Ornwin says "Cassandra's suggestion of a curse across time seems likely. I suppose that means if we keep exploring, we might meet more Rumps who are live, at least at some moment of time."

Shad generously considers all that has been said. Occasionally, his eyes steal over to the barkeep who busies himself cottaging some cheese. Unknown to himself, several of his fingers have begun to twitch in rhythm to the man's cottaging.

"Time travel," he begins, in his most expansive of mannerisms, "is one thing. To be the fly imprisoned in the amber is another."

Noting the general look of perplexity that his opening has produced, Shad produces another pair of options: "Did the card take you back in time or did the card transport you to a Relang imprisoned in time?"

He ponders the matter, "You weren't able to exit the Rump's chamber, confined there without egress until you brandished your card. Is that a prison or a paradox?"

"After you had escaped, you beheld a painting that was not the one you had first beheld."

He spreads his arms wide as if to say, what more do you need to know?

                                                                                    ~~~

So the painting of Relang changed after we returned from battling with him? Did the card change as well?

"Are we to visit each painted Rump and restore them to their proper state?"

Is this some twist on Dorian Gray with the paintings showing the corrupted version of the Rumps? Then we put them out of their misery and things go back to how they should be?

Rasxif is unable to offer comment on the appearance of Relang’s portrait in the wake of his defeat, having been comatose during the time that said discovery was made. However, talk of time travel keeps him attentive to the exchange between his companions and the paranormalist, his imagination piqued by such a possibility.

The card in question is produced and with its production, a certain hypothesis confirmed.

Then, Shad produces the following: "While there are some who would argue that murdering the Rumps and their pups in their beds would be tantamount to 'restoring them to their proper state.'"

The patron pauses momentarily, no doubt chewing over the word "tantamount," enjoying its taste and casting about for another opportunity to produce it in conversation. He doesn't find one and thus continues with a little less wind in his sails but gassy nonetheless.

"It's not so much that all would be restored to a prelapsarian state..."

Again, he falters, enamored for a second time with a certain word. This time, he regains his self-control more rapidly.

"Okay, let me put it this way. If you were to travel back in time via your card tricks and kick enough Rump such that it doesn't grow up to be a monumental pain in the Rump."

He looks bemusedly about and offers his two cents: "Why, then, this Tegel place wouldn't be rife with lich lords and what not."

Well, I suppose one could see the inverse of Dorian Gray at play here :)

Ornwin says, "Well if freeing the manor from lich lords and the like is a good idea, I'm willing to go on kicking whatever Rump we can find."

'Right-o! Back to the manor, then. Who's got the cards?"

”It sounds as though there are a lot of Rumps that need kicking,” Rasxif observes, ”but I’m willing to help see it done.”

Archonia was beginning to wonder if somehow she had also travelled in time, going back. That would explain a lot. But with a shrug, she realized if one waited long enough, you'd get back to the right point anyway, so she had nothing but time. One might as well use it dealing with Rumps.

Outside the Emperor of Curd, as an accompaniment to the curb-side pump, the guests find a soap dish stand complete with a lavender-seed flecked bar of lavender soap. It smells of the chateaux and the sunny expanse of a continental country. There is also the unmistakable whiff of judgment.

Laved or not, the guests enter the Emperor of Curd and deposit some admittedly squishy viscera upon the reception counter.

Bright and crisp, save for the stain of a livery upon his vest along with other less recognizable ones, Chester identifies the magical intestines before him.

"That's a stomach lining of holding, type II," he announces.

"And that's a large intestine of climbing," he proclaims.

Oh, that's why Brant had clung to it so. The other guests had forebore from sharing their own conclusions on that matter.

They're both pretty rich in bile (or au jus if you prefer) with some of it invariably splattering a just deposited platter of bagels and lox. That might or might not be a deterrent for some of the guests.

“Intestine of Climbing? Is it worn by the user or used like a rope?”

”Must be hard on the digestion,” Rasxif says with a frown.

The following morning as the guests groggily gather round the breakfast buffet, set this morning with steaming platters of kippers and scrambled eggs, a pitcher of orange juice, and an urn of black coffee, they hear Chester clicking his nails on the counter of his desk. Studiously ignoring his summons, they dedicate themselves to putting fork to plate, pausing only to disperse the right amounts of a peppery sauce on to their portions or secure possession of another pastry.

Rising above the slurps and swallows a bass voice thrums: "Friends, somewhere in the heart of the steaming jungle lies the answer to the whispered tales - rumors of a magnificent city and foul, horrid rituals! Here brave guests might find riches and wonders - or death! Are you brave enough to face the terrors of the unknown and find the Forbidden City!"

Reluctantly pausing their glorious ingestion of kippered eggs, the guests look up to see the instrument of the voice, a divine half-human, half-elf half-breed, dressed in swirling sylvan robes and brandishing a clubby extension of oak.

"What makes it forbidden? Why look for it? What questions need answering?" Archonia asks the curiosity before them.

"Pardon," says Brant, barely containing a belch.
"I didn't quite catch all that. What needs killin' and what was the reward, again?"

These are not questions the non-binary half-elven druid has anticipated. Previously, all they had needed do was to proclaim and slobbering subservience had followed. They try again.

"Friends, somewhere in the heart of the steaming jungle lies the answer to the whispered tales - rumors of a magnificent city and foul, horrid rituals! Here brave guests might find riches and wonders - or death! Are you brave enough to face the terrors of the unknown and find the Forbidden City!"

They hold their ear-to-ear smile a beat too long, their go-to persuasion method.

Then, they continue their peroration:

"Merchants carrying precious loads of rare goods from the jungle lands have been waylaid, their goods taken and their men captured or killed. Even then, those who survived these raids had to face headhunters, brain fever, giant leeches, cannibals, and leopards. Few men ever returned!"

From behind concierge's desk, Chester taps his fingernails more insistently. It's beneath his dignity, of course, to call out across the room.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 21:56, Mon 19 Feb.

"Cultists. Rare treasure. Got it." Brant beams. "Sign me up!"

Ornwin says, "Rare treasures, certainly. Brain leeches, not so good. But I will go for it if the rest of you are willing."

Archonia had not gotten any answers. Just the opposite- it was more questions. Do headhunters have to hunt outsiders since the natives have brain fever? What do cannibals taste like? What percentage of women have returned?

But the tapping of Chester's fingers suggested he had something to say. Perhaps that was where the answers were, so she went over to the concierge desk and asked, "Have you the light of it?"

Conspiratorially, Chester leans towards Archonia, his reserve of dignity having already been exhausted, close enough for her to smell the barn upon him. He has already pushed his "Rough and Ready" figures and playset to the side in anticipation of this.

"Archonia," he nearly wickers, "the forbidden city is where the ghosts of the Rumps' dead enemies have gone to roost. Were a tribesman to go there, he would lose his soul, having crossed into the barnyard of the dead."

He pauses here and then says, in all seriousness, that he doesn't know what would happen to a tribeswoman were to go there. He's not even sure, all things considered, that there is even such a thing as a tribeswoman any longer. There is no shortage of men claiming to be women, he lets her know.

"These forbidden city dwellers have made off with my cask of amontillado, which I have always stored in the darkest corner of the Curd catacombs. I suggest you start your search there."

He leans back and steps to the side and motions to the trapdoor on which he has been standing.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:49, Sun 03 Mar.

Ornwin eyes the trapdoor and mutters, "Well, going down is more natural than going up. Are we going the usual way, with me first?"

"The Amaranthine Doxy believes flesh is mutable, but still finds it off-putting to find them in the bleeding lodges," Archonia replied. "As for the ones without flesh, if they were enemies of the Rumps, and we have been fighting them as well, should we not leave them undisturbed, the cask notwithstanding?"

”That all you’ve had stored down there? Nothing in the walls that you’re trying to keep hidden?” the gnome asks suspiciously.

Rasxif brawls his blade, ready to follow Ornwin down into the unknown.

If someone's doing the bookkeeping, Brant will go ahead and swap out his hauberk for plate.

As I noted on OC, OSRIC says plate costs 400 gp and conveys AC 3. Assuming that this is agreeable, I will change Ornwin's armor to plate.