Chapter One: Sweet Dreams are Made of These

[Brian]

Bjorn: You wake up sitting against a wall.  Your body feels a little stiff.  It's very cold.  It's dim, and your head hurts.  A woman with long blonde hair is kneeling over you, looking down and frowning in consternation.  She's wearing white robes with gold trim, and you appear to be in a large room -- the walls and ceiling are made of stone.

   "Back with us now, are you," and then, she says something.  And you know it's your name.  But at the same time, what she said was neither the name you used with your friends, or any other name you've been called before.  But you know it's yours.  At your blank look, she repeats it, and you hear it as, "Bjorn," though you know it was something else.  "Are you alright?  You don't LOOK injured...."


   Dracos: You wake up lying face-down on the floor.  There's some weight on your legs, but you're able to climb to a kneeling position before you're stricken with a wave of dizzy nausea.  You hear someone say something ... and then you hear Bjorn's name.  But, it wasn't "Bjorn", even though it was his name.  You look up at the comment and see some woman in a white robe kneeling over someone who's a bit shorter and smaller than Bjorn should be, and his features aren't Bjorn's, and yet, you know that person is Bjorn.

   He's currently dressed in nice-looking leather armor with fine steel plates (meticulously etched with spirals and flowers) all over.  He looks as dizzy as you feel.


   Ginrai: You wake up when someone grabs your wrist and hauls you out from under some heavy weight.  "Are you well, Loremaster?" someone asks you.  When you blink away the confusion, your eyes seem to not want to focus entirely.  "Here, I believe these are yours."  Someone puts a pair of glasses on you, and everything leaps into focus suddenly.

   The man kneeling over you to see to your wellbeing looks at you closely.  He's got fine black hair, and very fair features.  His ears are the slightest bit pointed, and he has a sword strapped to his back.  A broken bow lies on the ground next to him.  In the distance, you can see a woman in a white robe kneeling over Bjorn (and yet, it doesn't look remotely like Bjorn).  To your left, you see a huge man in piecemeal armor staring blearily at Bjorn.


   Rezantis:  You wake up lying on your back.  Near you, a huge (probably about seven feet tall, at least) man is kneeling.  You know that this is Dracos, even though he looks nothing like Dracos.  He's a Dracos-and-a-half tall, and about three-Dracoses wide at the shoulder.


   Huitzil:  You don't wake up.  You simply shake off something -- like a daydream -- and find yourself crouching in a corner behind a statue of some huge dude in armor.  You're protectively cradling a stringed instrument (looks like a lute with copper chords) in one arm, and have a dagger out in your free hand.  You have the best view of the room at the moment.

   Your corner is dark, as the only light comes from a pendant around the woman's neck, and a bobbing little indistinct sphere of light floating over the elvish-looking guy's head.  He helps someone (you know it's Ginrai, even though there's only a passing resemblance to him) to his feet.  The room is probably a good twenty meters by thirty meters.

   There's a statue in each corner (all identical), and two doorways.  One is near the woman and Bjorn, the other is opposite.

   The floor is littered with corpses, but the majority of them are obviously not human, or remotely like it.  Each one of them looks to be hand-crafted by some sick and twisted imagination.  They could be goblins ... or orcs ... or who-knows-what, but they're ugly, they smell bad, and are wearing the remnants of armor.  Their blood is thick and black, and hardly runs in the cold of the room.

   Whatever happened in this room before you arrived, it was bad.

[Bjorn]

With a now-instinctive effort, Bjorn makes himself go loose, taking inventory of his body and then ignoring it, and then expanding his awareness as far about him as possible.  It's a relaxation that hints at the ability to move in any direction without a moment's notice, the laziness of conserved energy.

Or so he hopes, anyways.  Otherwise, his teachers would be pretty pissed off.

At the same time, he studies the woman before him, quickly cataloguing as much about her as he can process before flicking his eyes away to study the room around him.  "I'm... fine," he says, in a low voice.   "I think.  Just a bit disoriented."

Before he can stop himself, Canadian-bred politeness kicks in, and he asks, "What about you?"

[Dracos]

Dracos groaned slightly, shaking his head to clear the nausea and glancing back to see what was on his legs.

Dracos

[Brian]

A corpse.  A big ugly one, too.  Probably an orc, though it's smaller than you.  Weighs a lot.  Smells worse.

Someone next to you is struggling upright, and looks about as crappy as you feel.  When you look at him, you know it's Nathan.

[Dracos]

Dracos frowns, snorting and kicking the corpse off of him if possible, trying to get fully to his feet.  If he does so reasonably he offers Nathan a hand up while glancing around and stretching slightly, trying to get both his bearings on the area and the general feeling of not-shittiness back in his body.

Dracos

[Huitzil]

Paul rolls his head, wincing and gritting his teeth; then leans forward onto his hands. What just happened to him feels like the exact instant you pass between a vivid dream and wake up into reality... only it lasted for hours, and was far more deep, amplified.

Head downward, he exhales sharply and opens his eyes, suprised but not startled to see the dim stone laced with trickles of stinking blood beneath him. He then looks upward, position now like a crawl, and looks out again through slitted eyes. Then, almost as an afterthought, he shifts his weight to one arm and uses the other to bring the mystery-instrument to his face to examine it.

[Brian]

Rez seems content to just stay where he is, though the kicked corpse is rolled away from you.  A little of the syrup-thick black blood seeps from a sword wound across the chest.

[Brian]

Huitzil: It's a lute, it looks like.  The neck is long and straight, and the wood is seamless.  You know it's two separate pieces -- at least, you're pretty sure it is.  But it looks like a single solid piece.

While you're no expert on quality, as far as you can tell, this thing is a masterpiece.

[Brian]

Bjorn:  Your body doesn't seem to fit quite right.  It feels different.  Making an art of knowing your body lends you insight.  You feel ... looser, more able, and at the same time, not as strong as you should be.

Smaller, too.

The woman studies you for a moment, then nods in response to your question.  "I'm fine.  Come, we have much to do."  She turns away (taking much of the light with her), and strides towards Ginrai and the elf.

[Bjorn]

Rolling to his feet, Bjorn stops to take inventory of both body and possessions, before carefully studying his environment while padding after the woman.

[Brian]

You're wearing armor.  Looks like full-body leather (even gloves), with fine metal plate over it.  You suppose it could be considered studded leather, but somehow that doesn't seem quite right.  The plating is etched with various whorls, loops, spirals, and flower shapes, but the armor itself seems sturdy enough.

You have at your side a straight-bladed shortsword, etched identically to the armor.  The blade is loose, though, as though the tang was too short.  A sheath is belted to your waist, and you're wearing leather gloves (with a metal plate on the back of each hand).

On the ground nearby is a rather large pack with another sword strapped to the side.  This one doesn't look as nice as the one you're currently carrying, but weighs more, and feels like the crafter knew what he was doing this time around.

Looking in the pack reveals another set of armor like the one you're wearing (again, not as nice, but somewhat heavier and perhaps more functional), a few olden days outfits (peasant blouses, woolens, leggings, a sturdy looking cloak) and some dry-rations wrapped carefully in what looks like thick, hand-waxed paper.

Jerky, a hard yellow cheese, and some painfully dry looking bread.  A skin on the side of the pack opposite the sword contains (by smell) water.

[Dracos]

Dracos, realizing the obvious, glances down over himself, checking if/how he's changed.

Dracos

[Huitzil]

Paul sees the people that he knows are his friends, yet aren't, and sees them looking over themselves. He, too, takes a quick glance back down, to check himself. Who is he this time?

[Bjorn]

Frowning, Bjorn swaps the decorative sword for the functional one, and then picks up the pack, and follows the lady, studying the room.  

The familiar-but-strange figures around him make him blink, for a second, but then he remembers being warned that his body would be left behind.  A shrug settles that.  

Much more immediately important are the corpses strewn about.  Kneeling by the closest, Bjorn examines it carefully, studying both the body itself, to try and judge any characteristics he can determine, as well as the types of weapons and armour it carries.

[Brian]

Dracos: You're wearing thick fur leggings, a thick fur coat, and thinner fur gloves and sleeves.  Your furs are augmented with bands of steel plate across your chest, and on your arms.  Your leggings are augmented as well, but only armored up to mid-thigh.  From there, you're wearing a thinner fur kilt (banded vertically, like an armored skirt) which allows a greater degree of movement.

You imagine walking around in full armor like Bjorn's would be a bit awkward, and you're having enough trouble adjusting to a different sized body without that aditional trouble.

You feel about as strong as always, but much sturdier.  Your body responds as quickly as you'd expect it to, and there's a large longsword lying within reach of where you woke up.

The blade is engraved with runes that you read as some sort of family history.  You recognize your name on the sword, at least.  You're pretty sure the other names (starting from the tip of the sword and working their way towards the hilt) down the blood-channel are your ancestors.  This blade's got a lot of lineage ... but there's also no room for another name after yours.  The crossguard bears a celtic cross on each side, and the pommel displays a sigil which you think is your family crest.

A helm is lying next to the sword, and matches your armor.  It's warm, and has flaps to cover your ears, though they can be tucked under if you don't want them to interfere with your hearing.  On your belt is a wineskin (reasonably strong stuff, too), a horn (from some animal, modified to be used as an instrument, or perhaps just an alarm) and a belt buckle bearing your last name on it.  Looks like it's made out of gold, and repeats the sigil from your sword's pommel.  Your scabbard is secured to your back with a baldrick.

Running your hand across your chin reveals a beard that's been braided, and has rings braided into it (the letters etched onto the rings are difficult to see from your current position, as they're pretty close to your face), though judging by your hair color, you're much older than you feel.  Your beard (and the rest of your hair, which is pretty long, and bound up with a strip of leather into a pony-tail), is salt-and-pepper colored, with patches of white, gray, and black.