Emancipation

[Anastasia]

Your knock is not a knock, for it sounds like a bell being run. A delicate, small hand bell. The sound is heard clearly in the secluded valley, followed by footsteps. Loud, heavy footsteps. The door is opened. An iron golem the size of Hanna or so is on the other side, who...smiles. His metal face shows the emotion clearly as he says, "A guest! Come in, come in, we don't get nearly enough guests here!"

[Corwin]

"I suppose that's what you get, being so high up!" Seira chirps, all too ready to be shown inside.

[Anastasia]

"Come in, come in! Have you been traveling long? Do you need a chance to wash up and refresh yourself?" Inside it's all wood paneling and floors, clean. A small coat room is ahead, a few cloaks and the like hanging on hooks from the wall. "I can get a meal for you if you're hungry, or a room if you need to sleep first."

[Corwin]

"Oh, that's fine! Thank you, but unlike the petitioners I actually came here to meet Zonnas Brookmore, so it would feel off if I happened to have a snack without him."

[Anastasia]

As you're lead in, "Well, do you want something sweet? I have snacks," the golem agrees, leading you in - to a general work room, one part library and one part some sort of arcane laboratory. It's pretty minor - just magical circles and such, nothing too colorful, but it looks well done. Amid it an old man in black and green clothing sits, bald. He slowly puts down his text, "Ah, a visitor?" he says, right to the point.

[Corwin]

"Hello! I hope you don't mind, but I asked Celestia to let me pass to meet you," Seira greets him, approaching with her hand stretched towards him. "I'm Seira Aryn, and I was hoping to take up a bit of your time."

[Anastasia]

A handshake - he has a good, strong grip.

"Z-well, I know you know who I am if you came here," he says, as meanwhile the golem taps its chest. It swings open, a crackling furnace within. It withdraws a platter of freshly cooked pastries, "Snacks are ready," The golem announces.

[Corwin]

"Thank you!" Seira tells the golem cheerfully. "And thanks for showing me in, too~"

To Zonnas, she says, "I do think some obvious things should be voiced, although in a casual setting such as this it probably doesn't matter. Is the golem of your making? I thought your field of research was in dimensional magics."

[Anastasia]

"He was a gift," Zonnas waves it off, "Yes yes, a gift from a pirate mage who owed me for saving his life. Well, more a privateer because he had an official writ from King Stephan, and he was targeting the Bleak Ships. He had the most ingenious system, a heavy iron ship reinforced with magic to be seaworthy. He had a handful of golems he'd use to check the ocean depths, along with beacons he could use to pull them back up when they were done. Horrendously expensive, but I'm told he made it all back in a year from treasures lost in the depths."

Your host takes a pastry and has a perfunctory nibble before putting ti aside. "He had a few that the beacon didn't work in, and he gifted me one to settle the debt.  Then of course he gained intelligence in that incident with the Dragonheart, and an interest in self modification."

[Corwin]

"Using golems to explore the bottom of the ocean? An interesting approach. Rather than retrieval beacons, wouldn't it be more fun to possess the golems or use some sense-sharing spell with a different sort of beacon for focus?"

[Anastasia]

"I told him that!" The golem turns, "I told him just that but he said he preferred to keep his attention elsewhere."

"Ahem," Zonnas clears his throat, "It's better than going down yourself. Have you ever had the occasion to explore the blackest depths of an ocean?"

[Corwin]

"Yes, actually! I ended up discovering a sea elf village pretty close to the city I was living in, and they had a portal to Water. I fixed that up, and ended up traveling across Water-- well, my friend actually ended up on Astral because the portal acted up, which necessitated fixing it in the first place. Good times! That was before the mess with the ancient underwater ruins, of course."

[Anastasia]

"Mmm, deeper. Out into the deepest trenches of the ocean, where horrors and eyeless beasts stalk?" Is the answer you get.

[Corwin]

"Deeper than Water?" Seira deadpans. "I've had my share of horrors on Prime, too, sure. Ended up running into a group of huge kraken this one time. It was the weirdest thing!"

[Anastasia]

"Deeper, it's-" He begins, but stops. "But you understand the difficulties, at least."