AshDrunbar Character Creation

You look into the final cell and see...a dog? Big ol' friendly spaniel, just sleeping peacefully in the prison cell. No sign of any...

Your vision shifts, shudders. The dog gets up, but backwards? Its hindquarters just float off the ground until they are hovering over its big head and floppy ears. The image finally collapses, and you no longer see a dog, but a young girl. Can't be older than 14, and is likely much younger. Your brain tries to rationalize how you saw a dog where there clearly wasn't one. You have a headache.

Roll a Nemesis PV check.

Trying to make sense of what just happened...

That is correct. The sudden onset of your headache quickly fades to a dull ache, but no other effects occur. It seems, though you are not sure, that the image of the young girl before you is correct. That dog must have been some kind of illusion. The girl approaches the bars, but not close enough for you to reach. She is dressed in the same sort of rags as the rest of you, and they hang about her waifish frame.

"Are you sirs and madams breaking out of jail?" She looks at you expectantly.

She points to a drawing on the wall, scrawled in something you can't identify. There on the wall is an image of the big dog you saw...

Suddenly, your mind becomes clear. Images bloom away from the dog and cover the wall. Houses, ships, all sorts of people, flowers, fairies, swords, dragons, the ocean, pretty much everything. The images shimmer away as soon as they appear, but you can still see a faint outline on the wall.

"I made these."

"Um, sure," she answers, "I guess you can come in, but how? The bars are locked."

While you figure that out, she answers the rest of what you said, "I'm Titania. They put me in here about a week ago. Don't really know why." She looks over her collection of drawings, most of which are no longer visible except as faint scratchings in the brick. "I just find things to make marks on the walls. They won't let me have brushes."

"There is! Here." She hands you what she makes all the marks with, a long and sturdy iron needle.

You are quite correct. And 16 is a Difficult result, great job!

Though your tool is not the finest, you deftly pick the lock on Titania's cell and set it aside. The door opens, and she steps out, pausing wistfully to look at her empty cell.

Titania follows along as you talk, looking as though she finds you very strange. She says nothing in response, but nods. You can't be sure, but it looks like she's ready to help you. Where are you going first?

"Not sure there's anything holding these bars shut," the old woman answers, "looks like they're just sitting." The old woman turns her attention toward Titania. "Hello there, little girl. Where's your mommy and daddy?"

Titania waves shyly, but just hides behind your leg a little bit and doesn't say anything.

If you want to find out more about this social environment, you can try rolling a PV check in one of your mental Virtues, or selecting from one of your skills.

Maybe rolling a Knowledge (Occult) with the Enlight as base, to see if Cayenne detects sorcerous foulplay at work with the witch...
Either that or a Guile with Nemesis, to feel if anything's off with any of the two women's behaviour.

You are unsure if this is foul play on the old lady's part, or something to do with the bars, but your knowledge of the occult tells you that something is off about her cell. The bars themselves are made of ordinary iron, but each one is encircled with the tiny lettering of some kind of script you don't recognize etched into the floor, and the bricks of her cell don't look right. You'd have to examine each one closely to get more information, but you don't have that luxury...without opening the bars.