Homebrew system thread II, section 3

[Kaelan]

Feels appropriate at the moment....

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Which part is he playing in that? Bean might be relatively safe actually, compared to the sound of 'I have a cunning plan' wafting in on the suddenly poisoned breeze...

Dirt gets there first, and crashes through the entryway to the tower to reveal- well, the place was burnt and smashed to the ground. He has earth magic, obviously, but there has been some attempt to sort the place out, to clear away and sort the rubble into something that could be used to rebuild. There is still a tangle of broken beams and shattered splinters of stone in one corner, the ceiling has fallen in and it is open to the sky, and the reason I'm talking about all of this first is that there is no human present.

No sign of him. He didn't have time- or energy- to escape, did he? Couldn't have- there is no far side entrance to the tower. He couldn't have fled without being seen, could he? He was definitely here.

Larric will arrive shortly after, and can join the confusion club. The former court chaplain has vanished. In a wizardly fashion, perhaps, but surely something at least a little bit flashy should have taken place?


Fiji?

[Simon_Jester]

Larric immediately leaps to the conclusion that the priest has not in fact left the building and has attempted to use some power to render himself invisible. He presses his senses and awareness outward, bolstering with Insight magic (Vision magic, I gather, cannot really be used to grant enhanced awareness of a situation), trying to detect any covering illusions or Someone Else's Problem fields that may be in place.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

On Insight- I almost hate to give this one away, I was looking forward to seeing you try to puzzle it out- but he resorted to earth magic earlier. If you want to hide in a background of cluttered, jumbled rocks, then it might be a good idea to look like a rock, maybe?

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

I'm going to do my best to pretend I didn't hear that for a while, unless you mean to say that Larric's attempt to detect the priest succeeded so brilliantly that he saw right through the disguise?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Not quite- that a man who has demonstrated power over rock might hide, actually retreat from reality, by pretending to be a rock is what comes out of the use of insight magic. Which leaves the characters looking at a mound of rubble and trying to figure out, um, which one? How do you identify which broken bit is him, and what do you do with him once you have? Guesses, please...


Oh, and the by now usual, Fiji? Anything?

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Aaaaah. So I do have something to roleplay.

And I think we may have to assume Dale is reverted to NPC status or otherwise out-of-picture, at least for now. I could cast about for interested friends.

IC:

Larric scowls again, thinking it over. "There's no way out, he's hiding, he's not hiding as a man, so he's hiding as... something else."

Speaking to no one in particular, Larric takes a deep breath. "We really only want to put things right. We think someone else deserves more of the blame for what's happened than they'll get if you go on this way. Please, my lord,* let's let this go easy and let the truth guide the law, like we all know orderly, civilized people should..."

"Dirt, you have some rock-magics. How about we try doing exciting things to the rocks until we meet one that fights back?"
________________

*If "my lord" is not the appropriate title, Larric uses the one that is; he knows it and I don't. I took that as a placeholder from a customary way of addressing a bishop...

[Kaelan]

Dirt scans his eyes over the rocks at first, doing things the non-magical way to see if any noticeable stand out as being the wrong ones here. Working on the assumption that the mage has been able to select the right rock type to blend into Dirt will resort to magic.

Reaching out into the rocks Dirt will request the rocks of real earth to move away from the imposter. If this works he'll point out enthusiastically saying " 'hat one" (whilst getting his axe ready).

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

That is sensible, but I was hoping for something a bit more off the wall, a bit more surrealist, when it came to doing exciting things to rocks. Oh well.

As a grounding in the spectrum of the possible, doing something like that is not easy. For a journeyman, to shape rock is easy enough; to do so well is a little harder- functional objects are much easier than art. To take on or to diminish the qualities of the rock, harder. Morphing to rock, tricky, have to be fairly good to do it at all. (Turning yourself into a living landslide or something, that's best left to the experts and the barking mad.)

To do so in a way that can actually change back, on the other hand, that requires both skill and presence of mind. He could easily have got a partial success; hm. Dirt's perceptive talents are fairly good, aren't they? That pile of rubble there, there's one that isn't quite right. Looks the part, fits in, but when you look away from it it seems to stay in sharp focus a bit longer than the other things seen out of the corner of your eye. Hm.

Trying to move the other rocks away, there's maybe half a heartbeat's pause before the one Dirt has his eye on moves too. Plan?

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

VERY sorry; I somehow came away with the idea that everything was resolved pending Dirt's action. Would Larric have spotted the delayed movement of that one rock?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It has been a disturbing time here, with illnesses, broken appliances and a new job to try to get my head around- some movement here is a welcome relief. (Writing schedule's gone completely to hell, though.)

I should have known better than to actually roll for that one- the dice say, actually, no. Failed perception checks. Until Dirt points it out to him.

Once the ogre says 'that one', (my dice are complaining about being neglected and refusing to roll lower than an eighteen- once they warm up a bit, all is good), yes- when you look at it sideways, it's the one that still seems in sharp focus when it's not at the sweet spot of your field of vision. It's the one that looks a bit too rocklike, really.

Yes, after much going 'which one- oh, that one'. So what is being done to it?

[Simon_Jester]

Larric bends down and pushes at the rock a bit. How big is it? Roughly the weight of a normal man?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It is irregularly placket- shaped and about eight inches across at it's widest point; should weigh about ten to fifteen pounds. It doesn't; it is closer to the weight of a tall, thin, bony man.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Larric isn't strong enough to even pick it up, then. He could hoist a grown man up over his shoulder, but I doubt he has the grip strength to hang onto a rock that size which is, more or less, osmium-dense.

[Carrying lead bricks is fun like that; you expect something that small to be something you can easily manhandle just by grabbing it, but it's heavy. Good way to sprain your wrist if you're careless]

IC:

Larric frowns. "So, he's been chased into a corner and turned himself into a rock. Can we change him back? I'm not sure how to talk to a rock."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

One thing that it means is that he only got a partial success; nearly complete but not quite. If he is only partially morphed, you may be able to reason with (or failing that, experiment on) him- he may be in more of a listening frame of mind now.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

The good news is he may be in a more listening frame of mind. The bad news is that he is, in point of fact, a rock. Negotiating with rocks isn't just hard, it's proverbially hard.

Waiting for Kaelan to weigh in on this. But whatever Plan A he comes up with, I think Plan B should be to just lug the rock back to Qulan and hope the local wizards can jointly figure out a way to change him back.

We set out seeking to persuade him to return peaceably, or failing that to capture him. The poor man was unpersuadable, but practically captured himself.

[Kaelan]

OOC - sorry for the late reply, been having fun with the local school winter bugs (half the kids have been off sick for the past 2 weeks).

IC - Dirt picks up the rock with two hands, hefts it for weight. Looking at the rock and then at the rest of the party he asks the question "if we break bits off, do we breaks bit off 'im?" Setting the rock down Dirt looks about for a suitable wedge to rest against the rock. "Or he could change back and start talking"

Using the flow of earth magic Dirt will gently ask "You want to talk now with nice people or later with not nice people?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Herault is running away, in many senses of the term; got as far as he could physically, then ran away mentally- retreated from reality almost entirely by becoming an inanimate object. Ogres, like early man, have a robust verging on brutal approach to mental illness- barely acknowledging that it exists; on the other hand many svartalfven are nothing if not exhibitionistically neurotic. Dirt can take whatever side of that he likes, for hints and tips.

Whether damage to the rock will result in damage to the organic being once he transforms- what he's doing is patently impossible and enabled only by magic, so how good a job he made of the magic is the answer to that really; with that level of success, yes, but it will be the threat that matters- he might as well be under anaesthetic, he's not going to feel it. Dread it, maybe.

There is a long pause while he thinks about it; from his point of view, you think he's thinking, the only chance he has to salvage anything from this is if he does start communicating, try to work on the situation. There is a powerful temptation to let it go and just stay a rock- but in the end, he's been in politics too long not to talk.

So what are you saying to him?

[Simon_Jester]

Larric asks Dirt, specifically:

"Can he hear me, or does it take rock-magic to even get through to him?"

Obviously an important question.

[Kaelan]

One way to find out easily enough. Dirt gives the rock a tap and thru the earth speaks to the fake rock "You 'earing him, and what do you have to say for yourself?"

where we go from here is dependent on how our new found friend responds....

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

strange side note first- just been reading James Wylie's "History of the Scottish Nation"- late nineteenth century, written very much the way that it is not done now- polemic and political rant really, but tremendously entertaining in it's own bonkers way; he spends quite a lot of ink and vigour trying to prove that traditional european-celtic Druidism is in fact a mutant folk offshoot of the Jewish faith. Also, subsequently, that the Catholic Church is a Pagan attempt to subvert Christianity, but that's another story.

I was just tickled by the notion of jewish druids; I may have to try to work that in somehow.


The rock responds 'I can hear you...but I like this place. If I tell you, will you agree to leave me here among the ruins?'

[Simon_Jester]

Larric would speak; it's unfortunate that Fiji is away because it'd be good to have more than two perspectives on the issue, especially when one of them is Dirt's (which is clever and sensible but often a little too out-of-bounds to be practical).

"I wouldn't mind leaving you here, if that's really what you want. But what we need's to know what just happened, how your church came to do what it did, and who stirred things up to make them worse. When you found out it'd all gone wrong... and we need someone notable to hear all these things. And our trouble is, we may need to tell the baron all this, and he may want the word of someone he already knows."

The alchemist pauses.

"I have an idea. We need someone of standing in the town, most likely someone with earth-magic in their own right, to hear the patriarch's testimony. Maybe not Lisanna, maybe one of the other wizards. After that... Patriarch Herault, if you want to retire here, as far as I'm concerned I doubt anyone's going to tell you you can't. On the other hand, if you change your mind and you want to come back, we can find someone to help you."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

He requires a fair amount of persuasion; 'If I thought it could be fixed, would I be a rock?' but that is just pessimism talking, and in the end there is very little point to pessimism; even stone can be worn down, or warmed up if you sit on it long enough. Which, from Dirt, is a fairly dire threat.

Part of the story is only confirming what you already have- power hungry, tired of being grey eminence, saw a leadership vacuum and determined to step into it. What Herault can add, though, is that it seems to have been a remarkably ill considered decision, done largely on the spur of the moment- moved more by the tenor of the times than by rational calculation or coordination. Which was the main reason he was heading to Auvaine, and the county's high temple- or possibly downriver from there to Fordston, by the Grumbling Falls.

He became personally aware of it about five minutes after getting within sight of the town on their return from the caverns, when the senior priest left up started shouting at him, asking why he had to bring the baron back, they were almost ready.

He actually accidentally gave them their plan, when trying to persuade them (he says, anyway) that if they weren't ready now they never would be, that it wasn't the situation holding them back, that this, this and this needed to happen (removing the alternative sources of power) before the temple and the priests would stand a chance in hell; they had already made a start on that with their rivals in the temple of Dnor- which had more to do with being able to mine the dead for information and blackmail material on the living than anything else, really.

Their moves at that point became increasingly frantic, and as he personally had been out of the loop in the approaches to this, he became responsible for keeping the Baron in the dark and thinking up a plan B in case it all went horribly wrong- which in the event, it did.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Um...yes, that was just half a post, and all I can say in my defence there is that large parts of my life have recently fallen apart. Given that I don't generally talk about such things on SDN at all really, or about much that has to do with real life, I don't want to start by wailing for sympathy but well, I am nowhere near one hundred percent. (Probably never was, really.)


Herault explains, under some duress, that he arrived as an outsider to a half formed dog's breakfast of a plan, and in the process of his criticising it the acting head of the temple realised what else he had to do to make it work. In the process, it was their idea to co-opt the priests of other religions. Herault had been doing much the same down in the caverns, but he was exhausted and wanting no more than to rest and recover;

those on the surface rejected caution, and proceeded to attempt to bully and browbeat everyone they could- and made too many enemies, some of whom did, as you decoded, sabotage the Valdemironi bid for dominance. Herault himself was not part of the group who had did this- admits that he would have been if they had not fallen out- and was trying to find support among the yeomanry when things came to a head.


The act of thinking about politics seems to make him feel better; he picks up throughout the discussion, and seems much less broken by the end. 'The temples at Auvaine itself may be able to lend might, at least.'

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Sorry; troubles with misery elementals again.

IC:

Larric takes it all in. "So, they tried to undermine your fellows' plan by pushing them to do it too... recklessly? To go through with it too hard? Would it be true to say they helped to make the riot happen, even if they wanted it to end badly for you?"