Homebrew system thread II, section 3

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Yes, all of those things are true; she is in fact an ex adventurer. Also adventuress. So gang, what now?

[Fiji_Fury]

OOC:

Okay, perhaps this is time for us to have a little strategy talk. We've been acting/reacting for a while now and never really discussed OUR plan(s). The immediate choice is between going to interrogate the priest Dirt is holding or heading back to the Baron's court... to more or less do the same but with more witnesses. Are we going to try to investigate D'avriel's scheme and thwart her? Are we going to try to rebuild/rehabilitate Qulan? Are we fleeing into the wilderness after rage-quitting the town and its infighting?

I suggest we pause for a little bit to do some planning then get back into direct action. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to retreat from the scene with the Irkrahni priests to actually have an IC discussion about this. Playing-by-post is quite different than in person and I feel like we've missed out on all those quick discussions between each other that shape what we're trying to do. As it is, it feels like we've been rushing along without a plan for a long while now.

OOC-2:
I am on vacation starting tomorrow (August 6) and will be travelling until August 24/25. During this time I am doubtful I'll have much computer access, so I might be going "dark" until the end of the month. Please do not take this as disinterest. I want to continue participating but will likely be out of communication for a couple of weeks here. If the rest of you would prefer to press forward with action, Dale will continue with you as a temporary NPC. I'll reintegrate once vacation is over.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Probably sensible. I think part of our problem is that we've been skidding our wheels, unclear on what our mission is.

With adventuring parties, as long as they have enemies present in the sword-in-hand sense, there is usually no shortage of things to do or ideas about what can be done. Roleplaying game parties are usually good at dealing with well-defined antagonists, so there's always something to do and someone able/willing to think about it.

When there is a 'rest state' where no pressing business comes immediately to hand (say, the situation when we came back to Qulan after defeating de Berrey), the players are free to rummage around and pursue whatever loose ends and unfinished business come to mind, so there's always something to do and someone able/willing to think about it.

Here, we're sort of caught between two stools. We're still in the middle of a crisis so we can't pursue our characters' unfinished business; the pressure of events demands some kind of decision, if only a conscious decision that it's all Someone Else's Problem. But there's no clearcut enemy in front of us against whom we can direct action, there's only d'Avariel. Who's clearly not our friend, but under the circumstances is clearly not an enemy we can make go away by hitting her.

Thus, strategic confusion and a lack of responsiveness by the players.

OOC MK II:

Larric's inclination is to interrogate the priest Dirt is holding, using the legal aegis of the court sorceress (Lisanna). This is more or less a repeat of what we did with the men who were hired to try and kill Larric/Dirt/Alfred in the marketplace earlier today. It also gives us a cutout so we can decide what to do with the priest's testimony after we obtain it, rather than having the whole thing spill out at once.

Now, Fiji, if you're leaving tomorrow you may not see this to respond; I don't know what Kaelan would say. I'm going to hold off a bit on making IC posts to give Fiji a chance to respond tonight.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Hm. Right.

Yes, you do need some time, and so does everyone else really- this would be a good point for nothing to happen, it has been a rather traumatic day for almost everyone involved (no matter how much they may happen to be gloating inside), so barring meteors falling from the sky there shall be an operational pause.

Dirt's idea- infiltrate and take over- isn't necessarily a bad one; worth considering.

Most of the people around the breach in the walls are going to drift away eventually, seeking medical care, rest or somebody to try to explain to them what the hell just happened, so now would be a good time for the party to gather and think.

[Kaelan]

OOC

Have a good holiday,we'll try not to break Dale whilst you are away.....

In the interim Dirt is happy to interrogate the priest with Larric. Also, who said anything about infiltration, Dirt was planning to just bash anyone who objected until they saw the light (in this life or the next).

[Kaelan]

Is there anybody out there...........

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

CRUD. Sorry, I had a whole string of things crop up and I knew I'd forgotten some ongoing schedule thing.

IC:

Larric is going to be trying to edge over toward the people he was with at the Valdemironi temple- Lisanna and the Ikhrani priests. He's feeling distinctly exposed at the moment from a political standpoint, and he knows the sorceress has the trust of the baron, while the Ikhrani priests are from his point of view among the most solid imaginable representatives and friends of the people.

He will encourage Dirt and Dale to head that way with their captive.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Lisanna is to be found looking at the edges of the breach in the wall; looks round at Dirt who has the priest still slung over his shoulder, at Larric, says 'We need to talk.' starts heading for what is left of her official residence- if you recall, the court wizard's tower was cut down from six stories to about a half, courtesy the Striking Phoenix.

What there is left is the basement, and that is where she has set up home. It's a jumble- full of salvaged bits and pieces of alchemical gear and jeweller's tools, a small library of intact books and a rather higher proportion of partially burnt, shredded and chewed ones that she looks to be trying to restore, the lumber and tangle of casting aids, physical components, things half- enchanted and waiting to be finished; she's normally much neater than this, it's just that she ran out of room suddenly, and tidiness has moved down several places on the priority list.

There is barely enough room for you all to fit in, Dirt is going to end up squatting on the floor- because of said lack of room, the usual circle of power has had to be drawn on the ceiling. She has a folding- looking chair of her own, she looks around slightly embarrassedly and pushes it towards the oldest of the Ikhrani acolytes.

'After tonight I'm afraid I'm in a rather blasphemous mood, so I'll put it plainly- do any of you actually trust the goddess of war at this point? Or contend that her representatives here have anyone's best interest at heart other than their own? Most of you saw the evidence in the Valdemironi temple- the geas that they tried to lay on the people, that she made sure included them too- and then managed to wriggle free of in time to come here and play the hero's part defending the castle against them.

Who do you think's going to be court chaplain in the morning? This was a power play. Opportunistic, perhaps, a moment seized, but I expect she, in particular, will turn out to have won and gained from this. What's coming next? How do we undo this move, or survive their next?'

[Simon_Jester]

Larric sighs. "I think the Krylanyans have lost it. They're-" the alchemist corrects himself, being something of a precisionist- "well, d'Avariel in particular is, can't speak for the rest but I think they're helping. Anyway. She and maybe the others are having too much fun with playing politics like it was a game, in look-how-great-I-am and look-how-smart-I-am. It's going to their heads and they've stopped caring what happens to people as long as they win on points."

"If we could put everything out in the open it'd stop them cold, I think; I don't know Baron deVerett a hundredth as well as you, but I can't imagine he'd want to give power and honors to someone who just got done helping stir up a mob against him. Thing is, do we have enough facts to make them look like they've been doing, well... exactly what they've been doing? I'm not sure; maybe we'll know after we have a word with this one."

He jerks his head at the stunned Valdemironi priest, thinking to himself about the old saying that you can't cheat an honest man... and that this priest was very effectively cheated.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It is the senior Ikhrani acolyte who says 'Politics is only their...raw material. Oh yes, they enjoy it, they play it with great skill, they may even become addicted to it, but ultimately it means no more to them than, say, sandstone means to us. It is what they mean to create out of it, the situation that they are playing for, that I think we may need to beware of and anticipate.

The baron, it pains me to admit, is a political craftsman of some talent himself; enough to appreciate skilled play in another. He may think that he is better off with her than against her- and by all accounts she was at pains to appear especially heroic defending the castle against the mob. We can make a case, perhaps, but it shall have to be a good one- and who will we have for advocate?'

[Simon_Jester]

"I don't know; if we can't find enough proof quick, maybe we should just sit on this and pull it out later- but later she'll be better off and probably be the chaplain already. We'll be able to figure out what we can prove and how to say it better once we know what that man knows-" he nods at the Valdemironi again.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'I don't think you can alchemically assay a human mind; the problem we're all hoping someone else will think of an answer to is that of all the gods and all the talents, the one best fitted to identifying and sifting out the truth is the set of abilities belonging to our victim, here.

We can take the thaumaturgy to pieces and examine it strand by strand, which we have, and it was enough to convince me; but someone without the eyes to see for themselves?

Perhaps our best move might be to put this one back together, actually, and see if the experience has taught him anything.' Lisanna suggests.

[Fiji_Fury]

OOC: I'm back! Had a great trip and am settling back into home, work and being connected. Thanks for your patience everyone.

IC:
"I think we have two priorities: First, questioning the servant of Valdemiron to reveal what he can about the plot itself and the ritual hosted at his temple."

Dale looks at the priest, disappointment at the reckless plot made clear.

"Second we'll need to discuss what we can do with this information next. Without determining anything until we've heard from our 'guest', I suspect we would be better served investigating d'Avriel's end-game rather than attempting to immediately thwart her rise in the Baron's court. We're already at least one step behind her on that count. Playing catch-up with her currently looking the hero could burn up any good will we have with the Baron."

"But first, let's find out more about the failed coup, and what Valdemiron's priests were possibly thinking in this mad scheme."

Dale moves himself in front of the priest and watches silently for a moment.

OOC: I'll give a pause here for any discussion or actions before starting things Dale's way.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

OK, realistically it's time to move to the interrogation. Fiji, Kaelan, how do you think we should play this?

[Fiji_Fury]

I think we commiserate with the poor bastard (Dale from perspective of a religious servant, Larric from perspective of a man who likes good order) while threatening to let Dirt cook him. We are "crazy", remember? Let's use that angle to our advantage. The priest is battered, bloodied, exhausted and has been manipulated like nobody's business. If we aren't too aggressive at first we might glean some good info, and we can always dial the threat level up to "Ogre".

And if we REALLY want to scare him... we can threaten to turn him over to Lisanna.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Oh, good, you're back.


I presume Dirt will be willing to cooperate with this? (I presume the party will tell Dirt at some point that he's only to pretend to be about to eat the human- he hasn't had a good live meal in a while?)

A potion of recovering consciousness is brewed up, and enchanted- stirring it with a set of yarrow stalks seems to be an essential part of the process- and offered to the groaning, twitching priest. He is drained, tired and battered enough that he is temporarily without the sense to refuse, and from the running commentary Lisanna gave while making it, it should make him readier to talk, loosen his tongue and deprive him of the presence of mind to come up with interesting lies. If you reckon it's a good idea to administer anything of the sort at all.

Do you want to amplify on the acting at all, go into more detail, or shall I let the poor fool begin to spill his guts unaided?

[Simon_Jester]

[Sorry, last few days have been distracting]

Larric's contribution, assuming Dirt cooperates, is to look very alarmed whenever Dirt looms hungrily, and very sympathetic and encouraging to the groaning, abused priest whenever he actually starts talking.

To paraphrase "yes, yes, you've been tricked, Persuasion-Charm, do tell us all about it."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The tale the acolyte tells is long and rambling, made slightly more so by being helped on the way- in addition to "don't let him eat me"- and it goes back to before last autumn, in its' roots.

When the grand consistory came apart and the nation looked ready for civil war, the Valdemironi were already manoeuvring for it- and laying plans for if not regicide and regency then at the very least brainwashing. King Justinian's complete moral collapse voided any obligation to follow him, as far as they were concerned, and they who should have been one of the strongest pillars of the kingdom were now looking at seeing it all slide down to hell- so why not get involved directly?

The permanent standing temptation of the Valdemironi faith is to reach for the crown oneself, after all... they had basically been planning to get the nobility to do each other in and pave the way for a rule of the godly for most of the winter, when the Authrani Empire decided to take an interest and sent a band of maniacs who tore the country apart, and at the same time drove all three barons quite literally underground.

Such as survived above ground, once they realised they really should have been much more careful what they wished for, began once they had pulled themselves back together to start on a limited, revised version of the same. Discredit the nobility and take power for themselves.

It wasn't going very well- the Ikhrani can confirm that their great secret plan was actually fairly widely known or at least suspected, it being so much like what they would want to do under the circumstances that it would have been more surprising, more out of character, if they weren't scheming. They had lost everyone with the boldness to batter on through, and had to move very circumspectly. There were some assassinations, mostly of reputations rather than flesh and blood, and some rabble rousing, but little provable.

What they did against the followers of Dnor, who are to a certain extent keepers of the stories of the dead and as close to an institutional long term memory as the setup has, was as direct as they could afford to be, and that largely consisted of making sure the worst happened.

The twin shocks of the Baron somehow surviving, escaping from the caverns and wanting his barony back, and the arrival of a gang of troublemakers from the goddess of war, moved things along. They resolved to try to assassinate the baron if possible, sieze power in the mudslinging that would surely follow, or openly overthrow him in the name of competent leadership if not.

Things started to really go horribly wrong for them when the krylanyans turned out not only to have a good idea what they were up to, but to be apparently willing to help. For them, too, the Imperial intervention had been a disaster and they were looking to salvage something from the fragments; or so they claimed.

Krylanya's followers do not think with one mind on the subject of war, ranging from the airiest theorists of armed conflict as instrument of policy to the most frothing devotees of the notion that war is the supreme test and proving fire of humanity, but the overwhelming majority of them do fall far short of appreciating the wholesale devastation the Twentieth Cataphract left in their wake. That was not war as they wanted to see it, nor as they wanted it to be. Fall in with the Valdemironi plan, and they might manage to put the genie back in the bottle, metaphorically speaking.

At least, that was the line they sold. It only really became obvious that they were so fundamentally in agreement with the Valdemironi back to the past plan that they meant to steal it for their own and eliminate their rivals in the process when she turned up on top of the battlements, daring the frothing crowd which included the priests she had managed to reflect their own charm onto to do their worst.

On nobody's side but their own, certainly not the baron's, the Krylanyans did not mean to stop the revolt, they meant to hijack it and benefit from it themselves, the priest now believes.


Any specific details you're trying to get out of him?

[Simon_Jester]

Larric is looking for any details about what D'Avariel was up to either during or prior to the revolt.

I imagine Dale wants details about exactly what happened to the priests of D'nor... possibly including himself.

[Fiji_Fury]

Oh, yes. Dale is very interested in what the Valdemironi did, what they permitted and who was involved. He will also insist "calmly" for any information on where tools, artefacts, relics and servants of D'nor were taken or fled to as the dust settled. This line of interrogation will be secondary to Larric's inquiries into D'Avariel.

On that note, were there any other conspirators involved within and/or outside of the community? P.S. - he'll save the tid-bit about a messenger escaping Qulan itself for after the other information has come forth in order to see what the acolyte makes of it.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

D'Avariel is an outsider, not a native of the county or, probably, the country; the Fourteen Gods are common throughout South Vathlin (the continent), remember, although they do sometimes take on local aspects; she arrived only about a day or so before the party did, and spent most of that time taking soundings of opinion, weighing up the situation and deciding what was possible.

It does seem to have been her idea to go for broke, to actually try to besiege the castle and kill the baron- although she was obviously pushing at an open door. The precise quote being 'You must have considered all your options- why not the bold move?' Of course it also seems that she went out of her way to establish a defence for later of 'they made me do it'- spurring them on then trying to hold them back, so that they had to pull religious rank on her to ensure her full participation.


They have no more interest than anyone else in plagues of undead, so there are limits as to how far they could be willing to go- but being the priest of the god of leadership and chieftainship, if they are good at anything it's that.

It might be necessary to refer to the map here for what happened to the servants of Dnor, because the county is littered with sites of special thaumaturgical interest. One of them being the permanent blackspot that is Old Carfax- haven't mentioned it much before because it hasn't come up, you've been in the wrong place- just like the Grumbling Falls and the Spiral Forest- but in character you would be quite aware of it, Larric especially. It is poisoned ground- the site of one of the Black Towers, destroyed now of course, but the taint never successfully swept away, the boneyard and the dead city around it if anything prevent it being properly cleansed- to say nothing of how big the job could be.

It is guarded and watched, and the local forces know that some day, given a big enough disturbance, something really nasty could happen. Something like a gang of lawless, reckless bloody- handed maniacs deciding to poke it and see what happened? That. The Valdemironi faked messages and signs and portents indicating something dark and terrible was about to happen, and told the acolytes of Dnor that something had to be done, defences had to be raised, relief had to be sent- and set up an ambush.

Setting up a situation that would deprive them of their caution, get them to do something like walk into a prepared ritual zone- where the powers of the chief of the gods could be used against them, extract truth, delegate; strip the messengers of the gods of their powers, peel back their abilities, prevent them being able to give the alarm, who cares about things like amnesia and brain damage along the way.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

What does Determination, the skill, do?

Also, that sounds alarmingly like Extract Truth being used to, well... remove things that are essentially true. Ouch.

IC:

After the priest is done speaking, Larric's voice is rough and low in response to the sheer... for lack of a better term, evil that is and was going on in Qulan.

"One man's word may not be enough to carry all the charges that ought to be laid. Lisanna, you know the baron far better than we- does it at least make sense to put him on his guard against d'Avariel? If he's going to make his chaplain someone who just tried to kill him, we may not be able to stop him, but we might be able to whisper a warning."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Yes, what they did was abuse of power in at least two senses of the term.

Determination is a tricky one, because it has the potential to be a panacea augment, useful to add a little bonus to everything; it can be used to persuade or to resist, but at reduced value- and it mainly gives bonuses to other skills, which precisely has varied, but essentially anything that it looks from the character's advantages and disadvantages that they ought to care about.


'Yes, of course, and we would be wise to be on guard against her as well. To face her in court and win, though, what would we need? We could make a case, and a fight of it, now- but as good a liar and twister of truths as she is, it would be close. Who do we need on side?'

[Kaelan]

OOC - have been reading the thread, just waiting for the appropriate time for Dirt to chime in...

IC - Now that the priest has finished co-operating Dirt smiles and eats him.

"What? we're not eating him now", fine, taking the priest arm out of his mouth he sulkily drops the priest back in the corner and wipes the drool from his chin.

"I say give D'av' job. Full style 'svart backing." An evil grin crosses his lips along with a glint in his eye. "Lots of work being priest, and Baron needs to tend to people. Personal touch from priest to all households would be good start. Show they matter to him. And then there are other things:
Paperwork
Rededication of all sites 'n graves
Chanting on keep walls
Victory service
Daily prayer for men
council for men back from old cave up mountain.
Lots of things to keep her busy......"


As they always say, be careful what you wish for, you may just get it.

[Fiji_Fury]

Dale tracks the acolyte to the corner where Dirt tossed him, providing a bit of cloth to clean himself up with.

"Let me be very clear," he says leaning in close to the man. "Your order intentionally ambushed mine and blocked our connection to divine D'nor. You used your power in deception to traumatize and erode the strength of the very community you purport to protect and lead. You declared war on me and mine. Any safety or immunity you might otherwise have as a prisoner or servant of the gods is forfeit in my eyes. I will cut you myself, slowly, and feed you to the Ogre if I find you've been lying. Did your order act alone, or were there any other conspirators against D'nor's servants? Be honest now, as your life and comfort are at stake."

OOC: I love Kaelen's suggestion about wrapping d'Avriel up in so much work that she's effectively neutralized, if only temporarily. That only has value if we can figure out what our best move is while she is partially occupied. Dale will engage in planning with the others once he has an answer from the acolyte.