Ward 32 – Episode 12

Rising from your seat, you stand before the woman with the python mask, raise the cup of wisdom to your lips and drink deeply.

For a few brief moments you are unaffected, but before long your vision starts to narrow and blacken, and you feel unconsciousness setting in around you. Before you collapse to the floor in a heap, you dimly hear the voice of the man on the dais…

“Forsaking power and remembrance, you choose wisdom and foresight. Blessing or curse, my friend, the gift is yours. As always, you have my pity.”

And then there is darkness.

Images without sound swim through the void and intrude upon your peace. Images of darkened hallways, of mad faces, images of bloodied and broken bodies strewn across the shore of a seemingly endless lake — all these flash before your newly opened third eye.

But most commonly you see images of yourself, lying dead in a hundred different poses and ways. You see yourself broken and lying before the monster you fought outside the door to Ward 32. You see yourself bereft of skin and muscle over most of your body, being eaten by the ghouls you encountered elsewhere in the ward. You see yourself lying on the floor in an unfamiliar place, skull crushed, with the glaring visage of a madman hulking over you. The number on his uniform is “23-G.” As is common in dreams, you at the same time recognize and fail to recognize his face. After the image fades, though, you are hard pressed to remember who it was.

A hundred other deaths in locations unfamiliar to you come unbidden into your mind, and threaten to steal your sanity away form you. At the end of it all, you see an image of a book on a pedestal in a library. The book is covered by a glass dome and the library is ruined and dusty. You see yourself lift the dome and take the book, and a sense of well-being rushes over you.

You awaken on the floor of the room in front of the door to Ward 32. You’re not sure how you got here from the party, but the sounds of it have faded and disappeared. Not even an echo remains. You look up at the hallway that led you to a party to find that it has disappeared entirely. Now only a smooth wall exists where previously there was a doorway.

Down the hallway where before you saw a light in a doorway, you do hear the sounds of shattering glass and the concussions of heavy objects hitting concrete. It is clear to you that someone is tearing that room apart.

[Wisdom] Despite your intense fear at the sounds of violence, something inside you feels that you will not suffer any physical harm from entering or investigating that room.

Harold lies nearby, face-down as you left him and breathing shallowly. A bit of color has returned to his cheeks since you last saw him, but he is still unconscious.

Beyond the lit door down the hallway, you think you can see the hallway open into another large room. You don’t remember it looking that way before… in fact, you seem to remember it going on into the blackness beyond your range of vision.

[poll id=16]

---

Episode 11 was SUPER long. I’m getting a little carried away and it’s taking more time than I thought. Gonna make the next few a little shorter, I think.

The results of the poll was a close race between Wisdom and Memory, with power a DISTANT third option. I totally didn’t see that coming. I thought power would be a much bigger draw. Wierd 😉

By choosing wisdom, Vlad was given a series of prophetic and cautionary visions. These will manifest both as what you’ve seen so far as well as a series of feelings that you will get, when appropriate.

It also entitles you to the answers to some questions you may pose in the comments (if I feel the question is applicable to the function of the drink) — the answers will be in the form of images that you remember from that period between when you drank the cup and when you awoke. The clarity and informative qualities of the pictures will be influenced by a die roll.

Updates are on Monday and Thursday afternoons. You must be registered to vote in the polls.