Status:Journeymage Shay Masters
Physical State: Lip slightly wounded
Mental State: Slightly drained
Magical Capacity: Brimming with Magic
Memory Storage:
x2 Pride (Learned Dragonfly Care)
x2 Pride (Ripped Off Merchant)
x4 Pride (Offered a Vassal)
x2 Shame (Purchased what you suspect are stolen goods)
x2 Flattering (Asked for help by important bone dwarf)
x2 Discovery Memories (New Pet)
Full Body Leather Armor (Worn, Enchanted: Flame Resistant, Enchanted: Weightless)
Bonemetal Mail Shirt (Worn)
Hooded Surgical Mage's Robes (Worn)
Bonemetal Crisis-Helm (Worn, Enchanted:
)
Utility Belt (Worn)
-Crossbow
-Pouches holding 35 Bolts
-Pouch holding 5 Bolts (Enchanted: Explosive)
-Pouch of 5 Rubber Dragonfly Darts
-Coon Fur Pouch holding 5 Bolts (Enchanted: Instant Load, Gift from admirer)
-Bonemetal Brute-Blade 'Shuhadaku' (Enchanted: Slay Human, Enchanted: Anti-Polearm)
-Grapple Hook with 25 Feet of Sturdy Line
Surgical Mage's Bag (Slung over shoulder on stick, Enchanted: Extra Space, Enchanted: Refrigerated)
-Surgeon's Knife Set (Enchanted: Self Sharpening, Enchanted: Painless)
-Surgical Forceps
-10 Bronze Needles
-5 Thick Spools of Unicorn Hair Thread
-12 Human sized doses of Slaver's Sand (Sedative)
-25 Human sized doses of Powdered Lust Thistle (Sedative)
-50 Medium sized wound doses of Beetle Casket Salve (Disinfectant)
-50 Doses of Memory Gum (Fuel for Secondary Magic)
-Jar of Green Kracken Vennom (Hemotoxin)
-Set of Steel Lockpicks (Not trained to use)
-Steel Bone Saw (Enchanted: Self Sharpening)
-Surgeon's 'Living' Cloth Wipe (Enchanted: Cloth consumes bodily fluids it absorbs to produce more of itself)
-Journeymage's Diploma from The Lower Fenwick Academy of Surgical Magic
-Final Letter from Brother Clancy
-Dunn's faded blue Mage's Robe
-Dunn's Spellbook
-Clean Quizroulan Cipher Scroll
-Marked Quizroulan Cipher Scroll
-Silver Bound Copy of The Royal Arts by Fenwick II
General Mage Skills:
Subschool of Memory Manipulation (20)
Extract Memory - Extracts the power from a specific memory, forming it into a drop of magic the size of a poker chip that mages use to barter with. Using this spell removes the chosen memory from memory storage, but dose not actually make you forget anything.
Consume Memories - Burns the power of one or more memories to learn a new spell from a specific subschool. The spell learned will relate to the memories burnt. The amount of memories that must be burnt to cast this spell is listed in parentheses () next to the subschools' name under the magic talents spoiler, and increases each time this spell is used for a given subschool. Using this spell removes the chosen memory from memory storage, but dose not actually make you forget anything.
Read Memories - Burns the power of one or more memories to learn a new spell from a book/scroll/ect. To learn a spell this way often requires memories of a specific type, such as memories related to medical practice to learn a new surgical spell for example. You may also have to meet other requirements as well, depending on the book or scroll you are using. Using this spell removes the chosen memory from memory storage, but dose not actually make you forget anything.
The School of Surgical Magic:
Subschool of Diagnostic Magic (15)
Diagnosis Target Area - Cast with a weapon in hand and target in mind. Choose the type of injury you wish to inflict (broken arm, crushed brain, pierced heart, ect), and the spell will highlight the area you should strike, while guiding your next shot or blow towards that area for a bonus to accuracy. Can be easily cast in the heat of battle.
Family Diagnosis - Cast with a visible target in mind. The spell will look into the deaths of the target's ancestors going back ten generations, and highlight on the target any bodypart or organ whose failure was the main cause of an ancestor's death. Deaths on the target's mothers side will be highlighted in red, deaths on the target's fathers side will be highlighted in green. This spell makes no effort to differentiate between violent deaths and natural causes.
Tumor Vision - As long as you maintain focus on the spell, all growths, tumors, moles, ect belonging to anybody in your field of view are highlighted in your vision. A simple benign mole is highlighted in white, and the color darkens as the growth becomes more and more serious; Terminal cancer is highlighted in pitch black.
Subschool of Body Manipulation (10)
Replenish Blood - Cast with a visible target in mind. Target's blood supply is restored to normal levels, and minor injuries to the target's major blood vessels are healed. Draining to cast, especially if cast on self.
Set Bones - Cast with a visible target in mind. Targets bones are returned to their normal position, and small breaks are repaired. Spell is painful enough to make most targets pass out. Trying to set more than two bones at once, or repairing large breaks, is very draining, perhaps dangerously so.
Subschool of Transmutation (10)
Reconfigure Blood - Cast with a target in mind. Target's bloodtype becomes AB+. Target's immune system is completely reset, rendering the target prone to infection, but also ensuring that any organ you might have just put into the target is not rejected. Very draining.
Mutate Abnormality - Cast with a target tumor, growth, or infection in mind. This spell extracts the power of a chosen memory within your memory storage, and converts it into a powerful beam of mutagenic energy to be focused on the target. The target will mutate rapidly for weeks, often gaining interesting magical qualities related to the memory used. This spell is often a death sentence for the person carrying the target tumor, growth, or infection, but can be used as a last resort on already terminal infections or tumors. Using this spell removes the chosen memory from memory storage, but dose not actually make you forget anything.
You purchase Tonic the Hunter's Dart Dragonfly, and as agreed the old centaur leads you out to a field just outside of town to give you a lesson. Unlike the falcons highborn girls keep back in Fenwick, giant dragonflies do not require protective gloves to handle as their feet are not their primary weapon. Your instructor first teaches you how to play with, wash, and feed the beast, as well as how to allow it to perch on your head or shoulder. She explains that Hunter's Dart Dragonflies are active at dawn and dusk in the wild, so until the beast is used to you and trusts you to provide its food, it is recommended that you keep an eye on it at those times, lest it wander off to hunt on its own. Otherwise it will typically conserve energy and stay wherever you leave it.
Next she teaches you the 'hover', 'roam', 'land', 'ready' and 'return' commands, which are all simple words spoken in a fey language. She explains that when 'roam'ing, Tonic will go after any prey that it thinks it can take without wandering too far from its master. She warns you to keep an eye out for Falcons while flying the bug, because although Tonic could easily kill one in a straight fight, a falcon in turn could kill your new pet by getting above it and divebombing to knock it out of the sky in one strike.
Lastly she hands you a pouch of five blunted throwing darts painted a bright crimson.
"While Tonic is under the ready' command, you throw darts in ta direction of the thing you want it to kill," the merchant explains,
"and if you would rather use another projectile, like a crossbow bolt, just paint it a bright red and the bug should be well smart enough to know it means the same ting as a dart."-4 Memories
+Blunted Dragonfly Dart x5
+New Pet: Tonic the Hunter's Dart Dragonfly
+Pride Memory x2
+Discovery Memory x2From the book merchant, you wind up purchasing the copy of
The Royal Arts, two Quizroulan Cipher Scrolls, and the cheaper copy of
The Progenitor Tomb. You give the latter item to Hershel, but quickly glance over the other texts for yourself.
The Marked Scroll is an artfully drawn portrait of a large dragon with a massive gaping maw. Inside this mouth is a 15x15 Block of characters, most of which are not from any language you understand. The scroll is marked in many places with cheap ink, forming text which is tough to understand; The languages used are based on elfish and human, and you understand both, but the handwriting is poor and in some sort of shorthand that combines both languages in dizzying fashion. In the end, you are only confident about the meaning of two of the notes. The first advises that the missing scales on the dragon's tail might be a messing in Lightning Binary, a visual language 'spoken' by bio-luminescent beings. The second legible clue is the first sentence of a short paragraph, which reads "showed scroll to Explorers Guild RE: Possibility that background is actually the view from one of the Dragon's Maw Mountains." Perhaps if you devoted some time to the scroll, you might be able to unravel more of its previous owner's hints.
The unmarked scroll is another beautiful piece of art, this time a diagram depicting the inner workings of a lock with parts labeled using characters you believe are derived from demonic runes. The border of the image appears to be a stretched out pentagram with seemingly random human characters contained within the triangle. You know such shapes are used by any magical practitioner who seeks to commune with other realms.
Lastly you leaf through
The Royal Arts, and confirm that the two learnable spells you have heard are contained within its pages are indeed present. They are easy to find, as the tome contains a table of contents. It might be wise to devote some time to giving the book a closer read, to see if any of its other spells match up with your needs and skill sets.
Spells Available from The Royal Arts:Intervention of the First Mages - Burn 10 Memories to call the spirit of one of the 12 Mighty Progenitors back to the mortal realm, using your body as a vessel. The spell will try to select the best Progenitor to match the motives and needs of your current situation. This spell, although insanely powerful, is typically seen as a desperation move as you have no control over what the Progenitor might do once it has your body; Typically Progenitors are charitable to mages who call on them, but they have been known to hold onto bodies for far longer than expected if they discover another cause that their individual values demand they pursue. Cost of Learning this Spell: (10 Memories Related to the Progenitor Faith OR 20 Memories Related to religion/history in general) + (10 Memories of Fear or Desperation) + (Any 10 Memories) This spell falls into the Memory Manipulation sub-school, which you are proficient in, as well as the Channeling Subschool (tied to the schools of Summoning and Hexes), which you are not yet proficient in.
Royal Hands - Select and Lay Hands on a target other than yourself to ease and treat any magical or mundane condition that visibly manifests itself on the exterior of the target's body. The power of this spell increases and the magic drain decreases based on the prestige of the caster's bloodline. This spell may not be used to treat a given target for a given condition more than once. Cost of Learning this Spell: (5 Memories related to the pratice of medicine) + (5 Memories related to pride in one's own family OR 5 Memories related to commanding others) This spell falls under the Subschool of Body Manipulation, which you are proficient in.
You can't help but be thrilled about picking up such a powerful spellbook at such a low price, even as you feel terrible about purchasing stolen goods.
-8 Memories
+Copper Bound Copy of the Progenitor Tome (Given to Hershel)
+Silver Bound Copy of The Royal Arts
+Quizroulan Cipher Scroll (Clean)
+Quizroulan Cipher Scroll (Marked)
+Pride Memory x2
+Shameful Memory x2Having finished your shopping, you once more pay a visit to Ambassador Purist Shatteredankle, who happily receives you for lunch. The conversation is awkward, as you are too proud to admit that you have forgotten much of your previous meeting on account of a would-be Centaur date-rapist, but you do manage to piece together some of what you failed to retain earlier.
Apparently the Bone Dwarf Government has little interest in meddling in human affairs; They view mankind as subjects of the Blackhoof Herd (whom they respect as a local power) and game for the Ogres (whom they consider brothers and sisters in faith). The humans that Bone Dwarves do trade with reside in the inland regions of Terminal Woods and send their caravans via the Dread Road, completely bypassing raider territory.
Purist, however, has lived in town for the better part of a decade. Having personally witnessed the rise of Cyrus, the ambassador admits that the slaver-lord offends him to the core. Although you can't figure out how to get the dwarf to give you specifics without risking what you wish to keep secret, you deduce that at your request he has written to the leaders of some of Snow-Skulls mercenary elements, explaining that there may be contracts to be had at Treasurecaves.
The ambassador, apparently, also has written to some of his young kinsfolk who may be looking to accomplish mighty deeds to attract the attention of the various Knightly and Spiritual orders within Bone Dwarf society.
After allowing you to try and pick away fragments of your previous discussion for some time, Purist abruptly turns the conversation to you.
"Last time, you told me you come from one of Fenwick's high houses. I know a mage would never be addressed by any title other than her Magely Rank, so I'm curious, do you have titles or land?"Pretty sure that you are dealing with yet another forigner attempting to marry a kid into Fenwick nobility, you decide that the truth is likely the best way to discourage that train of thought.
"I have a good number of older sibblings," you explain,
"so I didn't inherit much. I am Landlady of Verdant Tower, which is a residence hall on the Campus of The Wiffleton Academy of the Natural Magics, but all I get from that is a modest yearly payment for its use and an apartment there I can only legally reside in if I earn the title of High Mage.""I am also owner and portmaster of two docks at the harbor of Illstead, a city-state south of Fenwick where my maternal grandfather was brother of the king." you continue,
"Again, all I get from that is some money twice a year. If I ever owned a ship, I suppose I could commission it under the Illstead Flag without the usual taxes and paperwork.""Not much," the dwarf admits,
"but you are still a landed noble. Under human law, that means you can take on vassals, correct?"You blink. Vassals?
"Where are you going with this?""I think you might be able to help me with something..."Purist explains that he would like you to take on the service of his youngest daughter, Femuri, who is a soldier by trade. He explains that two years ago, Purist arranged for her to marry a wealthy widower, but shortly after the wedding she was caught in bed with her new step-daughter. The Ambassador explains that infidelity, homosexuality, and incest are all capital crimes in Bone Dwarf society.
"The legal bureaucracy that one must jump through to prosecute a highborn will protect my daughter for some time, but eventually she will be exposed and either executed or banished. There is a loophole we can use to save her, however: To avoid diplomatic incidents, those bound to a foreign power by marriage or servitude and residing away from Snow Skull cannot be tried for serious crimes."You wouldn't mind having a Champion at your beck and call, so you inquire about the girl's skills and abilities in more depth. Femuri is trained to fight with boomerangs and bladed chains while mounted upon a riding rat or blood bunny. Most of her weapons are enchanted in some way, including an ancient bladed boomerang carved from the metallic knucklebone of a Titanic Iron Troll. This artifact, Femuri's only real inheritance, is enchanted to return to thrower, cut through almost anything, and generate explosions on impact with structures made by mortal hands. She dosn't wear armor into battle, but as a Bone Dwarf she dosn't have to; Her kind can slowly recover from almost any injury, and can only truly be killed by old age, disease, some magics, and/or complete incineration of the skeleton.
In addition to her combat skills, Femuri has some experience in metal work, whittling, the protocol and ediquite of dwarfish high society, and the lore of the alpine and subterranean plants, animals, and Fungi near Snow Skull.
+Pride Memory x4
+Flattering Memory x2---
By the time you finish your meeting with Purist, evening has fallen. Now would be the time to seek out Stripe if you wish to attend the Hunter's Guild Party. Your new Dragonfly Tonic seems anxious... you were told this is the time of day his kind likes to search for food, so perhaps you could skip the shindig and bond with your new pet over some hunting of your own. A trip to the racetrack or a cozy night in with your books also sound appealing...
How do you proceed?
Author
Topic: (SG) Sawbones: Adventures of a High Fantasy Surgeon Mage (Read 5565 times)