kenod

*Looks at Sorana* Umm, I'll try not to die in the first minute? No further promises though.

Of course, the question is what you do once you catch her...

Karin simply stared at the wall, trying to figure out what was going on. Non of this made any sense to her, it didn't seem to function according to any of the rules about Investure she had learned. "How?" She muttered at a loss for words. She just looked at the wall, trying to figure out what was going on.

Mari walked a few paces behind Nila, studying the building. She strangely felt more confident, more assured, despite everything that was going on. Her posture was more relaxed, less obtrusive, though still ready to act at a moment's notice. Something like this was familiar terrain, something she done often enough. She might not like doing it, but she knew she could do it, and somehow that made her feel much better than she had felt during the chaos of what was happening in Oasis City.

Karin took a few steps backwards, still somewhat unsteady, trying get a better overview of the paintings. It seemed like they were pointing towards a specific place, a location everyone was heading to. A place in the caves, most likely. "Hey," she said in an uncertain tone. "This is something I've been thinking about since we first heard about the paintings. Who actually made these? It's one thing if this was some normal world, but this world was created less than a thousand years ago, right? I haven't been here for that long, but I've never even heard rumors of caverns, or of people capable of seeing far into the future, even among the DA. So... who painted these?"

Karin looked at the paintings in the light of her lamp. It took her a bit to recognize what she was seeing, what was going on here. She quickly recognized the different people in the paintings though, the situations they had gone through. Still, the implications of that made her pause and step back, trying to understand how this had happened. She knew predicting the future was possible, of course, but all that was on smaller scales, smaller time-frames. And even then it was inaccurate, with the viewed futures being merely possibilities, possible futures that might never come true, or that while coming true have a completely different context. In fact, the only successful instance of predicting the future for larger periods that she had heard of was done by Shards, not humans. She hesitated, then walked closer to the wall, trying to find herself. She wasn't certain if she should, knowing your own future could be rather distressing, but here the curiosity won out from her caution. Besides, she thought, knowing your own future makes it easier to avoid the bad stuff. Then she remembered some of the stories she used to read. And it can also lead to you fulfilling them, she berated herself, not being interested in being part of some Greek tragedy. Finding herself didn't prove to be difficult, given that the paintings included the incident with the worm. What she saw surprised her though, and she leaned in closer to inspect it. For some reason she saw three figures though, not one. She softly touched the painting, feeling scared somehow. The bottom one she could recognize as herself, some tentacles moving around her, but the other figures? One looked human, though she had no clue about what they looked liked, while the other obviously wasn't, with the only resemblance being having two arms and legs. Her only possible guess was that it related to something in her past, or something about the nature of her powers. Her hand started trembling slightly as she wondered who had made this, and if they would be able to tell her more. *** Deep in the alleys Aylitha stirred when she saw the cave paintings through Karin's eyes, shaken by what she noticed. A body started forming for her, and she started walking out of her chambers, looking for the other department heads. For something like this to exist in the caves... She paused as she felt something stir in a corner of her mind, a presence she hadn't felt for a long time, and she stopped moving, hesitantly connecting with it. Immediately it shied away again, disappearing again in the endless space it had hidden in. Still, she got the message. She turned around, slowly trotting deeper into the alleys instead, looking for the ancient archives. She knew that before going to the others she first had to determine where these paintings had come from, who had made them. Who had seen her secrets....

Karin took a closer look at the new girl, and recognized her from the meeting and sighed. So she did end up sneaking after them. "Ah, well, it isn't like it's illegal," she said with a shrug. "Just stupid, brash, reckless, and possibly mildly suicidal." Holding a hand to her head she looked around at the others. "Of course," she said, "that raises the question of what to do with her now. I mean, she was rejected for the team by ACE, but we can't really have her wandering around here on her own either. Or well, I guess we can, but it'll probably end badly."

If you want to you can. If you're interested in a setting idea, at one point we had talked about a different continent where magic was done by interfering with spirits instead of using runes, so that could create something interesting as well.

I'm not certain about this. I guess theoretically it might be possible, but the spren can only be in one place at the same time. So abilities might still work fine (emphasis on the might since we don't know if distance influences a nahal bond), but it would ensure only one of the two bonded people can summon the spren as a shardweapon at the time. A different solution might be for the one that loses the spren to become a squire of the other, or to use the massive investure of the alleystorm to simply create a new spren.

Karin nodded. A Seeker. That would make sense given some of the other wildlife found, as well it had been interested in her hand, but would also indicate that there were other lifeforms with Investure living here. She wondered what else was around. Looking around she could see some insects skittering over the ground, but she hadn't seen anything else yet. Still, Althea's suggestion of looking in the forest seemed smart. If there was anything around that would be the likeliest place for it to hide. Besides, it seemed as if there was a hot water source down there, and she had always wanted to try a bath in a hot spring. Just at that moment Corette came towards them, looking like something important had happened. So far for my bath, she thought as Corette started talking about cave paintings. "Uh, sure," she answered, wondering what about them could have gotten Corette so alarmed.

Karin gave Althea a confused look. "It has innate investure?" She asked. "Huh, didn't notice that. What is it?" She watched as it started to eat the apple, and then sent in a number of thin feelers into the cage. The animal immediately noticed, looking upwards, though it didn't move, looking somewhat confused. Quickly the feelers snatched a couple of its hairs. Retrieving them Karin put them in one of her containers, labeling it as 'Kalea'. That would take care of the DNA samples. Remembering something she cut the top part of one of the hairs, absorbing it instead. For a minute she closed her eyes, focusing. This was a trick she had only learned recently, and one she didn't really understand yet. Still, it could be useful. Taking a bit of flesh from the Soother Worm container she absorbed that too. "The DNA is rather different," she reported eventually. "I'm not good enough at this to give you any specific points of difference, or give you a genetic sequence, but I can tell you that the two strands have little in common, somewhere in between the difference between a dolphin and a rat and the difference between a reptile and a rat I think, though there seem to be some commonalities as well, possibly what encodes their ability to use investure?" She shook her head. "Ugh, I need a full sequencer for this, and the department's databases," she complained, "not some improvised trick."

Karin nodded. "Sounds good," she said. "Though, is that name for our little friend here or for their species?" She looked as it picked at the bread, wondering what it would normally eat. "Looks like an omnivore," she noted, writing it down on a notepad she had gotten out of her pack. "Scavenger maybe? Judging by it's body it might make a semi-decent hunter, but lacks the aggression common to those animals. Little in the way of a flight instinct, once captured. Lack of interaction with humans or lack of predators?" Karin moved over, sniffing one of the air holes of the cage. "No noteworthy smell," she concluded, writing as she spoke, "no interesting coloration or sounds either, indicating it likely isn't poisonous. No other defense mechanisms are immediately visible. Conclusion, the creature likely has little to fear from other predators in its habitat. Possible reasons are a symbiotic relationship with the local apex predator, high breeding rates or lack of significant predators above them on the foodchain. The lack of further information about this biome makes drawing conclusions difficult. Curious about food-sources and population levels. As noted before, likely omnivore. Should try feeding it some of the local fungi, and checking them for bite-marks. Should first check to see how it reacts to bread though, should give some indicator regarding omnivorous tendencies."

Karin nodded absentmindedly as she watched the creature track her hand. Smiling she played with the creature, quickly moving her hand around the glass to see the creature dance around. "We need a name for them," she suddenly noted. "We should figure out what to call the species." She glanced at the creature in the box. "Also," she added with a slight smile, "I think we should figure out a name for this little one too."

Mari simply looked at him. "You were going to tell us about our suspect." She prompted Avalon. She wondered what exactly he'd know about the violin player, it seemed he had investigated him to at least some extant, so that should be useful. "It seems you have a decent amount of knowledge of him," she continued. "I'm guessing you've investigated him at some point? Also, you said that this Epic you were chasing worked at the same place our suspect is hiding. Would they be a threat?"

Karin quickly moved towards her, eyes fixed on the creature in the box. she knelt down in front of it, excited by how cute it looked. "Aww, just look at how cute it is," she said, smiling at it. "Pity it isn't domesticated," she told Althea, "I'd love to have it as a pet." She crept around the box, examining it. "Hey, shouldn't this thing need some air-holes?" She asked of Althea. She waved her hand in front of the creature, wondering what it would do.

Karin quickly walked to Althea. "Really?" She asked in an excited tone. "Where? What is it like?" She looked around, trying to spot it. She figured her eyesight should allow her to spot it more easily than Althea could, and was rewarded with a glimpse of a small furry creature scurrying past, though it moved to fast for her to see any details.

Mari stared at him. "She'd still need to breath in Stormlight first," she pointed out. "And even then doing that will require focus, never mind the fact that you'd exhaust your storage pretty quickly that way. Speaking from experience, trying to use Division against hand-to-hand combatants doesn't work that well, unless you have a lot of experience, and even then an opponent can use feints and similar techniques to deal with it."

Mari nodded, releasing Nila. "My apologies for the sudden attack," she said. "Though since you are familiar with our suspect, could you tell us everything you know? It should help with formulating plans." She studied her, waiting for an answer. She wasn't entirely convinced about the whole explanation, but if Lusk was willing to accept it she had no reason to continue suspecting her.

Karin walked back to the others, having just taken a sample from one of the mushrooms, as well their spores. Everyone else seemed to be jumping down already, using the coinshot and lurcher as a makeshift rope. Looking down it seemed like there was water at the bottom. She thought about jumping down for a second, but decided not to, given that the equipment in her backpack might not like it. Still, she wasn't really interesting in being lowered like that. Sure, she trusted them not to drop her, but the lack of control was annoying. Besides, she had seen them drop one of the other scouts into the water as a joke, and she wasn't really interested in that. After thinking for a bit on how to get down she walked to the edge of the hole and opened her hand, a climbing anchor growing from it, rope growing out of her wrist. She nested it between two rocks, and after making sure it was secured properly she jumped into the hole, humming the Spiderman tune to herself. She quickly started abseiling, growing new rope as she went. Dropping herself into the water she focused on the hook, reabsorbing it together with the rope, then turned around to look at where she was now, taking in the glowing yellow fungi.

Mari quickly knelt down, grabbing his arms and tapping iron to keep him there. "Don't move," she said in a calm tone. "If you move I'll break your arms. If you inhale stormlight I'll continue until you run out." She took a breath, pausing to let the man understand her. "Now you'll be telling us about how exactly you know so much information about our suspect."

Karin nodded, looking at the lightshow, and the people sleeping inside of it. She took a deap breath in case she needed to talk and then walked in. She wondered if the spores would affect her as well if she did breath in. She was tempted to try it, but decided to wait until they got the others out. Besides, she already had the chance to rest inside the worm. She wondered why the sleep effect was there though. Was it just self-defense, or was it to create prey, perhaps for a second species? She shivered for a bit, the idea of flesh-eating plants always made her nervous.

Mari looked at Avalon as he was talking. That's it, she thought when he was explaining even more about the suspect. She calmly walked up next to him, then suddenly reached out to flip him over, trying to throw him onto the ground.

Karin looked at Myriad, thinking about how to explain Epics. "It's not a weird question," she said, trying to reassure the girl. "Epics are kind of like the magic-users of my world, which is one of the earth variants. Basically, the main difference with other magic-users is that each of us has their own set of abilities, unlike magic-users from other worlds, where specific types of magic-users always have the same abilities. There are some common types of abilities, but every Epic has a specific, unique set of abilities, and their abilities generally have specific quirks to them. Each Epic also has their own weakness, which is unique to them. Triggering it cancels their abilities." She thought about what Myriad had said, about how her abilities were 'awesome'. It had been a while since someone had last used that particular term, and she wondered if she would feel the same way about it once she saw some of the more ... scary things she could do.

"Sure," Karin said with a grin. She walked to the scout group. "I'm in as well," she said cheerfully. "I'm an Epic. For my abilities, I've got an enhanced physiology, high-speed regeneration and partial shapeshifting." She thought for a second. "Ah, as what that means," she continued, "basically, I'm quite a bit faster than normal people, my reflexes are better too, I'm somewhat stronger than I look, but not much, I don't need to breath, drink or sleep, and if I don't get injured or use my abilities I can go without food for a couple months as long as I've fed beforehand. As for shapeshifting..." She sighed, she disliked talking about this, but it was probably something the others would need to know. "Essentially, I can change parts of my body, grow tentacles, adjust my own biology, that kind of stuff. For example, adjusting the sensitivity of my eyes to deal with little light, or do something like this." With that a number of small tentacles burst out of her hand, mixing together, the black fading, leaving her holding a white knife. She showed it, then flicked her wrist, the knife disintegrating back into black tentacles that got absorbed into her skin.

Karin nodded. "You can use your ability to make cages, right?" She asked. "Could we use that? It might not work on everything, but it could work for the larger stuff." She scratched her head. "I could try sedatives, I've got some stuff in my bag that could work, and I can make them myself as well, but dosages might cause trouble, and I prefer to avoid accidental allergic reactions."