Fern

Lore made possible by the Mayhem at the Mysterious Market event
brought to life by @akitcougar and @Firra, their text is in italics and has been left unchanged

Fern hadn't realized she touched something. Honestly, she didn't want to, okay she might've wanted to, but really she restrained herself! She kinda wanted to touch everything the moment she set her first paw in the store, but still she restrained herself.

It felt as if the armband beaconed her, as if she had no other choice than touch it, to feel its beautiful knots, to satisfy the voice in her head.

She knew something was wrong the moment she felt a strange surge, and fell down and went blind. When her vision returned a few seconds later, she saw the intricate knotwork again. But on her body. Shook with fear she tried to stand up.

You stumble to your feet and almost knock into a shelf, but before you do you're steadied by someone you don't recognize. A Skydancer is holding you upright. She pulls your arm out to look at your new tattoo.

"Well, things just got way more complicated, Cat," she says wryly. But you're a dragon?

"The chances of a compatible person finding it was negligible." A cranky looking Pearlcatcher wanders into view, takes a look at the arm, and grunts. "Well, looks like you're with us for now. That is, unless you want to end up with your insides as outsides."

"They've got a few days at least, Cat, no need to scare them." The Skydancer turns to you, "I'm Andraste and this is Cotriona, and we're-"

"LEAVING." Cotriona grabs the two of you and shoves you toward the back of the shop, just as the bell above the door chimes. You and Andraste turn to look and see a mirror with a terrifying skull visage prowl through the door.

"Why yes we are!" You are bodily lifted between the two of them and hauled through the back of the shop and out into a back alley. They set you on your feet, but you're still sandwiched between them as they lead you down the alley. "Listen the puppy back there is bad news. He's trying to get that." She points at your arm. "And the last time that happened to someone, they only got it back by letting the poor guy explode. We're tracking down someone who specializes in items like that. He'll be able to help all of us."

The door behind you slams open, and they both break into a run dragging you with them. The three of you hightail it through crowded shopping street. Cotriona has taken to weaving skillfully through the crowds, while Andraste is taking the more attention getting path above everyone's heads.

You get a bit bogged down in the crowds, so you clearly see it when they both reach the intersection ahead. Cotriona splits off to the left and Andraste to the right.

Fern is confused, being dragged along with two dragons she doesn't know. Although she likes the way Cotriona looks, she trusts Andraste more. Not knowing what she'll fall into, she follows the second dragon.

You decide to follow Andraste. She leads you through the maze of stalls and shops right in the center of the bazaar, grabbing bits and bobs along the way. You are barely able to keep track of her, yet somehow she knows the way while staying focused on the things in her claws.

Andy tosses you the device she just put together. "Hold that for a moment, darling, and duck around behind those barrels will you." You can't make heads or tails of what the device does, but you dive behind the barrels by the edge of an alleyway.

You peek your head around the side to watch, nervous as the dragons chasing you get closer and closer. You see Andy throw some coins at a nearby shopkeeper before she tackles herself right into one of the barrels next to you. A dark liquid spills out, smelling like tar.

"You're a fast runner, right?" Andy asks with a grin as she takes the device from your claws, immediately fiddling with it. An ominous ticking starts. Without waiting for your answer, she shoves you down the alleyway.

You can hear her counting under her breath as she follows right behind. Right before her countdown reaches zero she grabs you and pulls you under cover. The explosion knocks the breath clear out of your lungs and sets your ears to ringing. Bright and wild sparks dance across your vision and you’re not sure if they’re after-effects or real.

You barely have time to recover as Andy continues to lead you along. As your ears start to clear up, you hear a furious roar behind you. Andy freezes, paling. "Change of plans, darling," she saids, her voice tinged with a nervous edge. "That was Captain Serious Face herself. I'll distract her, you're going to go that way and find someone called Enzul. He'll know what to do about that tattoo. He's as old as the Shifting Emporium itself apparently."

You try to ask a question but Andy turns and runs back towards the noise, pulling a wildly sparking gauntlet onto her arm as she rounds the corner. You huff in annoyance, but you start heading away from that part of the bazaar.

You choose a door at random and shimmy through. This is a bar, dingy and dusty. The amount of attention your tattoo gets from the bar patrons is very uncomfortable.

The ridgeback bartender looks up in excitement. "Welcome to Electri-City Brewing Company!" he said eagerly. When you tell him you're looking for someone, his face falls a bit.

"Well, I might be able to help, but first, would you mind testing out my latest brew?" He puts down a mug of something that smells vaguely like honey. It's blue. "Help me out, and I'll see what I can do for you."

"I... I.. I guess so?" Fern is stammering, not being able to clear her head and think straight. If this is Enzul, she'd better listen to him, she thinks?

You grab the mug and take a sip. The smell is odd, but it tastes wonderful, and you chug the whole thing back.

The bartender grins. "Got some blue honey off those bees in the training fields," he said. "Thought it'd make some good mead, and I can tell you liked it. Name's Lectri. Now, who are you lookin' for?"

You explain the little you know about Enzul. He's old. He's a guardian. And he's somewhere in the Shifting Emporium.

The ridgeback hummed. A customer down the bar ordered one of the blue meads, and Lectri took time to think about your question as he served the other dragon.

"Well, you might want to try down in the historic district. I know a couple guys at the scrapyard down there who know absolutely everyone in the Emporium since everyone brings their trash there. See if you can find Sparkplug, she knows where everything is in that dump."

You thank him for the mead and the information, and you head out to find the junkyard.

You were expecting a small, somewhat rundown dump. As you approached the junkyard, your eyes widen at the sheer mountains of trash.

"New to the junkyard, I take it?" a small nocturne asks. She zips around you before deciding to hover in front of you. "I'm Sparkplug, I run this place and sell the parts that are still usable, what's your name and what are you looking for and ooooooooo is that residue from one of Andy's projects?" she says, not taking a single breath between words.

Eventually, you're able to get a word in edgewise. You introduce yourself, explain the unfortunate effects of Andy's flashbang, and say you're looking for an old guardian named Enzul.

Sparkplug fidgets the entire time, and by the end she's visibly vibrating with energy. "Woah that's so cool! I don't know an Enzul per se, but if Andy sent you, I can send you back to her! I always know where she is. If you do me a teensy-weensy favor," she says with a sly smile.

You sigh and ask what the favor is.

"Well, one of my workers misplaced an old piece of machinery that Andy wanted. If you're already heading back to her, would you mind going and finding it for me? Oh, you will? You're a dear," Sparkplug says, not even waiting for your answer.

There are two paths through the junkyard. Well, really only one that goes through it, but there's a clear path on the edge as well.


"Yeah no but what?" The nocturne talks so fast Fern almost doesn't understand what she's saying. "You want me to get something from a junkyard I never heard of?"
But the nocturne is gone before you can even finish that sentence properly.

"Hm. Well.. Here goes, I guess?" Fern mutters to herself, whilest taking the middle road. "When will this day end? All I wanted was to just browse that little store, maybe find something odd. Well yeah, I found something odd and then two odd things appeared and then I followed one of them into an odd place with an odd but suprisingly lovely drink, and now I'm probably going to be stuck forever in some odd trash. Gee wiz laddies this day is the best of my life."

With a determined look on your face, you head down into the middle of the junkyard. You enter a series of canyons and tunnels, all made of the surrounding junk from centuries of people living in the Emporium. You swear you even see a broken cogfrog of all things, but there was a slight avalanche that buried it before you could check.

Sparkplug had described the device as "big, sparky, with a lot of loose and broken panels". That, unfortunately, described half the junk in the scrapyard. Fortunately, it also had three big red buttons and the official seal of the Tempest Spire engraved onto it.

As you look around and half-heartedly dig into the junk piles, your arm occasionally prickles. Frowning, you walk until it starts to prickle again, and then you follow what feels like a magical signal.

You eventually find a book that makes your arm surge with magic before subsiding. The book is weathered and crumbling to dust. Half the pages are torn out, and many of the remaining ones are burnt. You can just make out the title, "Words of the Speaker". You wrack your brain for forgotten history lessons. A few of the remaining paragraphs make you think this is writing about some prophet from the Second Age.

You carefully wrap the book in a scarf you have, and you place it in your bag. You'll examine it later. You turn to keep looking, and you see the device you were sent for.

You approach it cautiously, not wanting to get burnt by a stray spark.

Honestly, Fern doesn't want to take anymore risks. That device might as well give her purple electrical hair, for all she knows. She puts it in her bag, with the book and tries to find her way back through the maze of junk.

You pull the device out of the junkpile, causing another minor avalanche. You carefully place it in your bag next to the book, and you make your way out of the maze of scrap.

Sparkplug zips up to your face as you walk out. "Well, didja find it?" You nod, and she grins. "Alrighty! Now, you said Andy went to distract ol' Serious Face? So then she should be–"

"I'm right here, Sparky," Andraste says as she lands next to the two of you. "And you found my intern, thank you darling."

A golem shaped like a dragon emerges from Andy's bag, followed by a tiny black cat. "Calculating a 97.2 percent probability that Sparkplug is going to repay your favor," the golem said in a mechanical voice.

"Thank you, Smallfry. Keep an eye on Bigby for me will you?" she says as she taps a few buttons on the golem's control gauntlet. The cat jumps off of Andy and into the junkyard, the golem hovering over it. "So, you're finally paying me back for that favor, Sparky?"

"Yessiree, Andy," Sparkplug says as she gestures to you. You pull the device out of your bag, and Andy's eyes go wide with greed. "I know you like weird things out of the Spire and I saw this the other day."

"Wonderful. Come along now, intern. We have places to be," Andy says, whistling for her golem and cat. You start to ask about Enzul, and Andy kicks you in the shin when Sparkplug isn't looking. "Later," she hisses out.

The two of you leave the junkyard, and Andy leads you to a nearby boarded-up building. She lifts up a few boards in one of the windows, and you enter the abandoned shack.

"Man, Sparkplug has no idea the value of what she's got in that scrapyard of hers," Andy says as she examines the device you'd found. "You know what this is? It's made to find Second Age magic. Also known as that little artifact in your arm." She pokes at some of the broken panels. "I think I can reconfigure this to overload your arm and get the artifact out. Want to give it a shot?"

Does Fern trust Andraste enough to just say, yh, go ahead? Does the need to return to her normal life outweigh the risk of lets say, possibly losing her arm?

She thinks about the chocolate cake awaiting her back in her cozy little home, and the choice is quickly made. "Sure, what could go wrong?"
Everything.

The two of you dive headfirst into tinkering this old device, passing each other different tools. Andy has her golem, Smallfry, give a hand, as Bigby the cat explores the abandoned house you found.

It takes a while, neither of you used to working with each other or on technology this old, but eventually you manage to get it in working order.

"Well, Smallfry, what are the odds?" Andy asks, wiping sweat away.

"30.2 percent it works, 68.6 it does nothing, and 2.2 chance of catastrophic failure," the golem says in its flat electronic voice.

"I like those odds. What about you, intern?" Andy asks you. You nod. Thirty percent chance is better than not ever getting it off, and you want this artifact gone.

Your arm starts to prickle as the two of you fit the device around your arm. "It's probably going to hurt, so I'm sorry about that," Andy says as she clicks in the last slot. "Well, here goes."

She pushes the button, and the device starts to whirr ominously. The two of you look at each other, and you know in the pit of your stomach that this was a terrible idea.

Andy realizes the same thing and starts trying to tear it off your arm, muttering prayers and curses under her breath. Her cat tears out of the hiding space he found, running out of the house and into the bazaar. The device is beeping frantically, and you feel your arm start to burn. The magic in the device and your arm surge, rushing towards your heart and your head.

You give out a yelp of pain as you're knocked unconscious, mere moments before the device on your arm blows up, leaving a crater where the abandoned house once stood.

The last thought crossing Fern's mind was about that delicious chocolate cake in her kitchen.