StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Dirt places the crossbow on the ground and sits down, looking somewhat confused. He lost the thread of the conversation at "looking for me". Reaching into his pouch he pulls out something furry and puts it behind the shield.

'Some of it did, and it hasn't come out to play again yet.' She says to Verone, wriggles her fingers a bit, and interesting things happen. His shield glows, separates into the colours of it's component parts, the separate strands woven into it; pops like a soap bubble, little sparkling fragments everywhere.

At which point he realises that the trees aren't waving, the air is standing still, the rest of the party are frozen in time- no, other way round. She's stepped out for a moment, and taken him with her, to go through it in slow motion. She didn't actually have to bring him along for that.

'You're living through this, for now, because I have a use for the contents of your head. Your ego will get you killed long before you become a real threat to the common good, so no problem with the end game.

If you manage to loosen up, engage with other people, share and support, be a better person- you might just last long enough and learn enough to become really dangerous.' she grins, and then time starts flowing again for him.

'Kuquan could and should be far more than it was.' She says to all of you. 'You were drifting slowly downward, apart; the civil war you nearly blundered into would have done as much damage- over many more years- and left you worse off, mutual hate would have left your state unable to heal, and starting to fall into it's component parts. Hopelessly vulnerable- you'd have ceased to exist within a generation.

The human cost of shock treatment was too high- but it is always too high, so what of it? The remaining deadwood is the people who stand between you and a living future, and much of it will have to be yours to dispose of, and by the law, now that the rough work is done.

Hm, dame D'Avariel-' she says looking at Larric, meaning the steel and silver clad Krylanyan paladin- 'she is a catalyst for several things that it would be good to have happen. Not that her version of what ought to happen and mine are at all alike.'

Looks at Rohal, wafts a small breeze at him- between body language and scent triggers, manages to convey that she thinks he should pursue the winter wolf.

Dirt. 'Growing people is harder. I think you might be up to it. Don't let them write you off as walking muscle, you're smarter than that. Oh, and play with these.' Throws him a packet of seed. There is a squeaky crunch form behind the shield.

Dirt. 'Growing people is harder

I will grow them like mushrooms.

IC:

Larric can see Verone's shield; it vanishes from one moment to the next, with no obvious signs of what happened except the (inferred) look of surprise and alarm on the mage's face.

Listening to what she says to the party as a whole, he has his doubts, keeps his mouth shut, suspects that Calvern knows about the doubts anyway- but on some level he's actually reassured, those are not the words of someone who burns and kills for literal or metaphorical giggles. If you'd asked him yesterday whether Colonel Calvern does things for reasons that can be understood he would shrug; today he's hearing that Countess Calvern does have reasons, can presumably be reasoned with, even if he personally isn't sure he'd ever share or want to share her reasons.

Then, she turns to him directly and-

She's definitely reading my mind... yeep. Sorting through that delays him until after Dirt speaks, when he realizes- Wait- D'Avariel... have they met before? She [the Krylanyan] never told me her name...

Oddly, the first thing that forms on his lips and doesn't get preemptively strangled is "Ah, thank you for telling me her name, your ladyship, I hadn't known..." But I suspect that she's going to say something to someone else, and no way in Hell is Larric verbally interrupting her, so he doesn't actually say it just yet.

"That is true enough. The failure of we of the knightly class to halt your progress is proof enough that things need to change. While I can question the necessity of inflicting that much damage, I can understand the need for, as you put it, 'shock treatment.'"

He is telling the truth. He's also trying to keep his thoughts away from the fact that he's standing in front of somebody who can turn him into a greasy smear pretty damned quickly.

(OOC: Just recalling what Simon said a while back: "And at a time like this, it's even worse than usual, because the aristocrats have just proven their own inability to defend their society from attack- which is what they exist to do in the first place. So any given knight who hasn't died in battle against the Twentieth Cataphract knows that someone might call their courage and dedication into question.")

Oh my. She's noticed me, personally.

That...was art.

Verone is left something that the behatted mage never is, which is speechless. He just stares at Calvern as she turns her attention to the rest of the party. Thoughts chase themselves around the inside of his head, mainly variations on the theme of his first two, finally joined by a third.

Did...she just hand me an instruction manual? Was that her path to power?

His eyes narrowed at that point, words rushing towards his lips that he probably should edit out, but...no, no, there's no conceivable universe where he doesn't say something along identical lines once there's a lapse in conversation, "Aaah...I don't suppose I could get you to do that again...very slowly, while I watch?"

OOC:

Oh god, he's going to get dismantled...

What is it with this campaign and seemingly normal players getting drawn into competitions to come up with the most famous last words of all time?

We've all heard the joke before: "Genie, make me a ham sandwich." "Okay, you're a ham sandwich." Now we know that is exactly how Verone would die.

IC:

Larric's jaw drops when he hears Verone say that. He's not sure exactly what happened, but it involved blur and then Verone's shield turning into a rapidly-evanescing fog. Now he wants an encore?

(OOC: If he dies, we are going to have quite a bit of trouble trying to recruit another party member in-character, what with the abysmal survival rate of people traveling with us.)

He thinks to himself, If he ends up a greasy smear, it had better not get on my armor. It will be a pain to clean.

OOC:

Let's see- Bryan might have lived but was narrowly swept away in combat after doing something rash. William swallowed a terrible curse. And it would appear that Verone wants to try saying "hit me again!" to Countess Calvern.

Any reasonable person would rate the last two deaths as suicides, and therefore not our fault.

He hasn't actually died yet, and with careful luck and planning might manage not to for, oh, at least ten seconds. ( )

In reverse order then- 'You would have to put up a similar shield; I could show you how else it could have been done though.' Hopefully Larric is watching this too, because it's worth taking notes on. Starts out as a relatively simple point of white light that expands into a multicoloured pattern, linked induction, antimagic, adjunct, and quite a lot of staightforward mesmerism;

essentially it mates to the shield, adapts itself- through induction- to it, mimics it and inverts it, while presenting a false image to the defending mage; and the clever bit- 'Do you see these signifers here? watch what happens when the defender tries to reinforce, look at the flow of energy, it's not achieving unity any more-' the dummy shield, set up to show, implodes on the notional defender. Tricks him into attacking himself.

She is an artist, indeed.

Says to Alfred 'You couldn't have stopped us. In fact I'm not sure we could have stopped us- we certainly didn't manage to stop ourselves until we ran out of target. You're actually at much greater risk than Verone is, because arguably you do owe the regiment a few drops of blood; it would be impolitic so I'll hold that in abeyance for now.'

'Larric; you might understand this- I don't think I've ever come across anyone who genuinely did kill just for fun; met some who claimed they did and some who even thought they did, but look closely and there were always drives, always reasons- and can you imagine walking through somebody's soul, feeling the choices they made and the pressures placed on them that turned them into something less than human, that tortured them so far out of true? Living through the destruction of what may as well be your own personality, and the only way out being- well.

The armour of monstrosity is the only defence, and the only defence against that is a reason to believe that it can all be made good in the end, that there is a legitimate end to butchery in a more perfect peace...and of course that is how the monsters manage to keep moving. The ones without a reason blunder to a halt eventually; the ones with a reason to keep doing it are actually a damned sight more dangerous.

I have no desire to bathe in the hatred of the people of Qulan, to feel them thinking what a foul and horrible being I am, not now. I'll find some other method of doing what it would be best that it is done.'

(OOC: It's still not something to bring up. "Join the Order of the Sharkcat! New openings daily!" There is something that definitely sounds wrong to anyone seeking to join us. Beside the sharkcat bit. Also, I picture sharkcats a Vaporeons but more sharklike.)

"Thank you, milady."

IC:

Larric visibly chews that over- you don't even have to be a telepath to tell, his jaw is moving a bit.

Memories bounce around his head. Himself scrambling around his own shop as tense, snappish soldiers muster in the square in front of him- he knows as well as they do what happens next, and there aren't as many as a survey of Peredburh's men-at-arms might suggest. Himself, trying to avoid the soldiers, neutralizing everything even possibly explosive he can find in the shop. Himself pulling a heavy oaken chest out into the alley behind the shop, piling the books inside, layering it over with a small mountain of wet blankets and bedding, then heaving handfuls of mud on top. Himself, hiding somewhere stony and out of the way. Himself, surveying the damage afterwards in the burnt shell of the building, paging cautiously through half-singed and quarter-burned books to see what can be salvaged, realizing he doesn't have enough of his apparatus left to make a go of it here, not with the glassworks gone. Himself, loading up the mule's saddlebags...

An orc in buff coat and back-and-breast: "Run out of money, run out of materials, but I can say this- I'll never run out of up..." That sits strangely with the rest, and the off-key-ness of it all turns into a really serious case of cognitive dissonance as he actually gets his brain part way around what Calvern is talking about. That rattles around some more, settling into end state: he thinks, quite actively and consciously, that he doesn't know what to think of it all. Which is uncomfortable, but uncertainty is a place he can operate in, even if he doesn't much like living there.

"I... well, I think a lot of people would be at least part relieved to hear that, I know I am. Thank you. I think... aside from that, anything I said, being who I am and how I've lived, would be silly at best and impertinent at worst. Except that, by your leave, we will pass the word on- about what you said."

'Something else to go away thinking about;' she adds. 'Njal. When I bring up the idea of a reason to believe that on the far side of the lake of blood is peace and sweet and pleasant land, that chopping bits off can make the world a better shape, he may well actually be it.

What he is doing may well change the world; will, if he has his way. There is more blood than he thinks down his path- I can come up with all too many horrible things that could be done- but the wonder and the glory of it was something I had not expected, and- well, we'll see.'


What are you all doing?

Feeding FiFi and trying to keep track of what is being said.
Other than that, making sure i don't upset the lady of death. She seems occupied with the humans which is good as far as dirt is concerned.

He just nods and decides to do nothing that would piss off the woman who thinks he owes her regiment some blood.

No dissenting voices then, so back to Qulan, with the uncertain news?

(OOC: Yes.)

OOC:

Yes.

Someone with a position of more confidence and actual strength might try to answer back to her, but I don't think anyone in our party really feels that confident, or that strong. Larric certainly doesn't. It's very hard to argue with someone who can reduce you to a grease stain that easily, and has a self-confessed enthusiasm for making things better by blowing up large portions of them.*

So, back to Qulan.

*She reminds me of a George Carlin joke: I'd feel more comfortable about the idea of "surgical strikes" if it were more common to perform surgery with high explosives...

Hm...




Anyway, assuming the end of the meeting:

IC:

A few minutes after the Countess (presumably) dismisses us and rides off, Larric's hindbrain catches up. "Did we... we didn't... we're..."

He doesn't quite fall down again, but his eyes are very, very wide, and his walk turns into more of a lurch.

A lesson. A lesson. Verone isn't quite crass enough -- or in possession of his faculties enough, more likely, to whip out paper and start taking notes, but he just watches in rapt, silent attention the entire time, focusing on the demonstration intently with a frown of concentration and then spending most of the rest of the conversation lost in thought. It's probably for the best; some fragment of sense has finally managed to scream loud enough that YOU ARE PUSHING YOUR LUCK STOP STOP STOP to the point that he's heard it, and is painfully aware of how close he just came to obliteration.

Also, he may have a bit of a crush on Calvern's brain.

Colonel Calvern does let you go, folding into the shadows (to go and talk to a Baalrukh and make him a job offer, actually), and Andrea is sitting there on her horse wide- eyed, stunned, almost unable to breathe, never mind take coherent action; she looks at you all and says, semi- coherently, 'What- were you listening to that? I- that's somewhere beyond monster, whatever there is there, we're just a price are we? Pawns- coins; spendable, pushable, killable-'

She's ranting more at herself than anyone else, and at a guess 'death before dishonour' is very present in her head; guilt at not taking a swing at the countess, even though she knows it would be likely futile.

she calms down a little, takes a deep breath, says 'I think we're, well, talk about killing the messenger. We would be the messenger- and I can't think who would actually want to hear this. What do we say? To whom?'

"We speak the truth of what happened here to Detrick." He makes a bit of a grimace as he says that.

This would be... before Larric caves in mentally. Let me rewrite that.

IC:

He turns to the knights. "Er, how to explain... To me it sounds like good news, bad news. The bad news is... what you said, milady. The good news is, she's not planning on burning anything down right away. Maybe you weren't surprised to hear that; I was..." and that's when his composure starts to slip. How much longer it takes to break entirely, I'm not sure.

Dirt will stand back up and put the crossbow away.

"sound like new boss not want all dead. Be happy. Go home, find next problem. Give new boss no wants to come back."

Larric mutters "smart ogre..." then his eyes cross briefly, then Larric's hindbrain catches up. "Did we... we didn't... we're..."

He doesn't quite fall down again, but his eyes are very, very wide, and he lurches over to a tree to lean on it.

He dismounts to try to help keep Larric on his feet.