Histoire takes her seat at the head of the table as usual, looks through her notes, and notices that she hasn't even distributed experience points for the worm. She'll distribute the points, then if the party decides to investigate the worm corpse, they'll find orange gems, hopefully they do decide to investigate it. After that they'll rest, and proceed with the next gem color, yellow.
"Hey, Histy," blurts out Neptune suddenly. "It almost feels like we're going through a rainbow with the colors of the gemstones. Would you make us go to yellow next?" she chuckles as she passes by.
A sensation of guilt twinges through Histoire as Neptune walks off towards the kitchen. Histoire finds herself scratching the back of her head, and immediately decided, that the party will be the one to select their gem color, she'll just have to balance every encounter, whichever color they'll use. Since they're done with red and orange, their remaining choices are yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, white and black. Looking through her notes again, she jots down basic encounter ideas for the other colors.
Yellow, is fear and confusion, and thinking about it, gets rendered moot by a paladin aura, atleast the fear portion. The confusion would have been difficult to see as an observer, but it's not immediately invalidated by their class choice. An abandoned keep sounds like the perfect place for this, it would be possible to separate the group, but she's certain they'd want to stay near Albedo.
Green, is pleasure, so perhaps, if somehow, they could harness its effects without abusing it, it could just be a regular city, albeit weird. Possibly.
Blue, is madness and hope, so while it would give the pleasure of hope; it's actually already slowly deteriorating one's body, but surely only after increased exposure. Perhaps an eroding miasma around the entire area, somewhat like a irradiated area, and only aberrations would be able to properly survive in such an environment, and slimes.
Indigo, numbs the affectee, both physically and emotionally. This may prove to be just a lesser form of death, if one would think about it that way.
Violet, is an oddity, atleast for a lich. Might be thrown away, or does not exist anymore. Or it's a large red-light district, which she would immediately have to think of something else, because she just realized that Rom and Ram are playing as well.
Black and White, the Lich would personally ensure it keeps it to itself. So, it won't be found like the other colors that the Lich has thrown away.
Histoire breathes a sigh, and looks up to check the time. It's almost time for the session. She tucks away the quickly jotted down notes, and goes to the kitchen to get some water. "Remember to stay hydrated, this is a threat," she chuckles to herself.
Returning to the table, she sees that the others are arriving and slowly taking their seats. She got reminded of the time everyone basically arrived as if they haven't had any sleep for days, and all because of the gemstones. She's glad she hasn't forced anyone's hand like that. Taking her seat once more, the idle chatter of the group dims down, and all of them look at Histoire.
"So, how was everyone's week?" asks Histoire.
"It's been quite good, same old, same old for the most part," says Vert, "4GO is getting a new update in a few weeks. A new scythe wielding class, a gun wielding healer, somehow that works, and we're going to the moon!"
"The moon, huh," comments Noire.
"Are you interested Noire? They've given it a free trial up to its first major expansion for free. No time limits, or strings attached. Just some, um, limitations to prevent abuse."
"Erm, maybe? Uh, I'll have to check my schedule for it."
"Well, if you ever do decide to play, just let me know so I can direct you properly."
"I've just been reading for the most part," says Blanc.
"What about you girls?" asks Histoire, facing Uni, Rom and Ram.
"Oh! Actually we've been asking Miss Mina to explain some of the big words you've been using when we're playing Miss Histoire," says Rom.
"Yeah! That's right." adds in Ram. "She's really surprised, and she said that she's quite happy we're getting to practice our math and language skills."
"That's good to hear from Miss Nishizawa," says Histoire with a nod. "What about you Miss Uni?"
"Erm, nothing too big, I mostly performed maintenance and improved on my weapon collection..."
"That's nothing to be ashamed of, proper maintenance of your tools and belongings are important."
"Thanks Miss Histoire."
"Speaking of belongings, here are all your sheets, and let's begin the session with distributing the experience points for the giant worm."
Everyone readies their pencil to update their sheet, already rubbing off their current experience values and waiting for Histoire.
"So how much we gettin' Histy?"
"All 8 of you will be getting 1400 experience points," reads out Histoire. "I don't believe you would be leveling up from this, so, now that you've all defeated the worm, what would you like to do?"
"Oh, um..." says Noire, rotating her finger around her sheet, "I'd want to, erm, investigate the town further. Just to check what exactly is in this town."
"Is that what everyone else wants as well?" asks Histoire.
"I don't see anything wrong with it," says Vert. "Let's check out the town, we can check the worm later, I mean what is it gonna do, run away?"
"True," says Blanc, nodding. "We should check out that house Uni was in, now that we aren't in a danger, we can check it out freely."
The rest of the table nod along with the current suggestion, as Histoire waves her arms around and changes the scenery to the village. She clears her throat, and begins to describe the village. "The village is in shambles, yet there is still a noticeable structure to the village that was once here. The pathways aren't completely eroded and covered with grass, attempting to open the doors, while somewhat more difficult than normal, proves that they aren't stuck in place due to rust on the hinges or that the doors are rotten in place. Taking notice of the smell, it's awful, it reminds one of a garbage dump, but not because of rotten perishables or refuse. It just smells like a room that hasn't been aired out for years."
"Oh? So just like what Poppy said, the denizens of this town do move around the town..." says Vert. "They don't seem to be taking care of the town as much but still better than absolute abandonment. Well, now that we're here, can we do a search roll?"
"Erm, sure Miss Vert, I'll ask everyone to roll, and take the average of everyone then, to simulate everyone looking around the town. Anything in particular you would like to look for? This isn't like a video game where the main character would just happen to know what to look for, so you have to give me some specifics."
"Oh, uh... maybe a diary? I feel like there would be something like that here, and there's nothing else I could think of that would give us the most information. So any kind of book, or log."
"Alright then, everyone, please roll your Search checks."
8 d20s roll across the table, with each one being carefully watched by their owner. Since individual rolls wouldn't matter, Histoire doesn't need to keep track of who rolled what, just that there should be 8 results, tallied together, and find the mean value.
"Um, Janette got, 23, total."
"Blunga got 7, big surprise."
"Poppy, 22 in total, I got a slightly low roll..."
"JC got 6... I think he's not feeling great..."
"Paul has 14."
"Burt ... 4."
"Sir Puddington has eagle eyes with 21!"
"Albedo got ... 6."
Histoire took note of their results, tallied them up and found the mean value to be at 12.875, or 13 rounded up. She thought that perhaps an individual roll from Poppy would've been a better choice, but she wouldn't give them a hard time.
"Okay," announces Histoire, "the average of your rolls is 13. So, moving on, after half an hour of searching, Janette found a rather ruined, but still readable book. Most of the pages are torn or stained, but there's enough pages and content to make sense of it."
"That's good," says Nepgear, nodding her head happily. "So what do I make out of the book?"
"Janette pored through the broken book, and sees that it's a diary. The whole book hasn't been filled in completely. Janette reads what she can..."
Histoire racks her brain on what she could place in the diary, as she was prepared for the orange gems in the worm, but not this in specificity. An idea passes through her mind, the entries would speak about the people getting abducted, and eventually, their deterioration as a village. It doesn't need to be fully fleshed out right now, and sometimes obscuring details will make them think ideas that would be more creative than her own ideas.
"A rather early entry states, 'Today, more people have disappeared. They should've returned a few days before, but nothing. It's getting difficult to restock the store.' The rest of the entry lists down a table of what looks to be inventory. There are plenty of corrections, and the numbers are just going down."
Nepgear places a hand on her chin. "Hm, so the place I found this book, did it look like a shop of sorts?"
"That's right. There's a dilapidated counter and equally dilapidated rotten shelves. The shelves are filled with trash and refuse, but not the rotting and really awful smelly kind. So it's not nauseating."
"What more can I read from the book?"
"The next readable entry reads as thus, 'Great joy! They have returned!' except, this entry was crossed out, or almost. As the entry continues, 'Something feels off about them, they seem physically whole but their minds seem addled... They attempted to trade using odds bits and ends instead of gold, yet when pressed... they truly believe they are trading with valuables.' It takes a while before you reach the next readable entry."
"Wait, hold on, 'they truly believe they are trading with valuables'?" asks Noire. "What did the orange gem do to the test subjects again?"
"It makes the subjects somehow greedy, and hyperactive, but I suppose you can control hyperactivity somewhat," says Neptune. "and more importantly, this entry doesn't make my previous theory on it wrong, since Histy said it was right."
"I'm sure she was just being nice," says Noire looking unimpressed. "Anyway, if they were suddenly becoming greedy, and this entry says that they truly believed they were trading valuables, then wouldn't that imply..."
"What they're suddenly seeing junk as actual gemstones and gold, and other knickknacks that are expensive?" says Neptune nonchalantly.
"Actually, that's exactly what I was going to say," replies Noire. "That would be the most logical conclusion. The stone most likely doesn't make someone greedy, but makes it so that it would be easy to fall into greed. Perhaps, some kind of mental effect, and continued exposure makes it harder to resist the mind alteration."
"Huh," says Blanc. "makes sense to me. Are there more to the entries?"
"Well, is there Lady Histoire?" asks Nepgear.
"Janette goes through the book further, and the next entry that has readable content takes multiple pages, and even then, it was only a scrap. Janette could only read, 'Looks like they finally got actual gold to pay.' Skimming further, more unreadable entries, and finally another entry. 'Another failed trade? They're calling my gold, junk? Seemingly randomly?' Further entries entail the same topic. The readable portion of the entries after that is the person seemingly attempting to make sense of which of his gold is getting accepted by the other merchants."
"Hm," muses Nepgear. "So, the junk he was getting eventually became valuables to his eyes, and when he was trying to trade ... he couldn't tell which was real so he would occasionally trade junk that no one else wants, and sometimes he would trade with real gold. What about the last readable entry?"
"Janette flips to the back and works backward. Eventually she finds a readable entry, it's not the last one, there are multiple unreadable entries after this one. The entry simply states, 'There was an earthquake last night it seems. Today, they're checking it out.' This is the last readable entry."
"I'm guessing that's the worm? Maybe? Or maybe the worm was just... something that happened, and maybe the gemstone had some effect to it... either way, it seems the worm was a by-product of the gemstone somehow. I guess let's check the worm now? Before that, I'll keep the book, and let everyone know what I found."
"Alright then Miss Nepgear. So, Janette read through the book, atleast to what was readable, tucked it in her inventory, and let everyone know what was in the book. Since everyone on the table already heard it out-of-character; in-character, should be the same."
"So, um," says Nepgear, "I think we've combed through the village enough. We all know that all the junk here, since this place has been under the influence of the orange gemstone, the villagers definitely see all of these as gold or valuables."
"Hold on. That still doesn't really explain why they're skeletons, or rather moving skeletons," says Noire. "Nothing about the entry states them becoming undead..."
Neptune chuckles smugly with a hint of triumph. "Silly Noire, can't you see? The testing logs were only for live subjects, and it was never on dead subjects. Obviously the hyperactivity that the living subjects were subjected to, under the influence of the gemstone, just manifested in such a manner as the subject expired."
"Big words for someone like you, where'd you steal them?" retorts Noire.
Neptune looks shocked, as if she was told she couldn't have anymore pudding. "Why, I never!"
"Alright now, you two," says Histoire, attempting to defuse the situation.
"Hahaha, it's okay Histy, we're just having fun. Anyway, I'm sure that's the reason why they can move about."
"Well," says Noire, "all the same, perhaps once we're back in town I'd like to ask around if that's possible... So, anyway, let's check out the worm."
"The party moves out of the town, and back to the worm. Or what remains of it, since you've all defeated it. What would you like to do with the worm though? You can't put it in your pocket."
"Blunga would like to roll Survival, in order to basically cut it apart. Like an autopsy, find out whatever it's been eating," says Blanc.
Blanc rolls her d20, it lands and she immediately picks it back up.
"Um, Miss Blanc? I wasn't able to catch that..."
"No! Nevermind! Blunga will not be cutting up that worm!" she blurts out, clearly annoyed.
"Erm... are you okay? Did anyone catch her roll..?"
"I don't think we need to ask her at all judging from her reaction..." says Vert. "I'm almost certain it landed on 1. You could've just taken 10. That's a thing. I'm certain we've used that before."
"...could I, Lady Histoire?" says Blanc meekly.
Histoire thinks to herself, and realizes, there's no real interesting result to a failure roll for cutting up the worm. "That's fine Miss Blanc. Go ahead and take 10."
"That'll be 18 in total. Thank you Lady Histoire. So, I'll cut open the worm then. After that, what do we find?"
"Cutting open the worm whole will take almost all day, due to its sheer size, or you can open up a specific portion."
"Erm, I think I'll cut open the whole worm, we're not in a hurry for anything, so after the fight, we'll just cut open the worm and study it overnight. I don't think there's a massive threat around anymore, so we can take our time."
"If that's the case then, I think this is a good time for a short break," says Histoire.
"Sure, Histy."