Metal duckie, you're the one...

It's Korday, Aestry 14 21:59:20 1018. The full moon is up. The tide is low and ebbing. The night is warm and sultry, and dark clouds hide the stars in patches. Elsewhere they shine brightly. Dew forms on the ground.

SUMMARY: Elessa, Sorscha, and Yelrona encounter a strange critter in the aftermath of mayhem.

(Continues from MAYHEM!!!.)

Sorscha is busy cleaning her sword as she looks about. "Find anything, Yelrona?"

Yelrona has been exploring the site of the battle, more out of a sense that she ought to than anything else. "Well... lots of things. I mean, look around... there's things on top of things, with things leaning against the other things. But I haven't a clue what to make of any of it." She shrugs.

Yelrona picks up a piece of molten cooled metal and holds it up to the dim streetlight. "Looks kind of like a duck, don't you think?"

Sorscha says, "Yeah. Makes no sense to me either, yelrona. I'd have to really look into it with The temple." She says making a face.

Yelrona laughs. "Is the prospect as distasteful as all that?"

Sorscha says, "It just get to be a little tedious. What's this? This thing? And that. And that. And that. And that."

Yelrona chuckles. "Well, perhaps it's the wrong Temple, then? One thing about Tarien's temple... it may be incomprehensible, but it's _never_ tedious."

Sorscha shakes her head. "I mean...think about it. Every little piece of information, you have to trek from here to the temple, then BACK." She then smirks. "Just a bit of a walk." She says softly. "But, lets find out what happened here."

Yelrona shrugs. It doesn't seem like that big a deal to her, but then again she enjoys wandering around the city. "It's that bulky armor," she decides at last. "Makes it too difficult to move." She turns the metallic duck-like blob around in her hands. "There's something strange about this metal," she observes. "Like magic is flowing through it?" She shrugs. She's as connected to the arcane flow as any elf, but has never studied magic, and knows little about it.

Yelrona shrugs. It doesn't seem like that big a deal to her, but then again she enjoys wandering around the city. "It's that bulky armor," she decides at last. "Makes it too difficult to move." She turns the metallic duck-like blob around in her hands. "There's something strange about this metal," she observes. "Like magic is flowing through it?" She shrugs. She's as connected to the arcane flow as any elf, but has never studied magic, and knows little about it.

What better place to pick up random stuff you might need than a junk yard... Of course, a lot of it is magical, Elessa doesn't mind, and it's good for practice as well from those nasty traps out there that people seem insistant on setting to keep her like out of their places. That is until she comes around a corner and finds a whole bunch of people there. Huh.

Elessa is short for a human, no taller than five feet in height, her body small, but muscles well toned, not weighing too much with her slight build. Her muscles are shaped and toned, her whole build on the small size, even small hands and feet, though she does have long, delicate fingers for fine work. Black hair comes in waves down her back, though it is kept into a tight braid kept near her head, thus only coming down a little below her shoulders. Her face is round with it's olive colored skin giving a soft glow thanks to years of sun. Eyes are a light brown, somewhat close together as they come down from the small brown and sit on either side of her small and delicate nose. Her nose ends with a small rounded point just a little way above her mouth, which usually small but can grow to large size in a smile.

Elessa doesn't go into things unprepared. She has chainmail wrapped around her body, but it is darkened, not ruining the quality of the material, but it doesn't reflect like most metal does, with bits of leather to keep it in place and close to her body. With tight pants that have a good number of pockets to cover her legs, she also has soft, dark, leather boots that keep her quiet as she moves. As typical for her, she has a scarf tied around her head. The colors are dark and muted most of the time, with small bits of color in relation to the season, as it flows back behind her and down her back.

Sorscha walks over and takes a peek. "Mmmm. Might have to take this over to the Society to take a look. You have any magic that could identify this?"

Yelrona shakes her head. "I've no more magic than any elf. A little bit of familiarity with magical devices, but... whatever this is, it isn't that. Maybe it's more of a divine thing?" she suggests, handing it to Sorscha. But before the item exchanges hands, a sudden transformation occurs: an infusion of magic into the lump of metal, causing it to wriggle free and drop to the ground, where it takes on a more distinct duck-like aspect. "QUACK! QUACK!" it shouts before waddling off, surprisingly quickly.

Sorscha opens her mouth, JUST as the lump changes into a duck and waddles off. Sorscha just watches it until it's out of sight. "Well then. I guess we're not going to take it to the Society."

Elessa seems more okay to avoid the group until something starts quacking at them. What the hell? That piques her interest and so she's over there to see. "What did you find?"

"The hell with that!" Yelrona decides after a flatfooted moment, and hares off after the waddling non-duck, which accumulates gears and other bits of clockwork as it moves. "I haven't the foggiest notion," she calls over her shoulder to Elessa, "but I aim to find out!"

The not-duck makes a sharp left turn as 'rona leaps to cut off its path.

Sorscha says, "That's....not a bad idea. hey wait up!" She says chasing after the 'duck'."

Elessa blinks at the not duck and starts after it herself. "I'll cut it off!" she shouted as she moved to try and cut it off from another direction.

Yelrona gives Elessa a Handspeech gesture indicating approval, then changes her angle of approach so that she and Elessa are executing a kind of pincer movement. The duck looks back and forth between them pathetically.

Elessa tries to disappear around the corner and ambush the weird thing, grabbing her haversack to try and use that to catch it.

Yelrona looks to the duck-like thing, then back to Elessa, who has vanished. Hopefully in a good way, she decides, and continues to chase the not-duck in the direction she had been before, leading the thing near Elessa's hiding place.

Elessa is quiet, and is good at being very quiet. With bag in hand, she waited until she saw the weird duck thing, and then launched herself at it, bag in hand to try and get the duck thing into the bag.

"QUACK! QUACK! QUAmfff!" The duck thing is fast, but not very clever... it is snatched up readily enough. Yelrona comes bringing up the rear, gleeful. "Nice work!"

Elessa smiles as she holds up the haversack with a grin. "Hopefully it won't mess with any of my stuff while it's inside there. So... what do we do with it?"

Yelrona shrugs. "Maybe it talks, if we ask it nicely?"

Elessa frowns and looks a bit inside the bag. "It was mostly quacking though..."

Yelrona nods. "True. I don't know. Maybe it's some kind of residual... residue... of whatever animated the golems, before?" She shrugs. She knews very little about magic and even less about artifice. "Maybe we can offer it some little metal breadcrumbs?"

Elessa tilts her head at the idea. "Well, we could give it to other people to study and see what the hell is going on with it. Arcanists for one thing, any wizard is another."

Yelrona nods. "That's probably more sensible," she agrees. "But yeah, probably not in there with the rest of your stuff, right?" She reaches in with a gloved hand to grasp the ducklike thing firmly, only to feel it diffuse, leaving behind a chunk of metal and a small collection of gears. She steps back, dazed, with a horrified look on her face.

"What happened?" Elessa looks and then down into her bag. She reached in as well and started to pull out the gears and stuff. "I'm going tob e pulling these things out of here for months."

"I am... not at all sure," Yelrona admits. "I think maybe whatever possessed the golems before is... scattered," she says vaguely, waving her hands in the air. "It was... hellish. Demonic, I guess. But... just a memory," she adds as she regains her equilibrium. None of that was real, she tells herself... or at least, it wasn't really happening to her. Still, she suspects her meditations will not be easy for some time.

Elessa sighs a bit. "We should report this to the Guild at least. They'll probably want some mages to investigate into this. That is just completely weird."

Yelrona nods emphatic agreement. "_Completely._ But yeah, you're probably right." She shakes her head, bemused. "I'm Yelrona," she adds, by way of introduction. "Have you ever seen anything like this before?" she asks, her handwaving suggesting that 'this' is meant to cover all of the evening's events.

"Elessa," she offers in smile. "And I've seen a lot of weird things, but that... no. I haven't."

You say, "Yeah. Me neither. Of course, I've only been in Alexandria a month, granted. Which reminds me, you probably have better contacts in the Guild than I do... you should probably take those in.""

Elessa shrugs, "We can go together. You saw more of it than I did."

Yelrona nods, accepting. "Fair enough."