Quote Originally Posted by C0L0R3D View Post
I got very confused regarding cycles and stuff! Turns out I can still do stuff, so let's roll with that uh yeah!

[Searching the Colbyi Estate. Still don't exactly care for the spelling
at the minute.]
Yeah, the time limit for cycles is more of a thing to say “if you’ve made your action before time’s up, great, but if time expires and you haven’t made an action yet and all the other actions from everyone else have been covered, we may be moving on without you to the next cycle.” But if you get your action in before time’s up, it definitely gets counted. I would definitely not start the next cycle if there’s still time on the clock.

Of course since I’ve been really slow with doing these lately (I definitely want to finish this season but have been pretty burnt out), yeah, it hasn’t meant very much. But you can totally submit actions after time’s up and if I haven’t addressed the latest action posts from other people who have posted before you, your action is definitely getting in on the queue.

And yeah, I don’t know how I came up with the name “Colbyi.” I just try to hammer out whatever might sound like a fitting name for each Pokémon and then move onto the next. xD

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Once the evening arrives, you join the other Savants in Benni’s dining room, enjoying the pot pie dinner she has prepared. The delicious taste feels like home, and it gives you a sense of warmth that makes it easy to forget what’s been going on around town, but once dinner is done, you know it’s time to head out and continue the mission as planned.

Tonight, you decide to head to the Colbyi Estate. Over dinner, Lyric mentioned a discussion that she had with Velay and that Velay had investigated the mansion, thinking it was abandoned. There was mention of a chest that was there that Velay had found, and you decide tonight would be a good time to try searching, hoping Colbyi is asleep or preoccupied while you investigate it.

You wait until a later hour before you head toward the estate itself on the far eastern side of town. From what you heard about Velay’s searching, it doesn’t seem like Colbyi has any kind of security or guards, but you decide to be careful and make as little noise as possible, hoping to not have to resort to any kind of banging or heavy pushing. Thankfully, as a Snivy, you find that’s going to be much easier than the kind of unintentional ruckus a large and heavy Pokémon might create. Moving through the grass and shrubs outside will be right at home with you and will easily keep you concealed during your searches while a Buizel like Velay would stand out easily. So you know you’ve got that edge at least.

While the night is young, you first search the exterior, just in case there was anything that might be suspicious that Velay might have missed. You find the estate is quite lavish with wrought iron fences, finely-carved stone walls with impeccable masonry, and gardens that are empty for now, but likely once were filled with colorful and lively vegetation, and only are empty now simply because Colbyi himself couldn’t care less about maintaining a garden or paying someone else to do so.

Meanwhile, as you deftly move and scope out the house from the shrubs around the outside, you see the mansion is old and dark and has seen many years of wear, but still seems to be in good standing condition despite a few blemishes of age. Still, at these nighttime hours, it does look creepy and unsettling and it’s not the kind of place you’d expect to see a happy and bubbly owner to live in. And you feel children would be terrified of the dark around here. Instead, now, you expect that the mansion itself is now a reflect of the owner in that it’s old, colorless, and lacking new life to it.

After waiting for a while, you notice all lights in the mansion seem to turn off, so you figure Colbyi has likely gone off to sleep. From your initial search discovery of the exterior, you use a lightly ajar window on the basement level to deftly sneak your way into the cellar. Thankfully, due to your small and nimble grass snake body, it’s easy and you make less noise than what a gust of wind would create. Once you’re inside, you find yourself standing in Colbyi’s wine and cider cellar, which looks old and covered in dust and cobwebs. You’re quite certain Colbyi will likely die of old age and natural causes long before any of these bottles even get looked at by him and whoever is in his will may end up having to deal with these. As you look upon the dusty bottles, you’re not even sure if there’s still liquid inside of them or if it just evaporated over time and Colbyi never knew.

Using a small flashlight, you search through the remainder basement cellar, finding mostly junk and old forgotten furniture that will likely never see much use again beyond being sold at an estate sale or end up in a garbage pile. Besides the long-forgotten belongings, you also find a small servant living quarters here, which doesn’t look like it has seen use for years either. Frankly, you’d feel sorry for any poor soul that would have to live in this cold, dark place just to make a living.

After heading up the dark stone cellar stairs, you arrive on the first floor, carefully making your way around silently and cautiously. Your small beige feet and light weight make it easy to stay silent around your search through the house, as if you’re simply a quiet ghost moving about the mansion. You decide to head your way directly toward the den, which looks well-furnished with cushy plush chairs set before a large brick fireplace while many fine paintings are hung on the walls. However, everything is dusty and old with cobwebs everywhere and it doesn’t look like the fireplace has been used in over a decade.

You then find the chest that Velay was talking about, a stark white chest with a jubilant Audino painted on it. Initially, the chest itself gives you the feeling of purity and innocence as your eyes look upon it, but something seems wrong. You look at the lock in the front and you find the black, oily substance that Velay warned about earlier, and you sense something he didn’t.

…this is the work of a Stalker. You don’t just feel it from your Savant senses, you can almost taste its stink.

Around the substance, you see the crawled word “sin” and “sins of all” as if someone took a quill and scribbled these twisted black words here. There’s also a missing metallic slot where the black goo is, and it seems like it used to be a metal plaque that was part of the chest, but now it’s gone. You’re almost certain there’s locking pins and mechanisms to this chest, but its too dark and it’s covered with the black ooze.

You have a feeling something was done to that plaque as well, wherever it might be right now. Still, you take care not to touch the black ooze itself, knowing besides being disgusting as is, it’s likely tainted and will likely leave you feeling sick and spiritually corrupted.

You carefully and quietly try to open the chest anyway, but it’s clear the plaque that’s missing is in fact the key and this originally wasn’t some kind of supernatural effect, it started as a conventional lock mechanism. However, some Stalker tainted this chest and now the plaque itself is some kind of tainted injection of darkness that you think might have some ungodly effect if you were to try inserting it back now.

{Chest of the Guiltless: Implantation of Sin} has been noted in the Team Records.

Still, unless it’s done, you’re never going to find out what’s inside this chest.

Carefully, you decide to leave it alone for now and search about the rest of the estate as much as you can without disturbing Colbyi. You managed to search the entirety of the first floor and the attic level, but you’re only able to search half of the second floor before you get too close to Colbyi’s master bedroom. And you decide that’s far enough and itself worth searching inside that room itself. You don’t sense any kind of unusual presence coming from there, despite all your concentration and focus. In fact the only sensation you feel directs you back toward the den where the chest is. Nothing comes from the master bedroom or master bathroom itself.

While you make significantly more progress throughout the old, lavish mansion than Velay did, you don’t find much else besides neglected fancy furniture, old libraries, many oil paintings, lavish carpets, and other fine and expensive furnishings. After seeing most of the remainder of the mansion without finding too much out of the ordinary, you decide to head out to report your findings, heading back through the cellar before heading back into the night. It seems like you’ve had much more luck than Velay did and Colbyi would never know you were here, but you imagine a Snivy such as yourself is definitely better at getting around and doing this kind of stealthy searching.

As you head back toward the farmstead and consider what you came across tonight, it's unknown where that slathered plaque might be right now and you don’t think you’ve seen anything in the farmstead storage that looked like it would belong to that lock. Still, at least you’ll know what it’s for once you find it and you imagine it will be pretty unmistakable when you see it.

And right now, you’re hoping you come across it sooner than later…

Colored the Snivy (S: Grass)
Health: 16/16 | Sanity: 12/20 | Purity: 24/24 | 6/10 Kurosuōbā | Dodge Rate: 40%
Perk: Diplomacy, Repair, Security
Reincarnation Forms: Morelull, Palpitoad, Mega Audino, Pidgeot, Cinccino
EQUIPMENT:
  • Defense Armor: <Empty>
  • Jewelry: <Empty>