Cryptid had watched the first event with confusion, unsure why individuals were receiving familiars. But then the cause became clear: It was a trade, as all things were. A trade for entertainment, but a trade nonetheless.

The lean bat-like figure approached. ”I would like a familiar in exchange for the potential of entertaining,” Cryptid stated.

The fox-imps first approached Oilstone T-One, delving into their tophat. What they drew forth was a small creature halfway between primate and rodent: two feet long plus a prehensile, bushy tail, with dark brown-red fur tipped with gold that made the entire creature appear to be gilded. It howled more like an upset cat than a rodent or a monkey, though, until the fox-imps set it down.

"Another one," one said with clear distaste, squinting.

The link with Oilstone slid into place, the howling ceasing, the angry little creature hissing and chittering at the fox-imps as if scolding them. The translucent blue piece of Chalcedony at its back caught the light with every little movement.

---

Cryptid's offer was met with somewhat baffled stares, though Nemean called down cheerfully: "GOOD TRADE. Solid. Give 'em somethin' good, boys!"

Which they proceeded to do, albeit again quite by chance. What was yanked forth was--nothing, at first; the imp had trouble, after grasping whatever it was, pulling it through the hat. Several other imps gathered around, and gradually, a sort of roaring, howling song began to emanate from the top-hat.

All of a sudden the hat seemed to vanish, a huge Sailfin Singer tumbling out, a series of bumpy little pearl spikes on its face aimed in a thrust at the nearest fox-imp's backside. It went tumbling and the Singer stumbled up, its song now full-blast and deafening, before its link with Cryptid snapped into place. It turned, blinking more placidly, as if awaiting a command.

@Oilstone T-One @Cryptid

POCKET LESSERS!

Part II: Team Challenge!

The series of challenges were still covered by huge cloths: like little rooms, ready for the teams to pass through. Nemean sat back, waving one hand, and lights began to converge on the first. "ARE WE READY?!" she crowed. The fox-imps hastily gathered around the first room, hands on the dark cloth.

"Your TASK is to stay on ONE SIDE of the dividing wall, with your familiar on the other! You'll both see the same puzzle. You've gotta guide your familiar into passing the challenge, with only MENTAL communication! ...I mean, I guess you could talk, too. It's not like they can speak," she mused, then shook her head as if dismissing this thought. "RIGHT! Challenge ONE! -You're taking turns so don't crowd that shit, give everyone a good view!"

Her fingers snapped, and huge billboard-like screens hovered over the forum, with a close-up view of a black cloth. This was whipped away by imp hands, and a low and suspenseful music began to pulse through the forum.

Large boxes sat to either side of the dividing wall. "CHALLENGE ONE! My assistants will tell you an item, and you have to find it in the box, then get your familiar to pull the same thing outta theirs! If they don't draw an item, or they draw the wrong one, you fail challenge one! Speed is a higher score! Aaaand.... GO!"

---

Team Challenge - Round 1!

This challenge involves Gembounds being divided from their linked Lessers by a dividing wall. They can't see through this, but the mental link with their Lesser remains. The first challenge presents an identical box of items to either side of the wall. These boxes contain likewise identical items: each has a pencil, a gemstone, a puzzle piece, a paintbrush, a dark and dusty rock, a key, and a few other similar random things.

The fox-imps will whisper a random item to the Gembound (players can choose the item's identity) and the Gembound must find the item, then describe it through their link with their familiar, guiding the familiar to find and remove the item from their own identical box. If a familiar is too small, the fox-imps will help it once it indicates the item!

Players should roll Other (or, if their character is Other-path, physical combat--to keep roll thresholds fair) to see whether their familiar succeeds, or gets confused or distracted.

Round 1 is a pass/fail: a Barely+ will net one point to the team's score, while a Failure or Crit Fail yields no points. Keep track of your characters' scores!

Characters may still join this round, and it will be assumed that they reached the starting line before the challenge began, but after the next round, the post will be closed to new entrants. The next post will take place on June 20th, so please post by the end of the 19th.

Note: these rolls cannot be used for character progression.

@Kaizer @East @Miriam @Mocha @Sair @Anala @Oliver @Richter @Tahlia @Knightly @Eleanora @Rift @Edeltraud @Oilstone T-One @Cryptid

If you'd like your tags condensed, just give us a list of which characters you have in this event!

Well this was... different. It wasn't an obstacle course, anyway. Dust Moth still intact (if confused and a little tired), Oliver headed into the first challenge.

The fox-imps leaned in around him as he examined the items in the box. 'Key,' one murmured, and he fished around with wing-claws, prodding and poking. "Oh," he said aloud, finding a skeleton key inside--and he pushed his mind (squinting) toward the moth, trying to show it the image of the key in his mind.

The moth had done a little confused wandering before going to the box, but at his prodding, it seemed to understand: it burrowed down, flitting through items until it found the key he was showing it in its mind. A fox-imp delicately helped to pry the item (and moth) out, both unharmed.

Score: 1

Mocha

'Cause I'm having a good time

Oh what fun these games already were! He made a new friend, he learned more about magic, and he got free food! Who didn't like free food?! Mocha was having the time of his life, and Nori was just along for the ride.

Mocha looked at his box of items as he waited for instructions, and then pulled out the chosen item. There were all kinds of fun little trinkets in there, but he tried his best to focus so that Nori knew what to look for. Unfortunately, Nori had already taken his distraction as instruction and picked the gemstone instead of the rock. He couldn't blame him, really.

"That's okay buddy, we'll get the next one!"

Score: 0

Sair

Sair was... a little concerned. Only a little, given that the games were all in good fun, but concerned nonetheless. His firetongue was a unique creature, and one he had already grown quite fond of given it's special way of hunting, but with a unique ability came a unique personality, and Sair wasn't sure that Trill would take to the contest without a line of sight. They had been working hard enough to keep Trill in line when they could be seen.

"I can trust you, just this once, can't I?" They looked at their new companion, pleading, before they separated to their respective boxes. Once the imps decided on the item that Trill would have to pick, they tried to convey it through the magical connection. 'Pencil. Thin, wooden. Sharp end. Please?' They hoped that was how the bond worked.

Trill simply... walked away. Alright, then.

"Speaking." Thinking. Doing.
OOC: 0 points

We don't know how to accept we're just a product of a chance /
And less like gods but more like plants

ANALA
From a spark to a flame

Anala was excited as ever, bounding over to her respective box and waiting for Ragnar to wander over to his. "This'll be easy, right?!" She called from behind the curtain, eager to begin. The skrungler responded with a hitter. "That's the spirit!"

Anala was given her assignment, the key, and she squinted in an effort to share its image through their bond. The skrungler plucked it up out of the box and trotted around the curtain to deliver. "What did I say?" She beamed at her new companion, offering him a friendly nudge with her nose.

OOC Notes: 1 point

Death-headed as they were, Tunnel Runners possessed a trait East could often tip his hat to: their resilience was unmatched amongst most hooved Lessers who didn't have size to defend against prodding monsters' claws. Sickening a sight as it might have been witnessing many an instance of these deer burying their snouts opportunistically into a corpse by the wayside, one couldn't deny the lack of pickiness on display heightened their chances of survival. And at the very least if something tried to attack them, cycles of practice honing an ill temperament allowed a decent fight against fate, antlers or tusks used to put up a last valiant struggle toward freedom instead of easily succumbing to an enemy's open jaws.

They could be described as a proud and combative crowd, not often prone to bowing their head to those smaller than them, even if that discussed pipsqueak happened to be their intellectual better. After regaining his bearings, the particular specimen that'd been promptly spat out in a tangle of limbs into the arena proved to be no outlier from his kind. Although a cautious choice sent a wave of calmness to him through the newly established link he had with the bird, the Runner snorted and threw his head back when rustling feathers accompanied an inky black figure's attempt to settle upon his shoulders. Nevertheless, once he barely lost out to a back and forth tug of wills, he grudgingly allowed this interloper who'd managed thus far to dodge thrusting antlers to briefly travel upon his well-muscled back.

Considering the impatience boiling beneath the skin of his temporary familiar, East considered it a miracle he hadn't been forced to dismount long before his turn at this cooperative game of search arrived. At the very moment the last participant walked away from the room with its dividing wall, the steam building within the Tunnel Runner had reached a critical point; he paced about, stopping every few seconds or so to huff and stamp the ground. At a fox-imp's beckon, the deer advanced, the restraint exerted upon him by his rider what held at bay an unbearable urge to charge through all in his path.

That same attendant stretched an arm out, an uncanny grin pulling taut over his face while the pair drew nearer. The appendage clearly was being offered as a more agreeable perch than the present one beneath talons. In a rare act of unity, both Lesser and Greater regarded it with skepticism—the first by disdainfully expelling air through nostrils, and the second by merely humming low and tilting his head with narrowed eyes. Neither trusted the possible poison lurking behind a friendly face.

"You can't just whisper it now?" East requested, reluctant to budge from his seat. "It's not like guts and glory here can understand any of our tongue wagging."

If the imp's smile were any more plastered on, a tap against his rigid lips would've surely made a solid thunk. He shrugged and croaked out in a voice that had inhaled far more smoke than air in his lifetime, "Them's the rules, pal. You're going to have to vamoose if you ain't interested in playing by 'em."

All right then. He'd take the bait, if only for a minute. No point in wasting all this time waiting around by forfeiting over so simple of a quibble as Lesser comprehension of language.

With a stern direction to the Tunnel Runner to walk over to the side of the room that remained tucked out of view behind the wall, he finally departed from his less than loyal steed. A swoop lead to landing upon the given arm of the imp who leaned in and shared his clandestine choice of item: "A puzzle piece."

Simple enough, he supposed upon flying next over to the box and fishing out the aforementioned piece. There should only be the one counterpart in the other container, identical in every conceivable way, so describing each individual groove of it shouldn't be necessary to convey what to seek. A vague sketch was transferred over the connection to wherever his irascible partner stood in the room's hidden half, and East listened for the sounds of a search underway.

Perhaps he should've tuned his hearing instead to the chaotic scuffling of a skirmish. A series of bangs rang out from the other side, and huffs and snorts punctuated clear signs of growing frustration. An imp that had been overseeing the familiar peeked his head out and gestured for help, disappearing back behind the wall as soon as two more rushed over. All East could use to spectate was the other side of his bond with the Tunnel Runner, unmistakable irritation pulsing there the single clue as to whatever difficulties were being had.

Eventually one of the imps stumbled into sight, panting and in total disarray. Suspended between a finger and thumb was the doppelganger of the puzzle piece currently situated in his beak. "That's the right one," the imp wheezed out. "He kept on trying to pick it up when we told him to point. Mind calling him off now? Please?"

If the way he clutched at his ribs was any indication, the Tunnel Runner had been none too pleased by the fact neither his hooves or tongue were skilled enough to retrieve such a tiny object. Best to wrangle him back under control before the situation worsened further and he escalated to antler stabs over kicks and similar body blows.

Score: 1

He steps forward to the crate, blinking his eyes as he tries to peek through the small opening in the lid. The Skycaller, who he'd decided he'd call Siren, was (hopefully) ready and waiting on the other side of the divider. "Well, what do you have for me," he asks the the attending fox-imp. It promptly snickers, before presenting Kaizer a copper gear.

Well, it's distinctive enough. He reaches in the box with his tail, rummaging somewhat blindly, before hitching on something toothed. Sure enough, it's one of the presented gear's companions. First task, complete.

Then he mentally turns to Siren. You're looking for a round thingy. It has funny edges- in and out and in and out- and is very shiny. On the other side, the Lesser stares for a while, but something shiny is enough to get it to want to cooperate. It sticks its head in the crate opening, before retrieving another metal gear.

Points: 1

An agile master of the air, although not necessarily an apex predator compared to the behemoths who roamed harsher cave environments, Kytes harbored a dignity which demanded a certain measure of respect. To be plucked out of the blue and dragged into a new setting was an impertinence ordinarily not tolerated. However, being faced by an individual whose immensity dwarfed him caused Miriam's acquisition to quiet an enraged hiss before incurring the wrath of someone fully possessing the ability to strangle any resistance from his winged body. Even as the bond between familiar and master established itself, he eyed her with the wariness any would a creature higher on the food chain than themselves. A wrong action might seal his doom, so the Lesser stilled every muscle as the Tatzelwurm picked him up to meet her examining gaze's oceanic depths.

Fortunately the capabilities evident in his shape drew out a more genuine, satisfied expression to the surface: dark lips eased open farther than the previous smile displayed, granting a ghastly cast to Miriam as the full extent of her jaws were revealed. "Well, aren't you precious," she crooned and brushed a claw lightly over a fright-frozen spine. "Let us see how we can put those limbs of yours to use, hmmm?"

Relief saturated the connection once she and the Kyte parted ways for their respective sides of the room, the emotion obviously the latter's while the former merely giggled to herself at the easy intimidation the very weight of her presence imposed. She lowered her head and nodded graciously as an imp, balanced on the shoulders of another, whispered the word "gemstone" into a curled ear.

Mere child's play, especially when acquiring such a pretty object happened to be her task. Barely a few seconds passed before she lifted it from the box, rotating the jewel so every gleaming facet could be caught for her benefit as well as those watching in the audience. She mentally captured the image in the best detail she could muster and shunted the result over to where her new reptilian lackey lounged.

Oh, how the bitter taste coating her tongue was barely concealed when the Lesser emerged from the other half of the room hauling along the entire box in a desperate move to please the foreign, overbearing consciousness breathing down his neck. A barely repressed quiver in her voice she attempted to mislead listeners into believing was faint laughter, shoulders shaking to sell the idea. "How sweet of you, dear, but I think you overestimated what I needed."

Having more complete access to concealed emotions, the Kyte understood better her true nature. A sense of threat hovered over him should he fail to follow her exact wishes too many times in a row.

Score: 0