>Roxy: Peruse for some sick graffiti of the Strider kind.
Roxy floats idly over the roof or Rose's shop, not far in the past compared to when John will have arrived here, slowly rotating around without the confines of gravity to keep him correctly oriented. Dave is certain to have left art of some kind. More importantly, like Roxy, he'll almost certainly have a predisposition toward the illegal. Ever since the Strider Patriarch - and the Lalonde Matriarch, by unlucky coincidence - passed away a few years back, the boys, Roxy and Rose have all been making a little extra on the side from activities that skirt the laws of the Big Island. It doesn't help that Clan Crocker's rule has not always been kind to the poor on the outlying islands. Since arriving here, Roxy has been supplementing his/her income with activities that are not, strictly speaking, legal. It puts bread on the table when the Realm Lords and their numerous bureaucratic henchmen aren't quite up to the task.
Actually back on the first subject, all three of Roxy's closest kinfolk are more of the artistic bent. Rose writes journals and stories, and secretly (she thinks) tarries away at the writing of galdors, arcane songs meant to charm and enchant. Dirk draws in his limited spare time and writes elaborate plays about fanciful subjects.
Roxy has always been a little more intrigued and fascinated by worldken and the natural philosophies than by artistic expression and ethical discussions and while it can tend to leave him feeling a little bit left out of the conversation when gabbing with his kin, it's an important pursuit. Dirk is even something of a tinkerer, but has never gotten so much into the theory. Sometimes Roxy really wishes someone other than Jade was more into it. Shame he doesn't get to see much of Jade.
Nobody got to see much of Jade for the last few years, after she went to apprentice with her grandfather in the tall ivory tower on the big island. Attempting to make the visit to see her up the tall mountain trail, one tended more often than not to be set upon and chased away by Jade's Grandfather's huge terrifying white dog.
With that, Roxy slips out of normal reality, and into the same, non-place slipstream that John will find himself in a short while, but for Roxy, it takes another form. It takes the form of a dark corridor, filled with a long, never-ending cascade of monochrome steps, outlined in white.
It keeps happening.
> Roxy: Land Already
Roxy lands under a bridge in what appears to be a rainy urban center, right along a riverside. Or a canal at any rate. There are no proper rivers in the City, only canals which have sometimes used the existing infrastructure already present in the world-island's geography as a framework. It flows slowly along next to him, some cargo vessels visible floating down it and carrying their loads deeper into the city from the rim. Visible on the opposite edge of the river is what appears to be a hill, another sign of the city's meager use of existing geography. Other bridges of various makes span the river, and Roxy can hear thronging crowds overhead, going this way and that between the banks. One of the city's lower speed trolley-cars rumbles by overhead.
It's too dark to see much underneath the bridge.
Lightning flashes, and illuminates the space under the bridge for a fraction of a second. All along the underside of the bridge is a sprawling mural, and while it's crude, it's not Dave crude. For the moment Roxy catches a glimpse of it, he sees a whirlpool of pastel colors, made indistinct by the strange shadows made by the lightning illuminating the lapping water of the river at the base of the slanting concrete under the river. At the base, he sees a collection of junk and boxes that might be a dwelling of some kind.
Slowly, the underside of the bridge comes into focus. Yes, it seems like ghosts can see in the dark. All along the far wall is a mural made up of more than a dozen individual vignettes, making a tapestry. They all seem to feature at least one creature who is part-human, part-animal. Prominently, a catlike creature that Roxy guesses is probably a girl from the way it's shaped, but it's all somewhat crude. It seems to portray snapshots of what can only be called adventures. They're sort of whimsical. The pile of junk at the foot of the bridge indeed appears to be a dwelling of some kind - a little tent made of boxes, blankets, and other bits and bobs, with a small portable cooking stove in the center, and a sleeping bag along off to one side. All about are open cans of paint, caked in long-dried rivulets of different colors. No one is around, but Roxy cannot shake the feeling of being watched.
Let's see what John's up to.
Minutes in the future, but not many...
> John: Take some adventuring initiative and seek out the clown.
He takes the abyssal stairs, though he does not know them by that name, thinking of the circus and circus performers, distracted only momentarily by thoughts of other things jokers make him think of. After a moment, he emerges at ground level. The central circus tent is surrounded by numerous others, and sounds of the performers going about their daily business. It's a different experience to see it in the early morning, without any kind of festivity going on. He did not attend the show at the time he went to visit and look around.
John's tangent is interrupted suddenly as he munches on the pink cotton candy, by a series of honks. One by one, they resound, as they get closer. HONK honk HONK honk HONK. Like footsteps.
Slowly out of the little crowds of performers, emerges a tall, tall figure, lean to the point of lankiness, dressed in baggy clothing, the macabre paint worn by the circus clowns, and the biggest, fuzziest, unruliest head of hair John has ever seen in his life. He slowly makes his way up to John until he stands over him, looking down from a full head and a half taller. And then, in a gravelly lilting tenor, he asks: