StarDestroyer.Net BBS

OOC:

Thank you, but...

Although that bit about an equal insult to spending a year as a washerwoman- definitely not out loud. Larric is not without perceptions of his own, and what he can see of the bit behind the mask indicates her personality has worry lines, probably scars on it, that suggest the truth is at least as bad or worse.

You conflated a few things.

What Larric finds insulting is one, being called a mouse, and two, the implicit slight to his vocation: the studying of matter and the inventing of interesting methods and gadgets and so on. He's actually a good fit for the Ikhrani and one direction I seriously considered taking the character was into their clergy.


The sentence featuring the word "washerwoman" was about how the things Larric is actually doing at this point in his life bear little real resemblance to the things he enjoys doing, or would like to be doing if he had the choice. Indeed, the main reason he's doing them at all is because he'd like to get back to work with some assurance he won't get his shop burned down around his ears again. And, hopefully, that his neighbors can say the same. A sort of generalized self-defense.

It's not that he finds 'heroing' degrading or especially unpleasant except for the bit about the dead bodies. It's that it is, from his point of view, a complete waste of time as far as the soul and center of his life is concerned. Except insofar as it gets matters sorted out so that he can go back to using his time properly, it's not achieving any of his lifelong ambitions.

"Washerwoman" has implications I didn't mean to put in there- because it's about one half step up from "prostitute," if that. I could just as well have said "baker" or "seamstress" (in the non-Pratchettian sense) or even "housewife" or any other conceivable way for a woman in this society to make a living, so long as it has nothing whatsoever to do with war, high politics, the dance of appearances, and all the other things this woman builds her life around.

If for some reason this woman found it necessary to spend a year baking bread instead of pursuing politics in steel lingerie, I'm sure she could do it, and it wouldn't necessarily leave any new scars on her head. But I have no doubt she'd be bored out of her skull, and would consider the whole thing a waste of time and life compared to what she ought to be doing, to what her goddess plainly wants her to be doing as well.

That's almost the position Larric's in these days, although it's not quite as bad for him as baking would be for the Krylanyan. At least he gets to try exciting new ways to blow things up, and what alchemist doesn't have an occasional secret fondness for explosions? So he's not especially bitter about it- he just doesn't feel much like encouraging anyone who thinks he'd rather be heroing, if the times permitted him to do otherwise. Especially someone who mistakes his interest in inventing the dynamo for mousiness.


For him, "politics-meddling hero" is just a new trade he may be led by circumstances to learn even if he doesn't especially enjoy it, right up there with "amateur battlemage" and "bookbinder."

Conflating? More like skipping over the bits that seem to me to be IC musing not requiring an answer; if she's good at any one thing, and the talk of dancing identities, masks to meet eyes of the beholder, should be a hint, she's an actress and illusionist- and how does the real person behind the (layer upon layer) of masks get to be that way?

There's an easier way than pondering, there's only so much that can be wrung out, that can be confirmed or denied (however right you may happen to be) without further action, or at least words IC.

Has the thinking given Larric an idea what to say or do?

IC:

He nods slowly, carefully chewing over his words, considering and discarding a few things that he shouldn't say even if he thinks them, or doesn't seriously believe after all.

"Madam, I thank you for the warning, you've given me something to think about and no mistake. What with all the mad business I've gotten mixed up in in the past three days, and how I've handled some of it, I won't deny my own two left feet. But I don't think you're as close to the mark as you'd like- to me you sound like a dancer, judging a sculptor for his poor footwork as he hunts up a chisel. Listening to you, looking at you, I'd guess that for you that dance you talk about is a part of life- I won't speak against that, but it's not me. Maybe you thought it was, or should be, but it isn't.

"I've learned to do things I didn't especially love before. If I must wear a mask, so be it, but it'll have to be a mask that fits properly, and doesn't block my eyesight. And if I must dance to live, then I will have to learn to dance- but I think I'd rather not be taught dancing by a puppeteer. Especially not one who's having trouble working out where the strings are supposed to go."

Preliminary note, all of this is, as usual, in character. She can be quite offensive at times.

She chuckles, and it's an interesting sound- sounds so normal it can't possibly be.

'So craft is where you turn to- and you think of yourself as a sensible man. In the midst of this, when for most people the world has ceased to make sense? At least you start to understand that you need the arts of survival.

Although not yet how much. You'll come to me, before long.'

She's prepared to let him leave at that point, finish preparing and head out to do the time- buying thing, try to find the countess.


Everyone ready to go?

(OOC: Yes.)

<YES>

OOC: Yes.

IC: Larric departs- again, trying not to give offense to Miss Steel Underpants, and he actually wasn't particularly insulted by that last bit because he's already binned her as "funny that way, not entirely to be taken seriously."


Larric's top priority is to find Detrick and Tamarin and check up on what they've hammered out by way of a negotiation strategy- and who's coming along in the party that's specifically intending to talk to her. He has a horrible suspicion that the answer is going to include "you," but he's resigned to that and won't try to back out of it now.


If there's significant time, he's going to try and hunt up Sir Alfred, and see if he can repeat the enchantment on that hammer without damaging it. While the odds of any one knight actually getting close enough to the Countess in a fight to score a significant hit with a sledgehammer aren't that high, even she probably wouldn't relish being on the kaboomy end of an explosion like that.

He never did get around to defusing the lightning grenades, too- and probably just as well.

(OOC: He'd be in the same area as all the warriors would be gathered, which would hopefully be near Detrick.)

Detrick's apparently persuaded Tamarin not to go; she looks slightly crumpled by it, he thinks she's going to do something stupidly confrontational, try for revenge, make some kind of doomed gesture.

From the fact that he managed to persuade her, on those grounds, he was probably right.

'Just get on with it,' Detrick says to Alfred, 'I'll try to stop too many of them running for their lives.'

So there probably isn't time- the group going out to look for her is going to consist of the party leading the way, basically, hoping to first bump into Eliska on the way and then to come up to the countess in something resembling workable conditions. Do the enchantment on the way.

Andrea's willing to go, with a relative handful of men at arms- some backup at least.


The town wall is in ruins, and it's getting dark- and Eliska is approaching as you're departing, it's not hard to bump into each other.

Now, how do you propose to go about this?

((Back from Maryland. I presume Verone's dragooned into going along as per having pissed off Detrick. Sorry 'bout the interlude, funerals are never well-timed.))

yes

Having swiped Bryan's horse, he makes ready to move out unless Larric or any of his group has any objections.

OOC:

The main thing I want to do is get some discussion about what we're doing and how we'll react if we find her (or she finds us), what we say, whether we're carrying the local equivalent of an olive branch over our heads and if so what it is, and so on.

Everyone ready to go?

yes? (still waiting for an equipment verification post)

using a borrowed (the workshop) computer for a few nights, things might be quite spotty in terms of schedule (and spelling)- Kaelan, equipment, seeds, tower shield, axe, the single shot lever crossbow, yes. Leather armour- it's not plant based.

Yes, Verone has been dragooned into this- Detrick has relatively little plan beyond 'Try to look odd in her general direction. Be armed, but try not to look like you want a fight. Try to be odd and interesting.'

"Hey whats everyone up to?" Comedy entrance time it is. (Unless ECR has something else planned.)

"We're off to find the countess and convince her not to kill everyone. Do you want to come along?"

(OOC: We're off to see the Countess, who's going to chop off all our heads. La de la de la de la. That's what would go through Alfred's mind if the Wizard of Oz existed.)

He suddenly realizes something, namely, the fact that riding out into open battle against her if talks fail isn't probably that smart. It depends a bit on how well the city is capable of sustaining a siege. He rides up to Sir Detrick and says, "Sir Detrick, how well stocked is the city on provisions? How well can we take a siege? If we can, I propose that we few shall ride out and meet her. If we fail in parleying with her, we shall ride back and assist in the defense of the city."

"If we fail in parleying with her, we're probably dead, if she decides she wants to attack the city, 'siege' isn't the right word for what happens next, any more than it was for what happened to the place last time."

Larric points at the big holes in the city walls and the recently constructed replacements for nearly all the buildings.

"Fair enough, but to ride out in battle in the open against her is foolishness. Even the modest protections of the walls would surely be better than nothing." He pauses for a moment. "I am also banking on the hope that approaching her with so few people will improve her measure of us and be more amenable to talk."

'No, if you hide behind the walls that means we're out of time, there will be a lot of people who will be unable to overcome their fears, and all the initiative will belong to her.

Think of this place as more of a baggage train than a place of strength, it certainly is at the moment. I'll rally what I can, try to stabilise what I can't, and be close behind when it comes to that- if the worst comes to that.' Detrick says.

OOC:

Hmm, yeah, the psych aspect of magic resistance in this setting is going to matter a lot. Not just here, but in general- people who are feeling tough, competent, and 'in the ascendant' will be inherently better at blocking and defying hostile magic than people who are feeling like frightened sheep in a pen. The gap might help to explain the relative lack of success enjoyed by people magicking back at the Striking Phoenix; it can't all be due to the effect of sorcerous counterbattery fire.

"Hmph. Very well. We ride out, then?"

Looking sullen, Rohal will nod in assent.

Larric sighs and looks at the magnificently-hatted mage.

"Well, if she's coming this way, odds are she wants to know what happened at the castle. Guess we'd better go tell her, eh, Tanner?"