Details of a Betrayal [18 Lage 4385]

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Zascalle hugged Ochirion to her chest, and snarled at me defiantly.

Zascalle: “You are here with terrible weapons at the ready! Would you kill the boy you worked so hard to heal, Sythyry?”

Me: “Great staring gods!” They were staring at us, too; that’s easy to see from Ketheria sometimes. “You are using your own child as a meat shield.”

Zascalle: “You have befouled and corrupted every other defense I had!”

La Hish: “Oddly, I do not feel befouled or even corrupted. I feel relieved that a certain minor problem of the last few months will be resolved.”

Me: “Zascalle. First of all, I want my money back.” Anyone with half a magic sense could tell I was carrying enough enchanted weaponry to run a whole duel-war, and then another. Direct threats were, thankfully, unnecessary.

Zascalle threw her purse at my feet. It landed with a dull amberish clunk; it was heavier than I was, and mostly with coins.

Me: “A good start. Next, the greater part of the theft — my missing bank accounts. Start with the one that pays the bills for Castle Wrong, where some thirty or forty of your friends — they are your friends, are they not? — still reside, and hope to reside for a long time more.”

Zascalle: “I can’t do it from here. I need to get to Trunk’s Amber.”

Me: “You shall write down letters, instructions, account numbers. Saza’s accountant and the banks of Oorah Thrassen will confirm that you have done it properly. Also, you shall give me all of your private notes and accountings — do not look so innocent, Zascalle, your degree of innocence has already been established. I know you have kept records of your deeds.”

It would have been extremely reassuring to use a truthspell on her, to know that the tiny, neatly-printed slips of paper she took out of the heel of her boots were complete and correct rather than yet another ruse within a ruse. I could have done it … but I was rather too squeamish. I was fairly sure I would have to kill or maim her in front of her children, but I wasn’t willing to read her mind. I hope this will be counted a virtue.

Me: “A good start. Care to explain all the details?”

She did not much care to explain, but she did. She had been trickling money out of my accounts for a long while, and then pouring, and then gushing, and then, for the last few days, when she panicked and knew that she must flee with her children from Vae, deluging. It was getting scattered around eighteen banks and suchlike up and down the main trunk. Inter-branch banking is a fairly new matter, with very confusing laws and customs governing it differently everywhere. So, Exempleia has strict laws of privacy of customers, which are well-motivated and utterly sensible. Egeia has strict laws preventing fraud, also well-motivated and sensible, but when money comes from Exempleia, Egeian banks cannot apply those laws very well, so they don’t try. Zascalle tracked down a number of such anomalies, and took advantage of them.

Five of the accounts are easier for me than the others: I am officially the one who owns them, pursuant to the laws of those city-states, though Zascalle has full rights to use them. Now that I actually know about them, I am going to toss one of them at Castle Wrong and another at Strayway, for short-term expenses, and use two of the others to pay off the bribes I owe the wizards of Oorah Thrassen.

The other fifteen parts will take a while to untangle. Untangling will be much easier with Zascalle alive and cooperative. My fortune, or at least my convenience, is held hostage for her life. to

I will say, I was sufficiently annoyed to consider killing her anyhow. But that seemed ungracious, as she had been (approximately) cooperative at that point.

Comments

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Did she say what caused her to start? Was it simply because she could and the she wasn't sufficiently upright to resist the temptation?

The other thing is that you're probably lucky she panicked. If she had just taken the accounts and left the cashbox alone, she would have had a far larger headstart before you noticed her absense and would have likely gotten away.

It's almost like the melodrama villain who is done in because they tried to grab one jewel too much from the treasure room.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Oh, she needed the cash to start her trip -- to pay for the skyboat passage, the spellbreaking, and all that.

I suppose she could have kept trickling money out of my accounts and I would never have noticed, though. It may be a tradition among my accountants for all I know -- I must figure out how to get some reliable auditing.

She didn't say why she started, perhaps because her motivation there was not as cogent as her motivation for taking everything.

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you need to come up with a pocket universe spell suitable for graciously imprisoning people in until you can retrieve them.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder if this might backfire on Zascalle, where Ochirion is concerned. Perhaps not now, perhaps not for years - but when things were tense, you were entirely decent and reasonable and did not want to do her, much less her children, unnecessary harm(even if in her case it was partly expediency and partly not wanting to upset her children unduly).

She, on the other hand, pulled him close, so that if you were to do something unpleasant to her, you might have to go through him first. Given that the most effective magic (for complexity) is that which affects a single target, and that you are mighty in Corpador(which has all manner of inventive ways to afflict a target without being nearly so flashy and prone to collateral damage as Pyrador), this grandiose gesture was not only cruel to her child, but also stupid. If she'd really been concerned for his welfare, she'd have pushed him toward Thiane, who due to her cooperation seemed a little more likely to survive any impending retribution. She wasn't; she was concerned for hers, above her child's.

Leaving her largely unmolested as incentive to keep cooperating was likely a good decision. But as an alternate, I think she could have also used a reminder that fine Corpador magic is not so indiscriminate as a three-handed sword.

Mharreff unhelpfully suggests Eyes of the Drill of Pain. For the squeamish(either because of the Mentador or because of the pain, I'm not certain), he offers alternate suggestions of Become a Wudgeon, Hideous Diminution, Needle in the Heart, or an Itchy variant of Deadly Berry. Or something akin to Ravages of the Disintegrating Flesh, which is getting into serious enough offensive magic that it has a bit more of a chance to be on serious enchantments already - harmful, but precise enough to A) not catch a child in its effect and B) likely leave the target still alive afterwards(at least more likely than some other spells of that magnitude).

Oh, and he also suggests billing her for the cley for any such spells that aren't cast from enchantments, just to make a point. Tack it onto whatever accounting there turns out to be of how much she's cost you.

Speaking of which - perhaps your half-sibling could recommend suitable auditors? A yearly audit - especially when it's not from the same auditor twice in a row - might go a long way to discourage this sort of chicanery in any future accountants. Kantele might also have some notion of who would be suitable. So, for that matter, might your bankers in Vheshrame. Long-term solutions, but thinking to the future is rarely a bad thing - I'd guess this is especially so for Zi Ri?

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem like it should be that hard to imprison a non-mage for a short while. Cr Ru Su Lo [Co][Hr] - not a simple spell, but likely well under Sythyry's maximum in the relevant arts. The verbs and Locador make the pocket universe and put the target in it, and I'm not sure if Ruloc would help move it so that its point of attachment is always handy for the caster, or if accessing it from a distance would require mightier Locador; CrSu and the optional nouns for furnishing it and, perhaps, giving it a larder. I should think Sythyry is able to cast such a spell that would shut someone up tight for a few days.

On a simpler level, Nowhere Prison (Cr[Su]Lo 15) is stated as having the victim not lack for the essentials of life - but even the sustained version lasts only minutes. Bumping the duration a few orders - minutes to hours to days - hmmm, I'd guess another 15 there(one step is listed as typically 5-10 complexity) while keeping Sustenoc. To ensure the victim doesn't starve, though, might require pairing it with a suitable CrSuHr cantrip to make some nonperishable biscuits or the like - bland but nourishing fare - and an additional 10-15 complexity. Still, it seems likely that the resulting spell would still be around cplx 50 or less - serious sorcery, but nothing zie hasn't already surpassed.

Imprisoning a Locador mage would of course be more difficult.

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Well, I think the keyword here is *graciously* imprisoning them. Particularly since the kids may or may not have to be tucked along with them for the moment. More sort of 'nowhere protective custody' than a 'nowhere prison', perhaps.

I would, of course, suggest imprisoning her in her own mind, but SBCL gets disturbed when I suggest a vast array of highly useful Mentador spells for some reason.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Being locked in solitary confinment for extended periods is basically a form of torture though.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

The problem is that you have to rely on the person being auditted to produce the information that needs to be auditted. What she really needs is better control system. No one person should have been able to move that large an amount of money without Sythyry noticing them doing so.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

If they produce the wrong information, the auditor will catch it, in theory. That's the point, after all. Money that went into your accounts came from somewhere, money that left went somewhere, and those are independantly verifiable.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure torture as a punishment is socially acceptable in Veshrame.

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Well, I suspect at this point Saza, La High, and Nangbang are probably all thinking about double checking on their own finances. Just in case.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

All they can verify is that the amounts in the given accounts matches what the records say should be in those accounts. They can't determine if the account are missing money not recorded in the records or if there's money in accounts not mentioned.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Yes, but does Sythyry want to torture Zascalle?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Yes they can. It's harder, but possible. They're probably not going to unless the numbers look suspicious, but if Sythyry has zir own records or memory of how much each enchantment sold for, for example, there's a starting point.

They can also ask the banks about transactions, and get independant records for those -- that in particular sounds like it would have caught all of Zascalle's manipulation.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

They can also ask the banks about transactions, and get independant records for those -- that in particular sounds like it would have caught all of Zascalle's manipulation.

That assumes the money ever made it to the bank. Suppose Sythyry gets paid 13,200 lozen for a really pricey enchantment. Evil accountant could deposit 12,300 lozen and stick the remaining $9,000 in her own private off the book account.

When the account is audited a year later, the records match the bank ammount perfectly. And is Sythyry likely to notice the slight difference?

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Not that I think that qualifies as "really pricey" for an enchantment, but - that's why the audit looks at the *whole process*. If Sythyry has records saying how much zie got paid for each enchantment, that 900 Lz is not going to vanish so easily as that.

Any one step in the chain is subject to falsification, but that's not how an audit works. Income, outgo, and current status of accounts are all examined.

This does require keeping independent records, but that's good for other reasons too (e.g. accidental destruction of records).

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Yes, but does Sythyry have those records? And more importantly, was someone other than Zascalle keeping them? That what I meant by she needs better control systems.

The problem was that Zascalle was basically serving in ALL the financial positions for Sythyry, so we'd be trying to audit one set of records produced by Zascalle with another set of records also produced by Zascalle. Since one person is keeping all the records, it's trivial for them to just modify them to match whatever the current situation is without their embezzlement being obvious.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Exactly what part of "long-term solutions" and "looking to the future" was so hard to understand? I was talking about putting systems in place to ensure this doesn't happen again, not to change the past.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

One possible arranement:

Phaniet - responsible for recieving orders for enchantments, emitting bills, collecting payment, and making transfers to the treasurer. Keeps copies of all these records and sends summary details to the internal auditor.

Kantele - responsible for purchasing all supplies for the straway, paying for them, and reciving transfers from the treasurer. Keeps copies of all these records and sends summary details to the interal auditor.

Treasurer (zascalle's replacement) - Deposits and withdraws money from the bank and manages investments. Keeps copies of all these records and sends summary details to internal auditor. For added security, while this person makes all deposits and withdrawals, this person cannot authorize a withdrawal.

Internal auditor (new position) - Keeps all summary records and approves bank withdrawals (e.g. when treasurer ask to withdraw money, the auditor determines if something you approved Kantele to purchase or someone you approved the treasurer to give money to).

This system would require two people to conspire to get money out of the bank without permission and require four to conspire to do so in away that isn't imediately obvious in an external audit. However it requires you to get an additional employee and also puts more record keeping duties on Phaniet and Kantele.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Pocket dimensions are pretty gentle prisons. The Co and Hr are what I suggested adding to make the place reasonably comfortable, by way of furniture and food. If what is made is very specific, always the same whenever the spell is cast, it might not even need to be quite as complex for that part(compare the simple Cr Il spells - the cantrips make a specific image, the cplx 10 equivalent lets the caster choose the image). The Ruloc might even allow you to shove some other stuff in there with them - existing reading material, for instance - and such a prison could hold several people as easily as one, so long as none of them are magically deft enough to breach it. (The kids aren't. Zascalle isn't. Thiane has been described as a fair hand at sorcery, but not capable of enough Magiador to sever arcane connections herself - if she is, in general, not much of a deep-mage, she probably wouldn't be able to either, especially considering the power Sythyry would have in such a cast.)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Yes. Also no.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I don't have those records. I'm not really hoping to get every lozen back, or every thousand lozens really -- even ignoring bank fees and bribes. But arranging things so that I am harder to steal from in the future would probably be wise.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Long-term solutions, but thinking to the future is rarely a bad thing - I'd guess this is especially so for Zi Ri?

We ought to think of it, and sometimes we do. I personally seem to think of the moment at least as easily -- e.g. the last several times I slithered into bed with somebody.

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

Unhelpfully? Oh come now, he even made you a prioritised list of alternatives! Clearly, he is the helpful. Also I approve of his choices.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

"Unhelpful" in that "even if Sythyry can cast the spell[zie can] and has it[much more dubious], zie is not likely to want to brandish Mentador around anyone". I personally think Drill of Pain is a very effective choice, with the benefit of doing no lasting or physical harm - even in worst case, the pain fades by the next morning, and isn't so extreme as to leave long-lasting debilitation beyond that - what's unhelpful is that it doesn't consider the sensibilities of Sythyry and those around zir.

Oh, yes. He also suggests that Become a Wudgeon is best accompanied by giving thetarget to a Sleeth to play with for a time. Best to be very careful in your instructions if you want said subject back in one piece - and pick a Sleeth who doesn't eat sentients to begin with.