Low Estate/Turns/Turn 8

← Turn 7 • Turn 9 →

• Aernoud van Nevel (josh_g): forest wanderer — FATE ▢▢▢▢▢ • Stress ▢▢ • Consequences unused (2), unused (4), unused (6)
• Antheunis Opgieten (lpsmith): slippery urchin — FATE ▢▢▢▢▢ • Stress ▢▢ • Consequences unused (2), unused (4), unused (6)
• Boudin Verdonk (maga): bravo and expeditor — FATE ▢▢▢▢▢ • Stress ▢▢▢▢ • Consequences unused (2), unused (4), unused (6)
• Mattius Rothmann (Fang): brutish warmage — FATE ▢▢▢▢▢ • Stress ▢▢▢▢ • Consequences unused (2), unused (4), unused (6)
• Willem de Vos (Jota): student magician — FATE ▢▢▢▢▢ • Stress ▢▢ • Consequences unused (2), unused (4), unused (6)
• Lazer Dennis (Rob): manic-depressive man out of time — FATE ▢▢▢▢▢ • Stress ▢▢▢▢ • Consequences unused (2), unused (4), unused (6)

Wrapping up Act I

[Along with everything else, if you want to do some minor character tweaks before we get back into things -- shuffling skills or changing out unused aspects or renaming a primary aspect to something more appropriate -- feel free. This would also be a good time to join in if you are spectating or drop out if you are running out of time to play.]

You all spend the next week, along with your other more relaxation-oriented projects, picking through the items salvaged from the laboratory.

Willem does some experimenting with the wand, based on a few thoughts he had during his initial examination and some of the paperwork he found, and eventually determines it's sort of a dowsing rod for ley lines and areas of magical power: it can be used to determine their location and strength, with accuracy increasing with practice. He also reads up more on Lady Bellaire's invention -- although the scale model doesn't appear to be anywhere in the lab, there is enough information (measurements, incantations, detailed notes on her attempts to build the full-sized version, and so on) there for him to theoretically build one in the future, given a couple weeks to experiment in.

Aernoud reads through his salvaged notes and gains a great deal of amount of information about ley lines and places of power in the city itself. At least under Lady Bellaire's theories, some magical places tend to drift around over time, while others are stable (she theorizes some stuff about the difference having to do with alternate dimensions in which this energy is located and it bleeding through to this one in different ways based on the different way in which the dimensions are connected). Stable places tend to be associated with this-world physical phenomena, though the order of causation is unclear. She calls out a couple examples of this around the city: a particularly deep area of the harbor that is associated with Water; a glen in the forest that is associated with Life; the university catacombs being coincidentally (?) built on a place of Death; a line of Fortune that passes through the commercial district and moves around continuously, touching some merchants one week and moving on to their neighbors the next.

Antheunis examines the geode he rescued from the lab. It's a pretty, sparkling thing on the inside, despite the plain exterior, and it would probably sell for a reasonable sum, but nothing like the kind of money the orphanage needs. Whether it has any magical properties or not is unclear -- there's nothing in Lady Bellaire's notes to say where she got it from or what it is. He also locates a secluded inlet in the harbor, for who knows what purpose.

Lazer pokes around seemingly aimlessly, as he does, and manages to discover a secret passage from the other side of the lab leading back into a spiderwebby cellar of the main orphanage building. Later on, he has a middle-of-the-night realization about What It All Means, which vanishes like smoke when he tries to put it down, but that's not to say it's wrong.

Boudin splits his time between the streets and high society, looking for connections. Gang fighting continues, and in general the rest of the city is sticking to a "wait until the dust settles" sort of approach. There's some muttering among the nobility that the Duchess should step in before it turns into rebellion, but other nobles seem content to let things burn themselves out down there as long as it doesn't touch the rest of the city. In general, the nobility are at this point less interested in the fighting than in the masquerade ball Lord Laurent de Koningh is throwing next week.

Back with Sister Marianne

A week or two after the first meeting, you're back in Sister Marianne's parlor, talking about what you've discovered (or at least as much as you want to share). "Gracious!" she says. "And to think that laboratory was hidden down there all this time! Well, we had better keep it closed off -- I would hate for any of the younger children to get into trouble down there."

"I do appreciate the extra guard patrols, however you managed that -- it makes me feel much safer when they stop by once a day to see how we're doing, and I'm sure Maldeghem has been forced to act more cautiously than he otherwise would. But I still don't understand what he wants from the orphanage, or how we can raise the money he's asking for. Do you think he was trying to find the laboratory? If we just gave him everything you found there, do you think he would be satisfied?"

Aernoud frowns. "This doesn't fit. Why would a brute like Maldeghem care about a research lab, even if it does involve magical power?" He turns to Boudin. "You've got connections - is there any way you could be introduced to this man? I'm good at staying out of sight, perhaps I could follow and duck into whatever rat hole he lurks in. You could ask him some careful questions, which he probably won't answer, but then I'll stay behind in the dark and listen in on his reaction once you've left. Antheunis, perhaps you could come with me?"

"Oh, totally," Antheunis replies. "We need to figure out a lot more about the situation before we can figure out what we need to do. I'm with you!"

(josh: assuming Boudin likes the plan... actually I don't know what else to say so here's my Stealth roll: @2d6+3 )

The Grotto and the Genie

Antheunis gets Willem to teach him how to say 'Go, I release you' in whatever that ancient language was, then takes the lamp (and Willem and I guess anyone else who's interested) to the secluded beach. He carefully sets the lamp down in the sand and sun and opens it, then retreats to the water, where he sits cross-legged, submerged to his chest, facing the lamp. Hopefully, this setting will be more condusive to a reasonable discussion than the highly-charged original situation in the laboratory. He is interested in finding out, in roughly this order: whether the djinn is satisfied with his current lamp situation, and if not, what could be done about it; what the djinn can tell him about his (Antheunis's) mother, if anything (what kind of creature she must have been, if nothing else); what kinds of tasks the djinn would be able and willing to perform.

It's a little tricky to communicate with the djinn, even with practice; when it speaks it speaks in poetry, and when Antheunis communicates with it more elementally he gets (what seems to him to be) mostly a sequence of images. On the other hand, it seems to understand you better than it can speak to you, and you manage to work out some information.

It appears that djinn are like barnacles in that they have a free-floating phase of their life and then a tethered phase, so being in the lamp is not problematic as such. On the other hand, the djinn doesn't seem to like the climate here and (you think) would really like to be somewhere warmer and drier.

This djinn seems to have some power over wind and sand, over poetry and music, over sun and shadow. Also over camels, but that probably isn't much help. You get the sense there are two ways to get it to do things: either you can bribe it with incense or wine or flowers or jewels or other things it likes, or you can command it (which would be a Resolve roll) (though you (Antheunis) can't command it, because it's one of those things you have to be a pure Child of Man to do).

Finally, in terms of Antheunis's mother, there's a brief, suggestive image of a woman standing in the water up to her waist, wearing only a damp white shift. She's cradling a baby in her arms, and as you watch, she kisses the baby, places it in a basket floating next to her, and the current takes the basket out into the water.

Antheunis's eyes get misty at the image of his mother, and he thanks the djinn [did he get a name from any of that?] and tries to release him back into the lamp. Which might be a bit tricky, him not being a Child of Man and all. If that doesn't work, hopefully Willem was around and can do it instead.

When he gets back to the city, he spends a little time poking around at the various obscure shops he knows, looking for things that might interest the djinn. (He's a Savvy Street Rat, but I dunno what skill to use here, or if I need a skill at all. If it's Community, I'll just find the stuff and get someone else to haggle for me.

← Turn 7 • Turn 9 →