>>5904637The Goddess of the Three-Quarter Moon regards you in silence for a moment, and then reaches out a hand. Accustomed to the tenderness of fairy-folk by now, you reach your hand back almost automatically, but yours does not find hers—rather, you find yourself launched backwards, tumbling through the air, saved only by your adoption of your <Improved Aethereal Form>. You skid to a stop on the chalk-white lunar sand, staring up at the mystical launch-pad which is your ticket home.
“What the fuck?!” you snap, before you catch yourself, mortified.
“I am sorry, Ezreal Mious Van Houtzmann,” Princess Yllarquin says, tone still neutral, expression unchanged. “You may not leave. Not right now. Not when things are so delicate, the balance precarious. Not with my secrets, my sacred teachings. Not when you might sue them to your own ends, and ruin everything.”
You stare back into those huge, empty eyes: big, black, spheroid shapes set upon an elegant face which now seems gaunt and thin. The titaness before you… You see her now as she is, ornately attired in her tiered, latticed gown, structured with rib-like protrusions to hold the tower of fabric aloft around rail-thin, alien limbs. The hand before you. Has not five shapely digits but a four-pronged, knobby talon. The arm has too many joints.
“I do not wish to harm you,” she says, almost kindly, “and I do not need to. Please understand: this is not a request, not an argument, and not a sentence. It is a statement of fact, little one. You will not leave. You will stay here, an honoured guest, and we will discuss it again in another twelve months.”
What do you do?
>Rush for the pad and try to activate it yourself [Arcana/Feycraft check]>Try to reason with the goddess [Sociability check, higher DC but success means victory]>Turn to Nym and Devi for help—they’re you friends, after all! [Sociability check, lower DC but success doesn’t mean instant victory]>Battle a god [initiates a lopsided, but not IMPOSSIBLE combat]>Use a spell or item to solve this [specify what, and how]>Something else [write-in] 