rumble at Mistral in a quiet apology as he worked. He had not intended to make her ill.

Noah tilted his head from his position on the floor and pinched something as he pulled out a thread from the little cloud that he had set up. A thread made of prime and sand that he pulled tight. "Found it." He held up the thread, what he considered up was more left and over.

"That is a sympathetic connection to time. Give it a pluck, I can touch it but I can't pluck it."

He tilted his head side to side, "The doctor is a delightful woman with a mind wise enough to mix tech and magic. She is a close personal friend of the end."

Argentus continued to be as confused as Hook as to what exactly Noah was up to, but he'd grown used to that feeling.  It usually turned out well.  When it was mentioned that the boy had been saved by Emily, his attention perked up.  "Don't feel bad about surviving, nor of being changed by the fight to do so."  He said to the boy.  "By letting us know about this you may have saved the doctor in turn now."

23:32, Today: Argentus rolled 1 success using 6d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 3,2,10(+1),1,7,1.  Int/Occ - would the boy be enough of a connection for Talion?

 The boy looked up at Argentus and a grin spread across his face as Hook sent him off to play. Hook still seemed a bit unsatisfied with the answer he'd gotten but said nothing more of it.

Mistral kept silent as the curative was prepared, but glanced sidelong at the others and wondered if they would object to such mistreatment of a pixie.  She was surprised when the young boy handed her the paste and a cloth and informed her how it was to be applied.  Others in their coven were surely better qualified to dress wounds, but she would give it a try for Noah nonetheless.  As the dragon examined his threads of Prime, Mistral set to work gently applying the paste to the wounds and then covering them in bandages.  Her ministrations were more successful than she'd expected.

OOC:  Sorry I missed this earlier, but here's a tiny retcon to add it in now!  Here's a Medicine roll to attempt to apply the cure:

• 18:59, Today: Mistral rolled 2 successes using 3d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 10(+9),7,1.  Int + Medicine 0.

Untrained doctor Mist :D

With a whisper Mistral opened her mystical sight to the bonds of sympathy connecting all things, and focused on the single gleaming thread Noah had pulled.  She gave the dragon an uncertain look, but then nodded and knelt next to the small cloud.  She poised her hands like a harpist, then carefully plucked at the glimmering cord to sound out a resonant note audible to those with hearing attuned to the supernal.  Mistral made some invisible adjustments and then tried again, plucking a new pair of notes in slightly different tones.  She then paused and took a breath, then began to delicately strum with both hands, combining the resonant arcane notes into a simple but sweet melody that sounded through the local supernal sphere.

 Unfortunately, despite Mistral's surety of hand, the note sounded sour and disconcordant. She was absolutely certain that this was the way the notes were meant to be played but also certain that they weren't supposed to sound like that.

Argentus winced as Mistral played the discordant note.  "Was that a mystical issue, or a Mistral's-not-a-harpist issue?"  He asked.

Mistral cut short the dissonant melody soon after starting, for she recognized that it sounded very wrong.  Plucking discordant notes on the strings of creation was inadvisable, to say the least.  She answered Argentus with a shake of the head, "I performed the melody correctly, certainement.  The string was out of tune, if you will."

Mistral rose to her feet and stated, "This malédiction temporelle is impervious to supernal manipulation.  A more direct solution will be required."  Perhaps breaking this timeless curse was in fact impossible, but to a mage an impossibility is merely a problem demanding greater cleverness, will, and work.


Mistral nodded once, then said, "Measures will be taken to make the journey less difficult, but any specific information would be of use.  Have you any object connected to l'adversaire?  Any thing with association to him, or to his lair?  It will help."


Mistral listened to the boy, then remarked simply, "Her boyfriend sent us."  Looking back to Hook then to the boy again, she asked, "Sacrificed herself in what sense?"

Noah a quiet and respectful patient to the workings of the good Doctor Mistral. He smiled at her the whole time she applied the medicine. "Thank you love." He smiled wide when she plucked the string. "You brilliant and drop-dead gorgeous woman." He looked at Hook, "You sure we are not directed connected to Wonderland?"

He took on the voice of the Cheshire cat. "Here in wonderland time moves in seven directions but everyone chooses forward forward forward." The more excited he got the less he focused on making sense. Insead he let Mistral in on his idea. There was a device used for people with shaking hands. It countered their motions to hold a fork or spoon steady. His idea was to set up a number of counterbalances so it stops a persons personal time. If they are held still long enough Their employer should be able to pluck them into the current timeline. Like snatching a fish out of a still pond and putting it in a river.

Counter the motions of the time thread until still, then attach an active working thread for realtime. He had no intention of fixing things, but setting a foundation for The End to work off of, the initial research so to speak.