Fantasy Steamhaven: Land of the Lost

[ArcticFox]

"I'll just have to call on Mox directly and ask him for passage then." Lianna concluded. "Is there something of yours that you could be able to give me so that Mox knows I'm here with permission? Well, sort of."

 

[Cartoonicat]

"I have but my candle and my bell, both I am unwilling to part with." Ymara looked around again, round eyes watching their surroundings. "Be wary. It has been a very long time since one of the living has visited. He'll likely be fascinated with you, though I cannot promise in the best of ways..."

- Enter Mox's domain
- Recruit Ymara

 

[ArcticFox]

"I hope he won't try to dissect me. I don't know if I can fight two demons in the same day." She sighed. "Thank you, Ymara. You've been strangely nice, considering I'm a Hunter." With that, she was ready to enter Mox's domain and hopefully breeze through it.

 

[Cartoonicat]

"I am simply treating you how you have treated me," Ymara said, inner rows of teeth revealing in a smile that looked more like the barring of fangs, but Lianna knew better by now. "The truffles were delicious." The demon waved farewell before drifting back to it's own domain.

With no team and Ymara gone, Lianna was on her own in a completely new world.

***

Mox's Domain
​

The path Ymara had set her on lead, in a linear fashion, North through the Demon Plane. Going too far left or too far right resulted in Lianna standing at the edge of a cliff above rivers that devolved into smoke clouds of varying colors. An abyss, like most of Ymara's domain. So, she had no choice but to walk along a continuously swaying road comprised of multiple platforms. Some platforms touched, providing ease of transitioning from one surface to the other, where others were several feet apart and required strong legs to leap the distance.

Thankfully, Lianna was a Hunter.

As she traveled North, the rumbling grew louder until, in the distance, Lianna quite literally watched a magnificent white-trunk tree with mystic red leaves sprout into existence. Behind it, an almost snowy scene that glistened in sunlight that seemed to stream from every direction.

- Investigate the tree
- Explore the red grass area
- Enter the snowy area
- Other

 

[ArcticFox]

When she entered the new and colourful domain, Lianna realised that she did not know where to go from there. She had forgotten to ask in which direction laid the next domain. Perhaps it was time to rely on her instinct. And her instinct told her that the big weird tree in the middle must be something important.

 

[Cartoonicat]

The tree, at first glance, look relatively normal aside from the coloring. Up close, the base travelled about half a mile long—either it had grown exponentially since she first saw it, or perception was tricky here. Low-hanging divots in the wood and sprouting branches provided reachable footholds, should Lianna try to go higher for a better view of the surrounding land.

Carved into the trunk were words and formulas written in seemingly thousands of different languages, all but one foreign to Lianna. It read "CO² = insight".

- Climb the tree
- Touch the engravings
- Read the formula
- Take notes on empty Monster Journal pages
- Keep walking
- Other

 

[ArcticFox]

"Carbon dioxide?" Lianna raised an eyebrow, then shook her head. She looked up the tree to see if there were any good handholds. Perhaps it would provide a good vantage point.

 

[Cartoonicat]

Upon either grabbing the nearest foothold or speaking half the formula aloud, Lianna felt a small hum beneath her hand. Almost a vibration, barely there. Several divots in the bark and young branches offered a clear path to the first thick branch, sturdy and standing about 30 feet off the ground.

Aside from the slight hum, nothing else seemed to be happening.

- Climb the tree
- Step away
- Stab the trunk
- Observe
- Other

 

[ArcticFox]

It was a weird thing for a tree to do, but Lianna assumed that she would not be encountering many normal things in this world. She continued her ascent.

 

[Cartoonicat]

Climbing higher, Lianna would notice that the snowy area beyond her new vantage point was not actually snow; river rapids, much like those below the cliff albeit more solid and peppered with large, jutting rocks, stretched for at least a mile. It grew increasingly hard to discern where one wave crashed and another began to form; the activity below seemed to meld together.

She'd need to find some way to cross.

- Climb higher
- Climb down
- Look for a way to cross
- Scan for danger
- Other

 

[ArcticFox]

Lianna decided to look around and see if there was any way to cross that foaming plain. If not, perhaps climbing higher would provide a way.

 

[Cartoonicat]

Smaller, slightly less sharp rocks peppered a dangerous path through the foaming rapids, a true test of agility. What looked to be an oddly-shaped tree trunk on the other side of the water now appeared to be a vertical bridge that, if pushed, would more than clear the distance and provide safe passage. Unfortunately, Lianna was on her own and specialized in strength, not agility. She would have to traverse the risky rock path herself or turn around if she couldn't come up with a clever way to cross. Nothing else in the vicinity stood out as particularly helpful.

Whether she decided to climb upwards for a better look or not, a twinge pinched the back of Lianna's head. A small headache.

- Climb up
- Climb down
- Try calling for assistance
- Something else

 

[ArcticFox]

Lianna took a moment, grabbed the heavy book from her pack and looked around.

"Mox, if you are there now would be the time to show yourself." She called, then added, "Please? I have a gift for you."

 

[Cartoonicat]

As her headache intensified, so did a creeping wave of disorientation. The tree bark's natural texture seemed to blend into a face, eery in its vague resemblance of a human: two eyes and a mouth.

"Ah, Science Gossip of Jonathan Larwicke. Quite the read, I have heard," said the tree, voice pounding against her aching mind. "I will have the book either way, so for now let us witness the ingenuity of compromised human intelligence." The tree's mouth blew odorless mist into her eyes, which burned and forced several coughs. "I have heard humans are especially susceptible to carbon dioxide poisoning, but a Hunter is not just any human."

Looking, the ground and branches below swayed. She was at least 30 feet off the ground, if not more.

- Climb down
- Sit down
- Jump
- Beg Mox to stop
- Attack the tree
- Other

 

[ArcticFox]

"Look, demon, I don't find this funny at all. I also have no intention of participating in your trials." Lianna scowled, trying to shield herself from the mist, "Now stop your games and lower me down like a proper adult, or I will start hacking at your tree."

 

[Cartoonicat]

"Lower you down?" Like a wrinkled man with a penchant for smoking, the tree laughed thick puffs of carbon dioxide into the air. When its laughter ceased, dark bark pieces making up its mouth twisted into a grin. "Why, that's a marvelous idea..."

The branch underfoot began to shrivel, leaving Lianna with only seconds before there was nothing but air beneath her feet!

- Jump to the branch below
- Jump to the ground
- Attack the tree
- Climb upwards

 

[ArcticFox]

"Foul creature!" Lianna hissed, trying to embed her sword into the tree to keep herself from falling down. If the demon was being unreasonable, so would she.

 

[Cartoonicat]

Yelping in pain, the tree's ambiguous face returned to simple bark. Mox was gone. However, as he relinquished possession of the tree, carbon dioxide began pouring out of every orifice. Leaves, branches, bark—everything, tenfold. Lianna's eyes and nose burned fiercely, her headache intensifying.

Luckily, stabbing the tree did as she'd hoped. With her sword embedded in the trunk, Lianna hung suspended in the air.

- Drop to the branch below
- Drop to the ground
- Hang there
- Other

 

[ArcticFox]

With nowhere else to go but down, and the gas now threatening to impair her senses, Lianna dropped down to a lower branch, taking the sword with her. She would make her descent down carefully if she was able to.

 

[Cartoonicat]

The moment Lianna touched down on the lower branch, it began to shrivel just like the one before. Approximately 20-something feet off the ground, now, Lianna could take a chance and jump towards the ground itself or she could continue playing it safe and move onto the next branch. But she had to act fast.

- To the ground
- To the branch
- Hesitate
- Other

 

[ArcticFox]

Twenty feet was still too high. Lianna decided to drop down a bit more before risking a jump.

 

[Cartoonicat]

World beginning to spin, Lianna dropped down onto the next branch, only to find it had already started withering. The shriveled wood released her into the air and she toppled into the ground from some 15 feet above. Though, it wasn't the fall that had her vision going black.

With her head pounding and eyes burning, Lianna's eyes eventually closed.
____

She woke an indeterminate amount of time later in a shallow lake of colored pebbles. Oddly warm, almost like a hot spring, the lake alleviated a lot of the pain from falling; her shoulder and left leg throbbed as badly as her headache, which had subsided very little. Mountains sat in the distance, oddly normal compared to what she'd seen so far of Mox's dimension.

Though she hadn't the time to enjoy the water. Almost as soon as she opened her eyes, the water in front of her rose into a small wave (yet big enough to engulf her), seemingly out of nowhere, and the pebbles below began to shift.

- Stand up and run
- Hold your breath
- Scream
- Other

 

[ArcticFox]

Lianna stood up abruptly, moving away from the rising tide. The demon was playing with her and she hated it. Digging for the book in her pack, she quickly called, "Mox come out to talk already, don't hide behind your illusions like a coward! Or should I just throw the book away?"

 

[Cartoonicat]

"Do it," came a booming voice that sounded similar to scratching stones. Water from the rising tide poured downwards, splattering Lianna with a light mist as it crashed into the lake surface.

From the tide rose, several feet above her, a long neck of pebbled scales exactly like those she stood on. It was then Lianna noticed the rhythmic rise of the ground beneath her; she was not standing in a shallow lake at all, but on the shoulders of a serpentine creature of many colors. A vivid orange eye looked her up and down, almost bird-like.

- Attack
- Don't move
- Say something
- Swim away
- Other

 

[ArcticFox]

"Oh," Lianna let out a gasp after seeing the creature underneath her. It was very pretty for a bloody demon or its familiar, "You asked for it." She said, throwing the book at its head as hard as she could.