She smiles shyly at the folks who introduced themselves, being much braver behind a monitor than she is in person. Then she gave Sterling The Drow an astonished look. "Sterling...? What happened to you?" It was nice to meet everyone she'd seen for years on the board in person. What a motley crew they were! Still, DM's words gave her a bit of a nasty shock.
"Quest....?" Zak was liking this less and less....one of the reasons she'd chosen this role was to escape dangerous undertakings such as quests and adventures! After all, she'd never thought of herself as very brave... "I can't go on a quest, I'm....um....that is to say...I'm supposed to be an impartial observer." Her way of saying I'm a big fat coward, expecially when Venger's glaring at me about something wickedly funny I posted about him...like that photograph of Karox hugging him...She stifles a giggle at that- it'd cost her a week of bread and water in a sider infested dungeon, but OH, it'd been worth it to see the look on his face! She'd gotten a picture of THAT, too...
She grins sheepishly at the others, then makes a bunch of notes in her book, recording the new names and adding little sketches of each of them. A moment later she yelps as all her little images, each only three inches high or so, parchment colored and still loking roughly sketched around the edges, climbed off the pages and started cavorting happily on the grass, squealing to each other with high-pitched mousy voices, "Free! We're Free!"
"Oops," Zak said, blushing with embarassment, and at her voice they all looked up at the big folks, started screaming and shouting, and a moment later had vanished off into higher grass. Zak looks at DM questioningly.
"I think you've just created a new race," he said mildly, looking mildly disapproving. "But I don't think you should do that again, the Realm has enough little people running about, and the Fair Folk- all the leprachauns, brownies, gnomes, those sorts- just might get uppity about it..."
(A commotion in the shaggy grass nearby seems to confirm his words...along with the insulting words "Scribble-face!" "Pencilneck!" and "Eraserhead!"...little green leprechaun hats and brownie caps are flying everywhere as the sketched-folks try out their miniscule magic weapons...)
"So how do I make them stay put...?" she asks him finally. His raised brow just tells her that it's something SHE gets to figure out herself.
"It's your choice, Scribe, I'm not making you join the quest or not. You may join them and observe, or you can go back to your dusty library and continue transcribing all those ancient Virulaxian documents I found for you...documents which Venger will have to translate for you, of course, as he's the only one left who reads the language..."
Zak winced, not entirely sure which was worse...why had she ever picked THIS role in the first place....? 'Cause it seemed approrpiate for the website, silly... "I'll...uh...think about it..."
(And the little folks in the grass capture a teeming family of field mice, and, after Fairalin charms them all, ride off proudly on their new steeds...but that's another story and shall be told another time. *grin*)
