StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Andrea pulls herself together, stands up, says with confusion 'I nearly did that, he didn't seem- he had too sharp a tongue for that, duty wasn't him, why would he sacrifice himself?'

Detrick asks her 'Are you all right, is he the only one who's...gone? Is he all right?' the second person there being Larric, and the answer would strictly be 'no', suffering from the non- physically induced equivalent of a concussion.

There is some screaming and wailing from outside that indicates they might not have been the only casualties- but not much; one person (unfortunately not the treasurer) had a heart attack at the sight of it, someone jumped off the inner ring wall and broke both legs trying to get away, another blundered into the coils that flickered out from the keep wall- but as opposed to everybody, you got off lightly...

The senior wizard of the guild present- a relatively squareset type, greyhaired but healthier than most wizards, more into intricacy than raw power these days, Lurentius Torr is his name, arrives shortly afterwards, looks to Verone and says 'Well done- when he's fit, we need to talk to both of you. Of this, and other things- the predictions of doom are still coming thick and fast.'

'Anyone with an interest in odd magic would have noticed that for miles.' Detrick realises. 'We may not have to go and find the Countess at all.'

(OOC: What's Kaelan going to do now?)

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:'I've had a lot of time to think about this,' Detrick says in response to Larric's comment about trying to parley, 'some of it spent bleeding, and trying to figure out why and what, what she will and won't lash out at.

She's not a bully or an idiot, not even necessarily a psychopath even though she obviously knows many of them; it changes you when you have to kill things. Kill people.

I think she's far out beyond the horizon of death, that she has become so much a native of the sea of blood that she no longer really believes in ordinary people, that they can exist or that on some gut level that they deserve to.

I think failing to be ready for her would draw her contempt, and her violence, more readily than anything else; she knows a lot of us think she's a monster, she has to, and what kind of idiots would we have to be if we just rolled over and waved our legs in the air to a monster like her?

I want to parley, but I don't think we're going to get it unless we show ready and willing to stand up to her. You're much more likely to slow her down and buy these people-' meaning the city- 'time with words than arms, but you're not going to get to the words unless you at least have the arms...'

The system is based on a relatively open-form concept of what are effectively attributes, often referred to as powers, with skills, usually four to six, associated with them. There are no spells as such, only acts of magic.

The attributes are associates with the groups of normal attributes every character possesses, and contribute to the aspect totals;
Under Spirit, there are the Passions- Happiness, Entity, Fire, Water, Insight
and the Conjunctions- Misery, Shadow, Dream, Doubt, Divination

For the Mental group of attributes, there are
Wits- Light, Martial Arts by Guile, Air, Substance, Ethereal, Vision
and Ponderances- Sense, Void, Creation, Time, Consequences, Astral

and Physical,
Forces – Martial Arts by Strength, Fauna, Earth, Death
Talents – Martial Arts by Agility, Flora, Motion, Life, Shape

Attached to the totalities of being there are those forms of magic which do not fit in any particular aspect-
Divine magic (of the appropriate god- see the separate Deities sheet),
Higher Sorcery- Induction, Adjunct, Enchantment, Antimagic, Summoning
Dominions- Law, Chaos, Good, Evil, Fate
For certain particular types of being, divine magic is replaced by Creature Powers- what is appropriate to a particular magic entity.

Euphemism alert; some things are deliberately misnamed- ‘entity’ is a polite, don’t-frighten-the-villagers misnomer for Demonological magic, ‘shadow’ likewise for Necromancy, ‘vision’ for clairvoyance, ‘adjunct’ for go-faster stripes, ‘substance’ is basically transmutation, ‘consequences’ is understanding and locally altering physical law; ‘astral’ is the reductionist form of spirit projection-things as their component parts, ‘ethereal’ is the holist- all elements of one interconnected unity,

Restrictions; apart from reasons such as finding someone prepared to teach you, some magics cannot be effectively grasped by those of lesser talent at all. There is a minimum power of 11 required in one other field before a character can being to learn any Higher Sorcery, 17 for Creation, Substance, Time and Consequences, 24 for any of the Dominions except Fate, 30 for Astral, Ethereal, Dream and Doubt.

Noting they have nothing else to say, he walks off to equip himself.