A Day of Preparation Before the Bone House

Session Summary: 06/25/2023

Ahhhh, the FINAL preparations before a most anticipated engagement! The morning began with a full sharing of intelligence. Charles laid out what he had learned about the City of Nod, the Dreamlands, and the troubling suggestion in multiple texts that the elven gates had been, among their many functions, pathways THROUGH the Dreamlands, and that this transit carried risk that the elves had managed through now-lost protocols. Kiren shared her research on the Bone House: its location, its entry requirements, and the specific detail that wagers there sometimes took the form of dreams, luck, or other intangible commodities. Diana reported her experimental findings: the hearts fed on gossamer and sent a fraction of what they drained somewhere else, somewhere she could not follow with her current methods.

With this shared foundation, they spent the afternoon pursuing final tasks. Kiren slipped into the Nebelmarkt again and found her way to the Rusty Dagger Inn, where she negotiated with Vladislav, an intermediary for the Bone House, to obtain the current entry token. The price of this transaction was one of those Kiren prefers not to discuss in detail. The token was obtained. Progress was made.

Charles visited several tattoo shops across the city, asking about the marks that had appeared on all their skin after the Missing Moment. The first shop was dismissive. The second was curious. The third, an elderly practitioner who specialized in magical inscriptions, studied the work with a magnifying lens for a long time before looking up with an expression that the heroes had already learned to find alarming. The first tattoo, she said, was a symbol for a gateway to a hidden realm. It was part of a larger formula, and it had not been completed by the hand that started it. Somebody or SOMETHING had been writing on them from the inside. The formula was still being written.

They returned to the Golden Stag and dressed for an evening at an establishment that catered to the city's elite. Mutu oiled his joints. Kiren sharpened her knives and hid them under her evening clothes. Charles prayed. Diana communicated with HIM in the silent way they had, and HIM arranged himself into the most socially acceptable configuration he could manage, which was still deeply unsettling but at least wasn't actively THREATENING!