3B - One flew over the cuckoo hut

Still Whispering "So the secret is just that she let the girl with the Necklace go? And at the end of the day she tortures and murders because her boyfriend dumped her? I'd like to be more sympathetic but the torturing and killing make it a pretty hard sell."

" Ok. So the armory and magic artifact storage seem like great places to visit, but other than rescuing the sentients from her larder I have no interest in stealing from her. I'd rather not deal with her if at all possible. She seems pretty chaotic and unlikely to be reasonable, or to keep to her word even if she was. How is it that only she is able to come and go freely? What is this hut and how is it controlled. Also, why is the only apparent way out through a broom closet, don't those stables open to the outside?"

The schoolmarm whispers, "Well, it's not like she's going out to find these people. They are all intruders and she deals with them as such. Honestly, she doesn't even kill most of them, just makes sure they're as miserable as she is. Lots of them are just stuck in here forever. In fact, that ogre there with you has been here for years. If I were to guess, I'd say she probably wouldn't even harm anyone if people just left her alone.

"That's not the point, though. She isn't a kind person with a broken heart. She was never a kind person. She's insane, heartbreak or no. Her love too for that matter. I'm not trying to say you should feel sympathy for her. She is a literal evil witch who is just as likely to eat you as she is to chat.

"However, if you plan on getting out alive, it's best you know as much as you can about her. A lot tougher folk than you lot have come in trying to kill her and she always ends up on top. She took down a couple of dragons on her own. If you think you can outdo a dragon, be my guest. But as they say, you catch more bees with honey than vinegar.

"But anyway, that's an armor room, not an armor-y. A significant distinction. Try not to get into too much trouble while you're wandering around. Baba Yaga has picked up some unusual things over the years, some of which I don't think even she understands yet."

Ichigo will take a look at the map and take a picture of it...Wispering "excuse me if you don't mind how did you get stuck with this job?"

The tiny, flying schoolmarm whispers, "I was summoned to maintain the library ages ago. She brings books, I go through them and sort them. I don't really mind the work, to be honest. I've always liked reading and I get plenty of time to do that."

"Fortunately I haven't come to kill her, or even harm her. In fact, if it's as you say I'm kind of doing her a favor by taking as many people out of here as I can manage."

" I guess we can just try to make our way back to the foyer, and hope she is in a good mood. I don't suppose there is any way to set up some correspondence with you? I am sure this library has all manner of wonderful liturature long since lost to the world, not to mention unique research that could be of benefit to many. Seems a shame to keep all of this hidden away rather than shared."

Sun chimes in using the best inside voice he can muster. "Only Baba Yaga can enter and exit freely, right? Other people here told us about some Ankev guy. Can he come and go freely?"

The tiny, flying schoolmarm whispers, "I don't mind writing letters, but I would focus first on getting out of here before you figure out on how to get back in. Don't let the sheer number of volumes fool you though. At least a third of them are cookbooks and another third are whatever she decides to write on her own, like diaries and spellbooks. There are actually a surprising number of romance novels and the rest are assorted books on various topics she has decided to study over the years. Not sure where she gets them all, but whenever she actually decides to go out, she usually comes back with a book or two."

To Sun she whispers, "He should be able to. I've never seen him actually come, so I don't know for sure, but from what I've read of her younger days he used to come and go."

Sam whispers, "But Wujen makes a good point. Can we make a deal with her and trust her to keep her side of it? She seems pretty chaotic. And what exactly IS this hut?"

"Well, once I'm out I have no intention of returning unless more friends somehow wind up inside.  I'll certainly be strongly wording some cautions to the nearby community not to send any more investigators to the mysterious hut that suddenly appeared near their homes.  Which is why I asked before I left.  If she built this place then those spellbooks and any related material alone could be extremely valuable from an academic standpoint alone, never mind the financial value.  Mr. Ankev has certainly made a fortune from his own knowledge, I'm sure Baba Yaga's knowledge is no less useful."

"But to the business at hand, assuming we are reading the map right, making our way to the broom closet is the only normal path out?  and you have nothing on how the house is actually controlled?

Sun's frog croaks loudly over the entirely Sam's whisper, forcing the tiny, flying schoolmarm to shush the frog. "Quiet!" she whispers, "No loud noises in the library."

To Sun she whispers, "If you can't keep your pet quiet, you will have to leave."

She then whispers, "While she is incredibly unreasonable, I've never known her to break a promise. She promised herself to her beloved for thousands of years and remained faithful during all that time, regardless of the circumstances. So if she agrees to something, I'm sure she'll follow through on it. Her terms may be ridiculous though. Or she could just as easily choose not to deal with you at all.

"I'm not sure what the hut is, but it is both alive and completely loyal to Baba Yaga. From what I've read in her diaries, she seems to have met it in some other plane of existence and brought it back with her. As it grows, new rooms seem to appear and she finds new uses for them. If love is the right word for it, she loves the hut much like one might love a favorite pet and the hut seems to reciprocate. As far as I know, it is not controlled so much as it is happy to obey her.

"I don't think the broom closet leads out though. At least, not usually. I haven't seen how it works first hand, but others in here say that the way out is revealed when the hut wishes to let someone out."

"Well, that puts us at an uncomfortable impasse.  We just want to leave.  I don't know what else we can do, unless there is some tidbit about the arrows on the map, like the difference between plain, hollow and filled arrows, or the meaning behind lines that don't start with an arrow.  I can guess some of it, but who knows how much I'll get right.  Is there a way to communicate with the hut directly?  Maybe we could convince it that letting us go is best for her."

The tiny, flying schoolmarm thinks for a moment and whispers, "You know? I've never thought about it. I don't know how Baba Yaga communicates with the hut. I assume she does, but its not exactly like a dog, you know? I suppose if you could find some way to make the hut happy, it would listen to you. I have no idea what would do that. Maybe someone else might know. You will have to ask around, I guess."

"Maybe if we rub the houses belly!"

The tiny, flying schoolmarm whispers, "It's as good an idea as any, I suppose. But how would you plan on doing that from inside the hut?"

Ichigo wisspers "Maybe i should rub the walls or something" he chuckles lightly.

(ooc: on my phone, so please roll...)

"I have a couple of things I can try, though I don't really know if they will work. Catch me if my brain explodes or something, I am going to cast a couple of spells that aren't really designed for this..."

WuJen starts by casting Analyze Device at force 6 on the hut. After that, assuming the first spell doesn't make it obvious he should not, he will try a force 6 Mind Probe on the hut.

Wujen immediately realizes that Analyze Device is not going to be helpful here because the hut is a living thing and his attempt ends in failure. He is surprised to find that the spell is actually a lot easier to cast than usual, as if the mana in the air around him is providing all the mana he needs for his spell, saving him from the usual effects of mana drain on the body.

The mind probe is significantly more successful, though the thoughts of a hut are so alien that Wujen has a hard time getting coherent ideas out of it. What he does get are a few images/feelings in his head that appear to be unrelated to one another and in random order, though all of them are within the last three days or so. He sees:
- Krista and Grant hack their way through the surrounding thorn bushes and then attempt to climb the bone fence, only to be zapped by eyeball lasers from the skulls on the fence which knock them out cold.
- Baba Yaga flies up to the hut in an over-sized mortar and pestle, carrying a large sack of corn. She pours the corn out for the hut and the hut happily devours it up. She appears to be much larger than even an average troll with long scraggly hair, bark-like skin and a large spider on her shoulder.
- Your group approaches and gives the password. It seems confused because it doesn't recognize any of you, but you have the password so it obeys as it was trained.
- The hut is flying over the ocean, apparently directed by Baba Yaga. It does not like this at all because flying is tiring.
- Baba Yaga stands in the hut's mouth and casts an invisibility spell over the hut as it flies over Mingmei. She appears to be looking for someone who is currently in the city. The hut is familiar with this person.
- The hut happily lands in a forest, ending its flight. Baba Yaga casts a ritual that surrounds the hut with thorn bushes and the bone fence.

Much like the analyze device spell, the mind probe spell completely lacks the normal draining effects to the body, making casting absolutely effortless to Wujen.

"Well, as expected one of the spells didn't work. Apparently the hut is more creature than artifact, magically speaking. While an analyze device yeilds nothing, it is indeed possible to probe it's mind."

"So what I learned is that the hut somehow eats corn, and likes it. I'd have thought it was too big, but perhaps it was less a big bag of corn and more a bag of big corn that it remembers eating. On that note, Baba Yaga is quite large herself, possibly as much bigger than a large troll as said large troll is bigger than me."

"Secondly, Baba Yaga is here looking for someone in the city, someone the hut knows." (Ooc: Did I get a mental image of that person?)

"Thirdly, I saw that Grant and Krista need to learn to take a hint. Not only did you have your way through the hedge, which is understandable, you also tried to climb the skull topped bone fence. Context clues people. Learn what they are and apply them to your life."

"Other interesting tidbits include the fact that the hut is indeed trained, which is why we got in. No real clues on how to communicate with it, but it seems at least as smart as a dog. While perhaps meaningless, I will note that none of it's memories viewed the interior. Possibly it's no more aware of us than we are of our own internal organs."

"Disappointingly, there were no clues on how to better navigate or control where a given door goes. I suppose it's possible she just tells the hut somehow where she wants to go....which reminds me. Sun, why don't you take a minute and meditate with that crown you have on. See if any of your thoughts aren't your own."

"Communication with the hut is our best bet, I do believe. However, if we can't it's possibly worth offering to help Baba Yaga find the person in the city in exchange for our freedom. It's not like she actually cares about us, and maybe we would be better suited to that task, who knows?"

Sun nods. "I know I can use this crown to fire brain arrows, but I'll meditate for a moment to see if I can do more than that."

He moves to a corner, sits down, folds his legs, takes the frog off his shoulder and holds it in his hands, which he rests in his lap. Closing his eyes, he starts to focus entirely on his thoughts and the circlet.

Sun does not learn any more about the circlet than he already does.

Several moments pass before Sun puts the frog back on his shoulder and gets back up.

"Sorry, WuJen. The crown only seems to shoot brain arrows, and that's it."

Sam asks, "What is a brain arrow?" as he studies the map, "Also if we are going to try and communicate with the hut, I dunno, maybe we try to go to the stable on the map there? It's the closest thing to some kind of animal related place I can see. Unless any of you have a better idea?"