IWUAaDNW: Party 5.5

There were a couple of things I wanted to try with this level. I started my tests the moment they went into the next room; the wasps I kept as reserve started buzzing their wings, filling the air with their noise. The adventuring party prepared themselves for the next fight, but when nothing came after a few seconds, Karjn motioned to Gwen that they should continue. Gwen, Ulfric and Karjn went to the next room, taking the rightmost path. [ILLUSION]Gwen, Ulfric, Karjn [/ILLUSION]and Maryll went into the next room, straight ahead.

That is to say, Maryll thought she was following them, but what she wasn’t seeing was that my luminous pixies were hovering behind her head, producing an illusion in front of her face. Because of the wasps’ noise, she wasn’t hearing the footsteps of her party members, and they didn’t notice she was gone until Karjn looked back and asked, “Wait, where did cloudhead go?”

At this point, I released Maryll, who blinked when she saw her party members suddenly disappear.

“Huh. Guys? Gwen? Mister Ulfric?” she called out, but the wasps drowned her out.

Gwen, Karjn and Ulfric backtracked, and at the intersection where I’d managed to separate them in the first place, took [ILLUSION]the only other path[/ILLUSION], straight ahead. Karjn was cursing up a storm.

“What part of ‘take the right path’ did that girl not understand?”

Ulfric wasn’t saying anything, but from the look on his face he’d already started to figure out what was going on. He gave a suspicious look at the right wall, [ILLUSION]which only had a perfectly regular row of trees[/ILLUSION]. At the next intersection, he [ILLUSION]followed Karjn and Gwen down the left side[/ILLUSION], and then… stopped.

He raised a hand, then opened and closed it quickly. He chuckled to himself.

“Taylor, if you don’t get those pixies off me now, you’re going to lose them.”

I dropped the illusion, leaving him surrounded by wasps, spiders and webweavers.

[...]

“Oh, the eye thing?” Karjn asked, earning a nod. “Yeah, overheard some of the soldiers talk about that. They didn’t think it was that much of a threat.”

“In combat, probably not, unless you’re not noticing it. Out of combat, well,” he pointed at Maryll. “That.”

“Ah. Right. Separate people, keep them wondering. And I’m guessing she used illusions to make us not see some of the paths?”

I materialized my upper body and gave her a nod. Karjn chuckled. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure if you get more of those, you’ll be able to separate entire parties with no one being the wiser. That’s kind of terrifying, actually.”