Bauen: "Most likely changed a haunt to a different haunt. I assume he was dead when you affixed him to the coin - if his soul was still possessing a dead body, he would be a lich, with the body possibly recovering on its own. The possession bound is normally broken the the body dies, but there are very rare incidents where it remains or is reestablished, the latter being a very difficult task.."
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You stand quietly as the two embrace, Ommel eventually stopping her babbling and resorting to sobbing.

After a couple of minutes, Ommel pulls away just enough to look at Tabi.

Ommel: "Everyone thinks you're dead, Tabi. The school sent a letter and someone over who brought a box of meat pudding saying you fell in a machine or something. What happened? Why did the school say you died? Did they just identify the wrong person?"

Tabi: "I got into some trouble with the city, and I guess they wanted to use me for something."

Ommel: "What? What did you do?"

Tabi: "It's better if you didn't know, they haven't come after you yet and I want it to stay that way."

Ommel: "What about everyone else? Shouldn't they know that you're at least alive?"

Tabi: "I don't know..."

Ommel: "I'll keep it secret if you want, at least until you get out of whatever mess you're in."

Tabi: "Thanks, Ommel. Oh, um, how's the auto-loom working out for you?"

Ommel: "IDIOT! How did you expect me to understand the instructions!? I never even figured out how to put it together!"

Tabi: "Heh, I have to go somewhere but I can help you out with it real quick. Oh, and this is Kleigg."

Tabi gestures to you and Ommel looks you over for a second. She then whispers something in Tabi's ear, who turns as blush as a chirop is capable of.

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You walk around town, quickly locating the Museum of Ancient Artifacts.

The curator, a uniformed chirop, greets you as you enter.

Curator: "Welcome. Admission is ten Aes, optional tour included."

You leave Judith to do her spotting and head for the city center again, locating the prison a block from the command building.

A two-story stone strucured with barred windows and a tall steel fence with the sharpened top ends curving inward.

A duo of mages guard the gate, letting you through after you tell them you're visiting.

The reception room isn't too different from Teleiat's containment facility - swept floors, good lighting. A man sits at the counter, and once you tell him you're here to visit the telepath that was taking out spotters, a pair of guards lead you down a level, and then another.

This entire floor seems to have anti-magic chambers, and the guards direct you to the one where the telepath is contained.

The first door opens to a short hallway there the anti-magic starts, and the next opens up to a medium-sized chamber.

A large cage fills the majority of the room, as if the stone walls weren't enough. A bed and two buckets are in the cage, a third bucket is outside.

The smell of blood is in the air, and as you approach the cage, you see that the bucket on the outside is filled with bloody fingernails, teeth, mutilated eyes, and messy sheets of skin.

On the bed is a youg woman lying motionless, watching you with a small smile on her face.

Sanoa: "Hello John. Have you found your book informative?"
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Curator: "One Aes is equal to one copper, just what we call it in the area."

>Break into a nervous grin.
"Hi. I'm just a friend of your sister's. She's a heroine, you know."
to Tabi: "I trust you're going to notify your parents?"

Tabi: "Yeah, just gotta make sure it's in a private place."

Ommel: "Heroine? Oooh ooh, is she like, a secret revolutionist, working from the shadows to take down a corrupt party that's using the government as a sock puppet?"

Tabi: "Um..."



Ommel: "Anyways, mom and dad are out getting supplies, let's get the loom put together before they get back!"

She grabs Tabi by the arm and pulls her to a door in the back of the store and you follow, entering what looks like a workshop. Except, instead of wood or metal, the material is cloth in immense rolls, along with countless spools of different colored threads. The main work area appears to be a large table in the center which has a foot-pedal-operated sewing machine rigged to one side. Scraps of cloth, clusters of buttons, and odd strings of thread cover the surface of the work table.

On one side of the room is a pile of crates, some empty, some full, some in between. Against the wall is a large metal contraption in a partial state of assembly.

Ommel: "That's about as far as I got, and then the instructions stopped making sense. Hey Kleigg! You should help too! Check out Tabi's high dexterity first ha-OW"

Tabi slaps Ommel in the back of the head, the seamstress bursting out laughing.

Tabi: "Wanna help us out Kleigg?"
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You hand the curator 10 copper, and begin the tour!

Curator: "In this hall, we have a collection of artifacts that are believed to be from before the cataclysm."

A few glass display cases feature green and brown rectangular objects, many of them damaged or chipped, featuring intricate lines of gold.

Curator: "It is believed that these plates were some form of ancient circuitry, but since they're composed of zero percent artificial matter, it's possible that they operate on another force that we have yet to discover. On the other side, there are advanced projectile weapons similar to the muskets in the west, but more complex."

They do look like muskets, but more, machine-y.

Curator: "Down over here we have more pre-cataclysm artifacts, but these contain artificial matter."

Strange pieces of damaged devices. No clue what they do.

Curator: "The density of conduit circuitry in these far surpass even Magusalto's high-end constructs, and they appear to be artificial rather than created by chirop, humans, or lupus."

She leads you to another hall, this one filled with a great number of stones from the size of a bead to the size of your head.

Curator: "Post-cataclysm, pre-corruption mana stones. Most of the smaller ones were dug up from ancient constructs and have extremely high capacities, while the larger ones were the first artificial mana stones made by ancient constructors. Large and ineffective, but it was the start of the artificial mana stone. Moving along, we reach corruption and post-corruption items - beast cores and the first construct weapons."

Partial and full suits of armor, large chunky backpacks that operated as power sources, weapons with large compartments attached that held components.

There's also a glass box with a dark blue spherical stone with clear wires sticking out of it that run to a metal handle at the base of the box.

Curator: "This is a completely-intact leviathan memory stone with the spirit still inside, it is one of our most valuable artifacts in the museum. If you touch the handle in front of the display case, you can communicate with the spirit."

Give it a try, or move on?
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She lets out laugh, honest and cheerful, making you try to resist the tugging at the corners of your mouth.

Sanoa: "I'm flattered, but no, I am not Ellissia Metus. You could say I was lucky and then had an unfortunate turn of events."

She's sitting up now, peering through the bars of her cage.

Sanoa: "Is your armor made of AM? You've gotten quite skilled in such a short period of time. You must have a knack for it."

Her expression changes to a sad smile, looking down at your feet.

Sanoa: "I guess I have something to apologize for.

It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. If I had succeeded, the Second and Esthen would've been able to quickly take Vranhal and unite the region under one banner, one that was tolerant to all kinds of people. Not the oppressive rule that Elizabeth has over the land. With the Daeli no longer capable of keeping everything stable, rogue states like Vranhal will run amok, resorting to violence on all fronts like the War of Blades.

I'm sorry I failed."
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She lifts the top off of one of the crates, pulling a folded piece of paper out.

Tabi: "Here, this is the control box. Just put it together like it shows in the schematic like a jigsaw puzzle. I'm gonna help Ommel with the loom's regulator gears."

You pick the box up and move it a bit away so you have some working room. Checking the inside, you see some gears, a box, some metal plates, conduit wires, and one of Tabi's interface bricks. Looking at the schematic, it seems to make enough sense, so you start tinkering.

As Tabi and Ommel assemble the gear system of the loom and talking about the going-ons of the family in the past two years, you slowly piece together a part mechanical, part circuit... al? box of some sort of executive function. With the flip of a switch, you power on the Interface Brick, which acts as the cover for the box.

Input Test Mode

The cursor on the screen points to Tabi, who's the closest to you right now, and the wavey blobs scroll across the screen as it registers her telepathic readings.