FaD Beginner Game: Mountaintop Rescue

Tarast Voon shakes himself off, dusting the snow and gravel to the ground.

"I am all right! Unharmed except my dignity, which has little value! How is everyone?"

He looks around for anything that he might use to climb out.

Listening to the Gatekeeper gives Tarast an idea.

The Kel Dor looks at what he can see out of the pit, if there's a tree branch or some vines he can manipulate with the Force lowering into the pit enough to grab onto.

Hoping no one is watching, Tarast centers himself, trying to remain calm. Doing what his mentor, Hethan Romund, showed him, Tarast felt himself, felt the pit, felt the ice and gravel and dirt around him... and he felt for the rope... and the cold and misery and the aura from the temple called for him to embrace the uselessness of his calling... it called for him to give in to the despair of being trapped, the fear of being stuck until he starved to death... alone and friendless...

But he remembered that he had friends, acquaintances really, both of whom knew his mentor and were with him on this journey. Sometimes the Force temps us so that we will learn to trust others...

Tarast lets go of his dark meditations, trusting that his friends will save him.

"Hey! You guys need help?" Pon calls out. He shakes the anger and hopelessness that clung to his person like a damp cloth in the aftermath of his jump. He takes his thoughts off of it by focusing on helping his friends. He takes the rope that Tarast used to escape and tosses one end into Dao's pit.

"What's going on in that temple has really crossed some wires in my head. I am starting to see why those hunters went mad. What about you guys?" Pon asked.

As he is helped out of the pit he was in, Tarast notices with sadness that his companions are both in a funk, and he reminds himself that he will need to be very careful if he is not to follow them...

"I've got a bad feeling about this..."

After Dao Jodh collects himself and climbs out of the pit with the rope, he walks up to join his companions looking down the path to what awaits them beyond.

"We seem to be facing a dark energy ahead of us, and the trial will be a difficult one. But let us not forget, Romund had enough faith in us to call us here to help her. We should take strength in that knowledge. She wants us to come rescue her... She *believes* in us. The least we can do is believe in ourselves!"

And with that, Dao twirls his walking staff around a few times and plants it in the ground. He has a renewed sense of adventure and a brightened outlook, almost as if his pep talk was as much for himself as it was for Pon or Tarast.

Edit: AAAAAAAAWWWW YIIISSSSS!

Pon chimes in, "Guys I'm a little winded I'd like to conserve my energy for the temple, think there is any way to trick these guys into letting us across?"

Looking at Pon Edestus and then at the situation, Tarast believes he's seen worse. "Believe it or not," he whispers, "I am an excellent conniver."

"I can talk my way around most people."