Hobson & Quazarn Disappear...(One of them literally)

Not getting anywhere with the ratling Ika Norvegova, Hobson and Quazarn vamoose.

Age of Fable

Max
The Remulaki grunts through a morbid psychometric fog, "Where oh where will my little donkey go?" With a shudder he...stands, ready to follow Hobson.

We leave.

I'll change back into police officer clothes, and hold Quazarn's arm in an 'arresting you' style, in case the robot is still out the front.

Max

[The camera-droid, you mean? She's back at the ramp leading into the arena]

Hobson marches Quazarn out of the beer garden. The nattering of the baobabbler fades into the noise of the crowd. The hobling doesn't spot any Brawl uniforms yet, and no sign of Chief Tallbard either.

[Where to? The scene is something like a carnival midway, with concessions and souvenir stands as well as betting and viewing tents. The vendors' tents abut a low, sprawling manse; behind the house rise up the walls of the arena. The front lawn of the manse is an impromptu parking lot.]

Age of Fable

Away! I look for an exit where we can leave without attracting attention.

Max

Pausing at a statue of a Vulkin scholar of old, Hobson hops onto the pedestal and susses his options. There's a fair amount of foot traffic to and from the parking lot. Beyond the beer garden stretches an overgrown hedge marking the boundary of the estate, continuing on beyond the manse and forming a sort of alley with the palisade like wall of the arena. Other than a few stoners swinging a censer amongst themselves there are hardly any people that way.

The guards in the towers on the arena are mostly faced inwards, watching the Brawl.

Age of Fable

Are there any taxis or public transport?

Max

[Nope, but how Green of you to ask ;).

[You were asleep during the trip here, so you're not certain exactly where you are, but if you had to guess you'd say it was the Elvesbeard Heights, a formerly well-heeled neighborhood mostly abandoned and run-down since the galactic nav-beam failed and Vanth got cut off from the spaceways. Northern suburb of God City.]

Age of Fable

"Quazarn, can you cast some kind of don't-look-at-us spell?"

Max

[Since the good Doc has been doing an impressive invisibility act of his own , I'll field this. As a warlock Quaz can make himself invisible using his Invisibility percentile chances. Since he's not currently the center of attention he can do this at no ability cost. He would need to use a spell to make others invisible.

[Hobson can use Invisible to blend in with the crowd and be generally inconspicuous. Sneak might also be useful, depending on what you hope to do.]

Age of Fable

OK - I ask him to render himself invisible.

If it works, I'll just walk out of here, being as inconspicuous as possible.

Max

The warlock disappears! Erm, completely. Not only is he invisible, but completely silent, odorless and possibly incorporeal as well: Hobson touches nothing when he reaches a hand into the space where Quazarn stood an instant ago.

With a shrug, the hobling sets off, trusting the moody warlock to keep up with him.

[I made the Invisibility roll myself rather than make you wait, Fable. You out there Doc?

[Now, where exactly are you headed?]

Age of Fable

I'll have a feel around to see if I can find Quazarn.

To allay suspicion from onlookers, I'll make it look like I'm doing interpretative dance.

Max

You draw a few curious stares. It isn't every day one sees a cop suddenly start dancing. Still no sign of the warlock though.

Age of Fable

I guess I'll just change into civilian clothes (once no one's looking at me), and walk out.

Max

[Out could mean many things from here. The main choices obvious to Hobson are out toward the road, through the hedge to the property next door. You could also try sneaking around back.]

Age of Fable

Out towards the road.

Max

Hobson strolls through the parking lot with hasty nonchalance. He avoids a pack of trelves, nasty customers with lightning rod javelins and silvery dead eyes, astride bat-winged jet-bikes.

The street is a tree-lined boulevard grown unkempt. The statues and fountains in the median are broken, looted or overgrown with vines. There are other mansions along the boulevard, set well back from the street. Their lawns are unmowed, grass shoulder high and gone to seed.

Age of Fable

I'm going to try and find an abandoned mansion where I can hide in the grass until Quazarn finds me, or until the Rumble ends and I can find the others.

Max

Hobson crosses the street and ducks into the dry ditch on the other side. Still no sign of Quazarn -- no crunch on the gravel shoulder of the road, no bent stalks of grass.

Confident he's unseen the hobling does a little recon. The neighborhood was pretty ritzy, not so long ago. The nearest mansion is a rather hideous pile of pseudo-timber and brick-o-foam, sprayed and quick-set to resemble a hybrid of geodesic dome and mushroom village. Its doors and windows are boarded up. Beyond that the street curves, and a driveway leads off the street in the outer bend. The drive disappears over a low hill, but close to the road there's a squat brick carriage house just beyond a rusty gate.
--------------------------------
What happens next to Hobson & Quazarn is so far unrevealed...both reappeared amongst their brawling broethren the next morning, but so far their tales are untold. The sudden forcible return of Quazarn to his home planet makes it unlikely that we'll ever learn how he spent his incorporeal hours.

In the case of Hobson one can speculate: perhaps he whiled away the hours playing whist with a wooky hobo, or avoiding the attentions of a robo-butler gone haywire. Perhaps while scouting the carriage house mentioned above, Hobson was set upon by two killer mockingbirds and an atticus finch, and dove into a yellow patch of flowers to hide. Safe from the birds, the flowers caused an allergic reaction and Hobson began to feel feverish and drowsy. In short, he reacted to the rue badly.

But this only the idle speculation of a pun-addled brain (Don't blame me. Blame the table of Adventure Ideas from Puns to be found here.)