You tumble together out of the night onto a carpet of stone on the face of a mountain.
The cave, as it is, is shallow and dry, little more than an overhang carved into the side of the dark stone cliffs. Rustling twigs and dried leaves cover the floor, and decades worth of guano cake the back wall.
The leaves crackle and crunch under boot as the walls open all around you. A ghostly form appears in the darkness. Dressed in the guise of a court jester or fool, giggling madly as it capers about, the fool seems ignorant – or blind – to your presence.
He holds one or two handfuls of ivory plaques and deals them in the air before you.
Bells jingling, he first reveals the Two of Swords, then its duplicate, followed by the
Sorceress, draped in a crimson dress and doublet. When he draws her, he places her at the head of the first column with one of the Swords beneath it. Next, he produces another Two of Swords which hovers in the third column.
"
The Wizard," he trills, placing the sickly yellow personage at the top of the second column.
Yet another Two of Swords, the fourth of such cards depends in the third column yet to have found its head.
The next draw provides its head:
The Magician, a cerulean blue.
Three more cards finish the draw: the Ladies in Waiting, The Prince of Swords, and The Hierophant from first to third in columns, with each taking the color of its head.
During the draw, the air about you hums, nearly buzzing, and you detect the whiff of an open wound.
The jester, cardless, strums the air before him and sounds, as if generated in foreign lands, crash the cave. He sings:
A lifetime in this plane seems quite in the cards
But if my analysis of the position is right
Within the manor and the lake,
There seems a glimmer of light
For all of a sudden indescribable things
Have shattered the sleep of both heroes and magi.
Strange as it seems,
There's been a run of crazy dreams
And a man who can interpret
Could go far - could rule them all.
With a rousing flourish of trumpets, he vanishes and the air clears. One of you beholds the vista beyond the cave:
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:03, Sun 03 Nov 2013.