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[IronyOwl]

Update 5: Dealing With Devils


You finally collapse into the dirt, panting heavily and clutching your stomach with one hand. The exertion has somehow made you feel better, at least.

"Gimme her stuff," you pant out crudely. Perhaps the affliction has affected your gentle demeanor. "I have been heinously wronged, and only vast recompense could possibly mend the immense harm unduly forced upon me by malicious actors."

Your stepfather rubs his chin for a moment.

"I could give you a candy," the hag offers.

"I don't want your cursed candies!" you shout, beating on the ground with one fist. "I want riches! Jewels! Forbidden knowledge! Something to make up for being forced into cannibalism or harlotry by this, this... this!!!" You point accusingly at the crone, staring at your stepfather.

"I could give you a pony?" your father hazards.

"So it could get eaten by hogs?" you return acidly. Your father beams in delight, much to your confusion and alarm.

"That's it! A hog!" Your alarm deepens.

"What?!"

"A warboar, to ride into battle! It's perfect!"

"What?! I don't want a filthy pig! I've been maimed, you should give me... something else!"

"Trust me, you'll love it!"

"I don't trust you at all!" you shout, before taking a moment to cough. All this yelling has damaged your delicate throat. Or maybe that's the foul curse placed upon you by a wicked witch.

"Gurdy what do you know about taming hogs?"

"The hungeeeeeeeer~"

You take a few deep breaths, still lying in the dirt in a miserable hick village surrounded by insane peasants. Prying compensation from your aggressors seems to have failed. You are cursed, ragged, and miserable. Deep breaths, and a different approach.

"I found an architect," you mention conversationally, picking yourself up off the ground and sauntering as neutrally as possible towards your cur of a stepfather and that... thing he keeps around.

"A what?"

You take another deep breath, trying very hard not to scream. "You know, a man who designs buildings as a trade, so that workers may construct them with the proper procedures and planning. I thought that might be of use to you, as you intended your new structure to be solid and grand."

"Oh! Yeah, yeah, an architect! I hadn't thought of that, you really found one?"

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. "Several, actually. I'm waiting to hear from a friend on which of them are available, at which point I'll be able to select the best."

"That's amazing!" your stepfather beams. "I knew this was a good idea!"

You clear your throat, in part to avoid sneering too badly. "I have also located several laborers, if you have not yet made a selection."

"Actually, we've been busy, so we hadn't gotten around to that yet! Who'd you find?"

You bite back a comment on what he's been doing all this time, and instead relay to him the information you acquired on the rougher, riskier crew, the numerous peasants, and the actual masons. He seems duly impressed at your ability to locate laborers in a town devoted to housing laborers, and boasts of how well this 'plan' of his is progressing.


You should then turn your attentions to materials, but you can't quite bring yourself to continue being productive. Your strange cramps, appeased by chasing a madwoman like a feral dog, start to rise again, and you have a... backup backup plan to attend to.

The town's cemetery isn't terribly noteworthy, and you see no immediate signs of fresh corpses. The gravekeeper is suspiciously nice and old, and calmly explains that the last buryable death was about a week ago, when a hapless peasant was subjected to equipment normally reserved for sawing logs. He mentions without prompting where the unfortunate was buried, so... if you get desperate for moldering corpses, you have that.

You then spend a while just wandering the graveyard, trying very hard to convince yourself you have it better than those dwelling here. This is made progressively more difficult by the increasing hunger and its associated symptoms, which finally crescendos in a rising wave of tension and pain bad enough to make you scream.

You also feel your limbs and face harden and lengthen in a grotesque transformation.

A desperate, wailing scrabble to the gravekeeper's hut and the full-length mirror the old man keeps around confirms that you are now a hideous ghoul. The change isn't so bad that you can't pass for human among peasants, but your delicate flesh and features have been slightly hardened. For someone in your position, this blow to your marriageability is likely ruinous.

You spring with alarming speed back to where you last saw that hideous witch, your new form apparently granting impressive stamina. You're still winded by the time you find the charlatans arguing with a merchant, but it's still a very quick trip.

"YOU!" you bellow at the hag. She gives her 'Meeeeeeee?' shrug and smile, which very nearly prompts you to roar in animalistic fury and charge her like a common beast.

Instead you stalk forward as calmly as you can manage, grab her by the shoulders, and shake her vigorously. "I know you have a cure for this! FIX ME DAMN YOU!"

"The pri-i-ice i-is grea-ea-t," she says, giving no other indication that she minds being shaken out like a rug.

"Price!? What about this price?!" you shriek, unable to gesture to your face without putting her down.

"Fi-i-ind me-e-e a-a sa-acri-ifici-i-a-al-l i-ite-em." You finally tire and drop her, doubling over to pant and swoon a bit.

"Sacri... for what..." you pant.

"The deeeeeeemoooooooon~" she says, wiggling her fingers ominously. You sway a bit harder, trying to find a reason to keep on your feet.

"What about the... demon..."

"The deeeeeeeeemon~" she says, wiggling her fingers again. Your stepfather and his goons continue arguing with the merchant while all this is going on.

You sigh in defeat. Two weeks after your mother married a charlatan and crook, her youngest daughter was hideously transformed by a witch, then pushed into a diabolical pact, all while living in a hog-infested rock. She was promised a pig as recompense.

So now what.


Deal With The Devil (choose 1):
A. All In: You've got nothing left, which is usually when people become involved with diabolism. Go all in with this demon business, whatever it is.
B. Necessary Evil: You need to stop transforming into a flesheating harlot ghoul, and if a demon can somehow do that you don't have much choice. But only do what is necessary to stop and- you hope it's possible- reverse your transformation.
C. Half Measures: You don't need a demon, you need a substitution for unspeakable acts. There has to be a way to flirt with evil without actually forging a demonic pact or whatever this old bat intends.
D. Third Option: You don't know what the hag is up to, but you bet there's a way to be more clever about it than she is. See if you can wriggle your way around this problem, rather than plunging headfirst into her crazy scheme.
E. No.: As a general rule, solving problems caused by insane cultists with vile magic using those same insane cultists wielding the same vile magic is a recipe for disaster. You will not be doing anything demonic, thank you very much.

Toll (pick any number, and write in any number of elements for each option):
A. A Use For That Pig: You think heathen sacrifices are supposed to involve killing animals, so you should probably find (or name and force your worthless stepfather to go fetch) and animal to be the sacrifice. Which animal? You're not a heathen, so you have no idea.
B. King's Ransom: A sacrifice is basically paying the demon, right? So you should give it something valuable to it does a good job. What do demons value? You have no idea, so you'll blindly guess material wealth like everyone else. Maybe you could give it some coins or gems or something?
C. High Art: If you have to pick a thing to sacrifice, it's probably symbolic somehow, so you should pick something that... matches what you want. What you want to happen or the type of demon you want or...? You don't know and none of these jackasses will tell you, so... you'll have to guess and hope something nice happens.
D. Abstract Art: Don't demons care about intangible things? Tricking maidens into giving up their purity, being banished by selfless acts, that kind of thing? Maybe you can sacrifice something intangible, like... the memory of a sunrise, or your burning hatred for your whore of a mother, or... something? Probably not your maidenhood, since preserving that's what got you into this mess in the first place.
E. See You In Hell: You don't care. You're sick of this hag's shell games, you'll throw whatever's on hand into the pit and see what happens. A pebble, a fistful of dirt, a random object grabbed from the crone or her conspirators, if there's no way to plan a good end for this you might as well just get on with it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Exile Alicia Denrose Nithrilium Addoir-Tarkon
Terrible Health, Unholy Vitality
Shattered And Then Ground Into A Fine Dust Morale
-
10+1 Diplomacy
 10 Conversation
  41+3 Seduction
 10+1 Court Manners
  36 Flattery
0 Administration
 0 Organization
  1 Bookkeeping
10 Intrigue
 10 Sneaking
  11 Eavesdropping
 10 Coercion
  11 Torture
10 Knowledge
 10 Sorcery
  11 Vile Sorcery
-
Stitched Cornflower Blue Tight Silk Dress [+1 Court Manners, +3 Seduction]
Fine Copper Turquoise Necklace [+1 Diplomacy]

[RAM]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I have a vision of her extremely reluctantly and with great irritation consuming a monstrous horde in an inferno born of her sustained and determined disgruntles glare from atop a demonic boar the size of a cow with an axe as heavy as a cavalry lance slung over her shoulder. It continues with her returning to a rural village that promptly sings her praises, and she can't help but second guess her actions, as the horde's plan to pillage and raze the entire country seems like something that would entirely improve the surrounding environment. It appears, from where I can see it, to be somewhat glorious...

Just... tolerating this doesn't seem to be an option, even with our indomitable sensibilities. Come now, we dabbled in such magic to impress that ever-so-distant prince. We must have heard of something, anything pertinent... One magic consuming another? We'd be lucky if anyone of holy alignment in the county is worth anything. They'd likely regard "holy water" as a fluid that puts holes in one's memory and celebrates the following morning by granting a favourable disposition towards advancing from their mortal coil... Consorting with demonic magic is one of the many things that we would avoid if we could. Any fairy-magic we could hope to encounter has no doubt been eaten by pigs...

The breaking of curses perhaps? No, if our true love is amongst these vermin than a kiss would most likely be fatal and the mere thought of a "happily ever after" would rightly eradicate our sanity. Running off to a convent? Enticing, but there are nearer means of ending one's life. Naked dances under the moon? Let's file that under "eaten by boars". Slaying a dragon and devouring its still-beating heart falls afoul of multiple critical shortages and fails to clear us of having to eat the most unsightly of things... Perhaps we could deceive the curse? It really is quite plausible that such rabble would be selling their neighbours as pork. We simply need find the local purveyor of salted meats whose home address lies nearest whatever passes for a mortuary and allow our ever-flowing optimism to take a brief constitutional...

Or... Ghouls are a corruption of life into a thing that drains the life of others to account for its own shortage? So an infusion of purity and life ought to repel it? Even if pregnancy in such a setting were conceivable, it would take entirely far too much time. A swim in some clear spring surrounded by wildlife(while being eaten by boars)? Perhaps some act of profound righteousness? These people are all living in squalor, no doubt there is someone near-at-hand who can be rescued from some dire plight by the virtue of our mighty, umm... well we have no shortage of wit and charm, not that those appear so much in most of the classic heroisms... but they should be plenty to save someone from whatever counts as a tragedy in these parts!

Ideally we would recall something of value from our occult studies...

D: Third option

Still, if we must pay a price...
D. Abstract Art: They always claim that firstborn babies are of value, what of neverborn step-siblings? We just need a heavy, blunt instrument and something to distract our stepfather.
Well there must be something that a refined young lady can afford? The hag is too quick and would see us coming... This curse is rather important at present, though they can likely smell that it is importance is owed to how much we would be rid of it. We will rather need our beauty for when we escape this madness. Our ability to bend the minds of others? Or at least turn the eyes of men... Well it is hardly something that we would wish to actually succeed at in this wasteland, but it is clearly an invaluable talent and the locals ought to be most easy to turn when subjected to the skills of proper nobility.

Meh, they will probably appreciate an act of vileness. Let's just take whatever chance we have to steal something from our father or his companions and sacrifice whatever hideous trinket it might be...

P.S.
 If my voluminous ways are distressing to anyone, please do not hesitate to speak up! I could tone it down or enjoy a respite for a time. I worry that my excesses may be intruding too much upon the space that should be devoted to the author's narrative, or that the weight of material might inconvenience other contributions.

[ZBridges]

B. Necessary Evil

A. A Use For That Pig: (Pig/boar).
D. Abstract Art: (The Hunger).

[RAM]

Bump of great optimism!