She had been in the middle of telling a joke, and then suddenly she was someplace else. She's been attacked by an illusionist before--a kidnapping attempt when she was a child--and she freezes, looking around to try to situate herself and figure out who would be so brazen as to attack the Duchess de Chelam's party.

The background hum of conversation disappears, replaced by--what is that sound? He looks around, alert, trying to make sense of his perceptions. His wife had been across the room, and now instead is lying back on the hill with him, obviously worried.

The hill is full of animal burrows. Small ones, so probably nothing too dire lives there. There is a little wooden awning over there under which there is a water bowl and a manger full of hay, not enough for a horse. The place is fenced in. There's some people in the distance, going into and out of the reptile house.

He reaches over and squeezes her hand.

She calms down. He, at least, is real; together they can figure out what else is.

They slowly stand up, and he will walk towards the people, checking to make sure she's following closely behind. How challenging does the fence look, to him?

The fence is designed for prairie dogs, and is more concerned with preventing burrowing out than climbing out. Still, it's tall enough to be genuinely prohibitive for an adolescent who thinks it'd be a laugh to go hassle the animals. Let's call it a DC 22 Climb check to get out without help.

He's wearing really nice clothing which he would rather not dirty. Let's see if they speak Taldane.

"Hello?" he calls out towards the people, waving his hand.

People look in his direction! Somebody calls back, "What the fuck are you doing in with the prairie dogs?" and somebody else says, "Somebody get a zookeeper!"

The effect is sort of like having Tongues up.

"I was hoping to ask you that," he calls back jokingly.

She is actually quite upset that a peasant would decide to swear at her! But she doesn't see any guards around, and Felip doesn't seem inclined to take offense yet.

A zookeeper is fetched and goes to unlock the door and let them out via a cunningly hidden gate in the side of the fence. "How in the world did you get in - what are you dressed as, should I recognize the film -" He has bright purple hair.

He files away "film" as something to ask about in a less embarrassing situation. "I'm afraid I don't know," he apologizes, "and am feeling rather lost. Where, exactly, are we?"

"The Shapto Zoo. Are you drunk or something, wandered out of a costume party?"

"We were at a party moments ago, but it was still early in the evening" he says, looking at the position of the sun in the sky. "Shapto is not a place I've heard of. Is it in Avistan?"

She is more interested in the man's hair. No illusionist would make it so obvious their victims were in an imaginary world. Have they been... teleported away or plane shifted, somehow?

"No, it's in Tapa. I haven't heard of Afistan, where is that?"

Should he tell them the tale of far-off Avistan? Unlikely. Or at least, this fellow seems unlikely to be the right person to read in to their situation.

"My home, and I fear I haven't heard of Tapa either. It seems like I should seek audience with the most learned of your wizards." Does this fellow seem like he wants to be their guide, or that he wants them to be someone else's problem?

Definitely someone else's problem. "...sir, I acknowledge that you are in full cosplay, but I am not part of your LARP and do not have a line I'm supposed to recite if you ask for wizards. Do you have zoo tickets or did you sneak in here somehow?"

"Neither. I suspect we were transported here by another." He's tempted to ask what a LARP is. "Whose menagerie is this, anyway?" Maybe that's their line of approach.

"Theeee Shapto Zoo is run by the Shapto municipal government at a small positive average return as an educational and scientific repository of animal and ecological knowledge and practice," says the guy with the purple hair, sounding rehearsed, like he says this twelve times a day.

"Well, thank you for your assistance in freeing us," he says finally, and then starts to walk away.

"If you don't have a ticket I'm gonna need you to leave the zoo. That's straight out that way, follow the white arrows on the paths, I'll page the security guards in case you get lost," or try to go look at animals without a ticket.

They will follow the white arrows, and he is quite interested in the security guards, actually. Does he even notice them, or do they look like the other guests of the zoo?

They're in uniform - gray uniforms with SHAPTO ZOO embroidered under a logo on the front of their right shoulders - and they've all got white or grey hair, while the attendees are not in uniform and have many hair colors. Mostly purple. Never, ever brown or black.