Quest for the Grace [22 Thory 4385]

[sythyry]

Quest for the Grace [22 Thory 4385]

The next morning, I was still far too sick to go out adventuring. And I had still gotten far too sick by saving Phaniet's life, so it seemed only reasonable that I then endanger her life by sending her out to get the Grace that she had offered to get for Quendry.

I couldn't get Inconnu to go with her, which meant that I spent half the morning curled up in Inconnu's lap, which is potentially awkward. I could, and did, get Rheng to go with her, because he is the Thief Supreme (according to himself) and good at getting around the Verticals. Jyondre seduced Yerenthax some more by volunteering both of them before she did, so that was ... um ... two very solid warriors, a clever and bold Orren, and a cowardist mage who never goes into danger when she doesn't have to, but has quite a bit of magic in her level head. ("cowardist" being rude adventurer slang for "not an adventurer".)

Next question was where to go. Phaniet and I improvised something tangentially related to Orkozarmon's Tenebrous Resonance, which worked pretty well and showed off a Grace of Mircannis not ten miles off.

Unfortunately some of those miles were straight up the main trunk. Which would have not been any of a problem if we had a working sky pilot; we could have flown them around in a dinghy and everything would have been as easy as, if not pie exactly, then some of those little treacle tarts with pears and nuts in them. Unfortunately, I was too sick to either go or appreciate those tarts, and Windigar was stomped flat from dying repeatedly, so that didn't work. Jyondre and Yerenthax snuck over to Eigrach and talked to their friends in the city guard and came back with some wall-walker talismans.

They scraped the bottom of the Strayway strongbox. (This has been a very expensive vacation; we have already gobbled through the money I had brought to last generously for two years. Fortunately, Zascalle says that the cross-branch banking system is not utterly incapable of sending us some money from my account in Ketheria in a matter of a few weeks, so I wrote some letters authorizing her to do whatever was necessary and sent her off to Eigrach. I will probably need to sell or mortgage some bit of enchantment to last 'til then.)

Obligatory Monsters In The Way

So they ground-walked over to the main trunk, and then wall-walked up it. It's a fecund sort of season, so the verticals-trees made a beautiful green canopy that was impossible for them to see through. So up they climbed, and after a while they got jumped by a hugeng. Or jumped a hugeng; I am not quite sure of the details. (For those of you who have never happened to make the acquaintance of a hugeng: they are one of the early monsters that Accanax (argh, my patron, now) made in a temper tantrum. Giant aerial shrimps, with sharp spiky legs and a penchant for spitting bone javelins out and giving people tremors. Well, Rheng and Jyondre got spiked by sharp spiky legs and/or stabbed by bone javelins, and Jyondre had the tremors for a while, but they dealt with the thing and brought a lot of its meat along with them.

Then they met a vorwi -- a floating tetrahedral person with four polymorphic pseudopod hands. (Ever notice how many of the Verticals-beasts float? There is probably some reason for it, though it eludes me at the moment.) They placated it with offers of hugeng-flesh, terrified it by telling it the news of the nendrai living not ten miles off, and it showed them to the headquarters and fortress of SOMP.

SOMP

SOMP, as everyone who is anyone in the illicit-pharmaceuticals business around Eigrach knows (and didn't you?), is the Society for the Observation of Mircannis under Plants. None of us had heard of them. They introduced themselves by saying, "We're not a crazy cult of berserk devotees of Mircannis! We're just some honest Rassimel farmers and crafters, living in a blobby fortress in the Verticals, carefully outside of the laws and customs of Eigrach."

When someone introduces themselves that way, you believe them, of course. Or you pretend to. Even if your Sleeth sniff out that the "honest Rassimel farmers" are growing wenezza [the World Tree date-rape drug -bb] and other such things.

Well, Phaniet politely offered to buy the Grace, and they just as politely refused to sell one of their sacred artifacts to her.

But, they were polite primes. They offered to heal the wounded Rheng and Jyondre, with some mysterious green healing paste that they produce there -- they do produce a lot of healing items. The wounded Rheng and Jyondre were pleased to accept.

Betrayal!

Which seemed good at the time, but not so good a little later. The Sompites had mixed a mind-command powder (krendayn, I think) into the healing goop. Krendayn is not the wickedest sort of mind-command powder that ever was. It cannot be used to compel people to violate the bounds of morality, politeness, or good taste. It can be used for commands like Tomorrow at noontime you will leave SOMP without the Grace of Mircannis, and never return." And, by itself, it's not that hard to resist krendayn; but Rheng and Jyondre had already waived their resistance, because resisting it would have resisted the healing (and the mind control was sufficiently obscure that they didn't notice it until too late.)

Which was pretty awkward. The SOMPites really didn't want to give up their Grace.

Well, Rheng and Jyondre were rather upset. Mind control is one of the least-socially-acceptable acts here. If it had been inside a city-state, the Sompites would have been begging for a lynching. Outside, well, Phaniet complained at them, and they noted that they had to protect themselves as best they could in the Verticals, etc., and they were very sorry but they wouldn't part with their Grace for anything short of a massive disaster in Eigrach or some such thing.

So, the wrongfolk went to their guest rooms, and ate of their own food (except Phaniet, who trusts her nose and her sense of magic analysis, and was not further drugged or poisoned).

The Inevitable Adventurer-Style Conclusion

At night, Rheng snuck out. He couldn't bring the Grace home, but he hadn't been compelled not to find it. Of course, SOMP being a pack of crazed cultists, they had a couple guards sitting on the door to the room containing the Grace. And, being a pack of crazed Rassimel cultists, lots of them were awake -- the guards, and some people working in their workshop, making more of those drugs that aren't allowed in cities.

Here's where it becomes clear that my friends were adventurers. Rheng tried to claw a hole in the wall to the Grace-room (the walls were a bit ramshackle, but, as befits We-Are-Not-A-Cult, the Grace-room itself was a nice little altar room). He knocked chunks of wood down on the main SOMP sleeping quarters, which were underneath the altar room, waking up everyone who wasn't already awake. Jyondre snuck out and flooded the workshop and set a chimney on (illusionary) fire, as a distraction. Somehow, they persuaded some of the Sompites that they were not here to acquire the Grace, but, instead, they were Eigrach city guards coming to shut down the evil herbalists. Which might have been a tactical disadvantage, since those Sompites would now want to kill them, but whatever.

Phaniet, hearing the commotion, popped out the guest quarters in a panic. She persuaded some other Sompites that she was an utter cowardist, a weak and pathetic city-dweller, so nervous that the slightest bit of thumping and dripping in the night of the Verticals brought her to a panic. Those Sompites made her go back to bed and shut up. So, she did, and arranged pillows and blankets in the beds to appear person-shaped, in the classic style.

In the confusion, Rheng squeezed into the altar room, snatched the Grace, and hightailed it for the guest room. Phaniet, uncontrolled, took it from him. She left the purse containing the payment for the Grace she had offered at first.

Then they fled -- separately, I think, to satisfy the control spell -- outward from the trunk, and treated themselves to a Very Long Jump, falling a few miles back to near the flats and catching themselves with levitation spells and suchlike. The Sompites presumably couldn't pursue them so far.

So I drank lots of kathia, puked most of it up again, (repeat a few times) and poured some into Phaniet by way of thanks, and we repaired Quendry. To the point of being in just about as bad shape as Windigar and Ochirion, viz., flat in bed for a few more weeks. (I have not the slightest idea what to do about Feralan, of course, but at least he won't die without attention. I think.)

Anyhow, I have the best wizard's assistant on the World Tree, and the best friends and clients, too. Even if I am now probably at war with SOMP.

And nothing I have ever done settles the spell-churned stomach quite so much as writing in my journal (or, perhaps, having none of my friends in a fatal coma anymore due to the actions of another friend.) I actually feel mostly better now.

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Well... they could go to war with you, or they could start smoking their own weed and make themselves feel better about losing their artifact. I know which one *I'd* choose.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they'll decide to go smoke their own weed after learning about the nendrai. The nendrai who is probably very upset and frustrated and would very much like a target to take out her frustrations on.

[rowyn]

So it'll be war, then?

...

C'mon, I know you. You don't smoke!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Well... yeah. But presumably, if I was a SOMPite, I would.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Goodness gracious! :O

Does the Grace get used up, or can it be returned after using it temporarily?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Graces can only be used once.

The rather rarer Glories can be used repeatedly, but they are rarer and weaker.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Huh. I thought they had a finite but greater-than-that number of uses, with some variance from Grace to Grace. Or does the technique which you needed it for use the whole thing?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Bard and Sythyry discuss the matter, and it is discovered that the lack of a plural in Ketherian plus some poor translation botched the translation. Sometimes 'charge of a Grace' was meant by 'Grace'. This is a one-charge Grace, as are many.]

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

That is rather a clever thing with the healing salve. I'll need to remember that.

[zhaleskra.livejournal.com]

As Jyondre (mostly to himself): Rheng refused initially. When the cat doesn't want to do something, you don't do it, you Gnarn-blasted otter!

OoC: That was an awesome adventure. It was a pleasure to game under you.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Yay! It was great to meet you, and to get a chance to game with you, too. Also thanks for entertaining Rhys all morning Saturday. He loved it. I hope you had some fun too...

[zhaleskra.livejournal.com]

Apparently I'm better with young children than I thought I was. Or at least young children who aren't trying to take my attention away from teaching them martial arts. It was fun hanging out with Rhys too.

The next time I host World Tree, I'll probably handle the initiative deck(s) similarly to how you and Vickie did at the con. S, because there might be the PC deck and the NPC deck, depending on a lot of factors.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

*sighs at the shameless display of preconventional morality*

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

??

[The plot I had in mind did include an option for Inconnu to seduce one of the Sompites.]

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Looks more like postconventional to me. The adventurers ignored the laws when they interfered with justice (6), and SOMP had a social contract outside the law (5).

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

If they had decided that personal property as a concept if wrong, and therefore it's okay take the grace despite what the law says, that would be postconvential.

Based on Sythyry's recounting, the reasoning seems to have been more along the lines of "we can grab the grace and escape before they can stop us, and since they're just a bunch of hippies no one else will care", which is preconventional.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

An example given on the page you linked to was 'preserving life is a higher good than respecting property, therefore you should steal to save a life'. Instead of conventional morality, which would be 'don't steal because it's against the rules', or preconventional morality, which would be 'don't steal because people will try to stop you'.

Given that Phaniet left payment, and they didn't steal other goods from SOMP that they could have gotten their hands on, they obviously weren't out to take what they could from the SOMP because they could. Their motivation was to save Quendry.

(also, I think this is a good illustration of why the whole pre/con/post thing is a load of crap, but that's just me)

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Their motivation was to save Quendry.

But it isn't, at least as relayed by Sythyry. Note that from the minute they arrive at SOMP until the return to the Strayaway, Quendry isn't mentioned a single time.

What is mentioned repeatedly is how disreputable they find the SOMPites, the desire of certain party members to get revenge on them, the unliklihood of the SOMPites to be able to pursue them back onto the branch, etc.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Actually, they repeatedly mentioned him to the Sompites, attempting to play on their sympathy. [They did, too, in the RL game.]

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

[Ah sorry. We have an unreliable narrator.]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Never noticed that before? Sythyry tries to be approximately true to reality, or to warn you if zie's not -- except about dialog, which zie cheerfully admits to embroidering a lot. But zie does tailor zir journal entries into anecdotal form, omitting or emphasizing things for the sake of the story.]

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

[Yes I've noticed, but it's usually more obvious when Sythyry's being unreliable because he writing style changes considerably]

[zhaleskra.livejournal.com]

Mostly we were trying to circumvent the spirit of the suggestion spell while still following the letter. Or something like that.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I rather suspect you will need to learn the structure of souls aside of the Magerium to a much finer degree if you are to understand how to separate entangled structures like Feralan's. Is there a particular god to whom you could supplicate to learn this information?

Also, I've found that similar problems in my realm are a bit like untangling knotted strings or mop-heads. There are means by which one may easily do this, but at some point it inevitably requires pushing a thing that likes to bend when pushed and may sometimes squirm as well instead of sliding through the loop. And if a knot has been pulled too tight, it will take time to work loose. My training with knots and with rope and stick construction has definitely helped with my spirit work, as has my idle habit of disentangling horrible messes of string. (Even hair tangles can yield to my skilled fingers, if the subject would Just Stop PULLING for a minute so I can see if it's knotted tight... sometimes that subject is me, though, and I just have to keep yanking on the comb because I can forget to take my own advice at times.)

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I think Iraz Halix? But you have to be dead to find her.

[rowyn]

They should've had Quendry check while he was still mostly dead!

Sythyry had a grace from Iraz Halix once, by way of Vae, but I think zie sold it almost immediately. A lot of Mutoc-Healoc-Spiridor does seem likely to be in order ...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The paper doll? No, that wasn't a grace, it was just a ... doodle, I suppose you'd call it.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I imagine I'll need to track down an expert on the topic, probably a Rassimel.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Sigh. In situations like this, it's easier to understand why most primes abhor anything related to Mentador. For every person who would confine their use of it to the benign(Meet the Pain, Silent Words, and other things which are strictly neutral or positive) or at least the somewhat righteous(questioning criminals/spies, attacks which use Mentador but don't do all that much that's specific to it(e.g. Eyes of the Drill of Pain)), there seem to be three who would just toss RuMe and MuMe around willy-nilly to further their own petty ends.

[rowyn]

That's how Mentador sucks you in: you start with a spell that looks harmless. Then you think "well, is it any worse to attack with Me than Py?" Then you decide that, hey, isn't it better for everyone if we discreetly mind-control the Sleeth into leaving quietly, rather than resorting to physical violence that would only get everyone involved hurt?

I mean, really -- isn't it? >:)

[zhaleskra.livejournal.com]

Even casting Mentador spells on yourself, say to improve your memory because you didn't study and don't want to pull an all-nighter, isn't much smarter either.

[rowyn]

I knew of a monster who kept a journal, of a sort, using Too Good a Memory. He noted one of the consequences here.

... he wasn't actually sane to start with, so I'm not sure how much difference it made overall.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

That's a universal consequence of using inappropriate measures to try to get out of doing work. Again, one does not follow on the other. If there is something complicated that it is vital you remember in detail(perhaps you've overheard an exchange of complicated pass-phrases, or a villain's itinerary, in the latter case especially if you don't know the named places), that spell may in fact be quite suitable; trying to get out of the work of studying by using it is a bad idea, but that's not the spell's fault.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I'd rather be mind-controlled than set on fire. Not so sure about STABBING NEEDLES OF AGONY vs being set on fire, though.

[rowyn]

Let's ask Raspberry and find out! I'm pretty sure she's had both done to her. n_n

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Your line of thought has public appeal, especially among primes, but that doesn't make it any less a slippery slope fallacy. Some people do have enough mental fortitude to not resort to dirty tricks, with Mentador or otherwise.

[rowyn]

Nice of Phaniet to pay for the Grace she stole. Maybe the evil not-cultists well be able to buy a replacement for their artifact. Eventually.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Phaniet is, evidently, the sort of person who will pay for a valuable resource when she steals it. I don't feel half so honest myself this month. And I really should do something about it.

[rowyn]

Would that be "teach yourself to follow Phaniet's example and be more honest" or "teach Phaniet to follow your example in being less honest"? >:)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Sythyry glances in the direction of Thenel, and sighs]

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that Quendry is saved.

SOMP is begging for a nendrai visit. Since that would be unethical on many angles, perhaps a more suitable response to mental violation would be the application of a magical blight on their mind-control crops. And maybe their wenezza for good measure ... say, turning it from a heat inducer to a cold inducer.

Re: Yay!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I would say that the wrongfolk gave as good as they got, or better, even if they did choose to pay lozens for the Grace. For my part, I don't want to encourage Vae to attack primes in any way. I am quite proud that my lessons are somewhat paying off -- she never destroyed Jinteros for killing her friends a few times, or attacking her, which I must say is quite the ethical point in her favor.

I personally might do something about Jinteros, if I can figure out how. But that is keeping the justice, or revenge, inside of our society. (Which is roughly what SOMP said -- they make their own justice, out on the Verticals.)

Re: Yay!

[rowyn]

SomePrime ought to do something about Jinteros. They're considerably more worrisome than SOMP, judging by respective behavior.

[bloofox.livejournal.com]

I was just happy to see the Thief Supreme!

And to see Quendry get better of course, too. Poor kid has a lot happen to him.