Del felt as Raven was right behind him-caressing his shoulder, whispering into his ear. Watching his every move. Guiding his hand when he was slow.
It felt...good. He had a feeling this was a test...she obviously knew his first inclination would be to seek a Remove Curse spell. No doubt, she was ready for a quick betrayal. In a direct battle of wills, he wasn't sure if he could win when she had such a massive advantage...and he also knew, he'd really only have one chance to escape. So he had to very, very careful choosing that chance.
Maybe he was deluding himself-or it was the curse putting thoughts into himself-but Del decided to bide his time for now.
...In any case, Lady Raven said removing the curse would hurt...and he was inclined to believe her. He loved her, afte all. Why would she lie to him?
And there was always the reward she had promised. Any reward from her would be enough. He broke into a brisk jog, forgetting all his traitor thoughts (At least the surface ones), and heading back to the manor. Oh, how he longed to see and hold her again...
Action: Head back to Lady Ravens Manor
Nothing happens on your road back, but the rain abates slightly; you think you can make out the silhouette of Archmage's Tower now. Raven's butler greets you at the door, opening it moments before you can knock; he bows slightly and steps aside.
The house was still eerily silent, its inhabitants either sleeping or sitting in place, completely motionless. Raven, however, has gotten out of bed, where now lay a crooked wooden staff, and was now standing before a trio of big red-chested birds perched upon her window, her eyes closed. You hear her voice in your head:
Raven: "
The experiment in the tavern was only a backup plan; you will take the first seats in the City's demise. I- yes, I already talked to Him! Stop worrying so much. You will move out this full moon, just as planned. The experiment's failure will not affect your side of the battle, I promise."
The birds fly away and Raven turns around. She seems to be a lot warmer and more cheerful than she was when you last saw her. While before, she was distant and cold, an ice queen whose eyes glimmered with cruel beauty, now she resembles a young girl. The sparkles in her eyes play wonderfully as she chatters away, picking up the crooked staff from the bed and taking your hand to lead you out of the room:
Raven: "
Songbird! You're back already. Overheard my conversation, have you? I don't mind, really, but I'm afraid your gift will have to wait; right now, you and I have to clean up a few things. Now, follow me - no time to waste!"
You descend into the house's basement. Raven puts a hand onto one of the walls and mutters something, and the wall opens, revealing a dark passage beyond; she summons a wisp and puts it onto her staff like a lamp glowing with bluish-white light, and drags you further down the passage while chattering away:
Raven: "
You have no idea how big a burden you have helped lift from my heart, dear Songbird. Marie, this terrible woman... I wasn't sure whether she'd fulfill her part of the deal, or if she'd keep the contract so as to torment me further. I'm sure there was something about you that woke up her kindness!"
You can hardly believe the change in Raven. Where is that coldness that seeped from her words? [Perception: 1-1] You try to search Raven's tone for a single shred of cruelty or distant hatred, but see nothing except for that contagious glee she seems to be overcome with.
Raven: "
She and I have a long history, dear Songbird - a very long one, indeed. She was once a prodigy, a genius of her time... but her last expedition to the elven lands twenty years ago had robbed her of her family and ambitions, and me - of my freedom."
You reach a crossroads in the passage, and Raven takes the right-side path. [Perception: 4-1] The stone around you shows evidence of manual work: Earth Magic doesn't tend to leave rough edges behind.
Raven: "
I was an elf once, you see. My name was- no, it doesn't matter anymore; I like 'Raven' a lot more than that name. I have always wanted to learn magic, but in elven tribes, only shamans do, and shaman is a hereditary position. One day, a pair of half-starved, exhausted travelers, a man and a woman, wanders into our camp deep in the jungles of the New World; speaking in a weird dialect of elven language, they introduce themselves as mages and offer arcane aid in exchange for supplies and directions to the nearest elven ruin."
Raven: "
Our tribe's shaman was away on a spiritual journey, so we gladly accepted the trade... but only for supplies. Our superstitions said that whoever trespasses onto the ancient elves' land will be chased by the forest itself until the day of their death. In a way, that superstition was true - but I did not know that. I was young and foolish, barely in my thirties, and I accepted the travelers' offer: in exchange for my help guiding them through the forest, they would take me as an apprentice and teach me magic."
Raven: "
That was when we struck the magical contract you helped me break free from: it bound me to find whatever they ordered me to find and to guide them to that thing, whilst they would see to it that I am trained as an apprentice and become a Graduate in no more than ten years' time. I have failed to notice that my side of the contract has no time limit; you might understand the implications of that. Breaking or cheating your way out of the magical contract was impossible; if you did, your soul would be completely annihilated, not even leaving enough of yourself to go to the afterlife."
Raven: "
And so, having foolishly agreed to the terms, I led the two mages into the smallest, most poorly-protected elven ruin I could think of. Turns out, 'poorly-protected' wasn't poor enough: its guardian spirit has proven too powerful for the pair to defeat and Marie's husband had to cover our retreat. He didn't make it out of that place. Marie never stopped blaming me for his death - and for what happened next."
Raven's wisp goes out the moment she stops speaking, and she quickly snaps back into reality:
Raven: "
That's nothing serious, we're just passing under the Dormitories. Too much dragonbane in one place, and even ether starts disintegrating. Hold my hand and keep walking. Suffice it to say that we really were chased by a small forest's worth of angry nature spirits until we swam across the oceans and hid into the City. And even here, in this stone-cold place filled with atrocities against nature, the spirits kept nagging at us, trying to get into the City as animals, insects and even plants."
[Perception: 2-1] You don't notice anything other than the light going out; after a while of walking through the darkness with no sounds but the screeching of Raven's staff against the stone of the walls, you stop and Raven summons another wisp. The light illuminates a dead end before you, a wall of sandstone. The wall parts under Raven's eyes like butter under hot knife and reveals a darkened cellar beyond. You see pools of shining ether lying on the ground here and there: the wisps like that the Raven has used as light source, only this time in shape of someone's footprints.
Raven: "
My, my, somebody has put a lot of effort into recreating the crime scene. I'm afraid I can't let them get everything right, though. Songbird, there should be three untouched bottles of ale in here somewhere, labelled 'Reedflow, Summer 489 A.G.D.' in here. Find them all and bring them to me, will you? Just don't drink them: the enchantment on that ale is faulty and even its creator doesn't know what went wrong."
Raven: "
The poor folks in here have all gone mad and slaughtered each another after the barkeep brought it out... a messy business, very messy. Our cleaner, whose footprints you now see, spent almost an hour burning away the blood and flesh so that the enchantment doesn't get spread by the vermin. The Guard decided to have a look at the tavern before he finished the job, though, so I guess we'll need to pick up the slack."
She starts modifying the wisps of the glowing footprints, lengthening the tracks, creating more footprints leading into a different part of the wall. Hmm... clever. If someone tried to dig there, they'd only encounter solid stone instead of the tunnel.
[Looting: 2; 1; 3] You find one bottle of the Reedflow ale propped up against the wall next to the staircase upwards; the barkeep must have put it here in case the first bottle is too popular amongst the customers. You look around, but notice no other bottles; they must be somewhere deeper in the cellar.
[Perception: 6-1] You see something moving in the darkness. It looks like a human in a shabby coat.
A race of immortal, ageless creatures, elves differ from humankind radically in their culture and basic values. Whilst humans are driven by self-preservation and an urge to leave a mark in the world, elves don't have such 'mortal' values as their motivation: instead, they could be driven by hedonism, by the needs of their tribe or by some other ideal that they build their lives around
The 'hedonist' elves were an ancient race living on the continent of the New World hundreds - or thousands - of years before the Great Discovery. Little is known about them - only that the ruins of their cities are extremely well-defended, and that their society, corrupt to the heart, had destroyed itself from within at some point.
Historians hypothesize that the ancient elves brought ruin to themselves due to magic being too widespread in their society, bearing similarities to the Atlantha's demise.
The 'tribal' elves are the elves as everybody knows them today: innumerably huge, oft-overbreeding crowds of hunter-gatherers, regarding the survival of an individual incomprehensibly unimportant compared to the needs of the tribe.
Some tribes are more warlike than anothers: led by warlords, they wage war upon humans for cutting down the trees and freeing space for farmland. Like locust swarms with bows and spears, they flood the human lands and destroy everything in their wake, leaving no one alive and eating the corpses; only when the tribes' population was decreased five times, do they retreat back into their jungles to restore their numbers.
Due to the warlike elves' terrifying reputation, all elven tribes, even the most peaceful and reclusive ones, tend to be mistaken for bloodthirsty cannibals. The colonists of the New World regard them as little but an incredibly dangerous pest to be exterminated, which more and more tribes start recognizing as a threat to their integrity.
Some elves have managed to make it to the forests of the Old World sometime in the second century after the Great Discovery, and by now should be numerous enough to threaten the farmland and even the City.
Name: Del Vundi
Color: Light GreenHP: 100/100
Gender: Male
Bio: Del looks to be a medium height male, with bushy brown hair and blue eyes. He seems fairly well travelled-a heavy green cloak and hood covers his fit body, and he carries a roughly mended wooden hilt sword hung on his left hip, and a fiddle on his back. Has all the looks of a vagabond traveler.
Personality-wise, He seems to enjoy debate and wordplay-one could say he has a problem with talking too much, and not noticing his surroundings. Del is also something of a charmer-he always seem to have a flower and a song for a pretty lady.
Suppressed Desire: Love
Skills:Apprentice Earth Mage
Novice Fiddler
Known Spells:StompTraits:+1 Diplomacy
-1 Perception
Inventory:Heavy cloak with a green hood
Open-throated white shirt
Thick leather pants
High boots with wooden buckles
Tri-corner hat
Old sword
Hip-mounted sword sheath
Rucksack
Full waterskin
Runed fiddle and bowCursed Engagement RingOrnate Green Gloves1 Bottle of Reedflow, Summer 489 A.G.D100 gp
NOTE 1: Note that the 'preemptive counterattack' mechanism is pretty much the best defense in this game. When you are attacking someone and they are attacking yourself, your attack rolls will be opposed to each other; if both rolls are succesful, no damage is dealt to each of the opponents. This also applies to AoE attacks like a wall of fire.
NOTE 2: If you want to, you can use Spellcrafting to roll for Spell Components to add to some spell you already know. If you learn the spell from a book, you roll for Components automatically.
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Topic: Staggering Wizards RTD: Turn 7: Saving Lives of Rats and Renegades (Read 20996 times)