(Thank you for your support. It means a lot. ^^)
Aww... your Luckamancy was a little more split this round. Still, some interesting stuff happened!
Turn 2
Vi leans back against the wall. The nice cool stone contrasting wonderfully with the otherwise warm day. She closes her eyes, ears perking up and listening. Anything interesting to butt in on or watch?
{_} You cock your ears around, and set your eyes to rove over the crowd. Now that you've got a better chance to look around, you notice that your new shady spot seems to primarily overlook a crafts and tools part of the marketplace; walking-sticks, lodestones, pouches and the like, with the addition of an active blacksmithing stall dealing in nails by the barrel with hammers to match, among other sturdy-looking ironware.
Meh, not much of it interests you right now. What you're
really looking for is some kind of juicy gossip to spy on...
"...Toby's gonna sell his cheap liqour again tonight, just like always, the shmuck. So he wants us to go smash up his stock before that."
Hm?
"So his place is in the northwest end, right?" a second man's voice asks.
"Yeah, wax-ears. The one with the fenced-in lawn and the sign that's
right on the front door, like I just told ya," the first responds gruffly.
Your eyebrow lifts steadily. The voices are coming from inside the building you're leaning against right now...
"Alright, alright... so we'll meet back there in a half hour."
"And bring your clubs. But Mr. Rengal said no killin' or nothin' -- just make this punk sorry he's undercutting his prices."
"Wait, do we get a bonus if we find out where he's getting it all from?" a third, younger-sounding voice cuts in.
A pause. "Good thinking... we'll see, I guess. For now, let's be off."
"Right," the other two respond.
Footsteps on wooden planks reaches your ears. Frowning, you smoothly slink away to the corner of the structure, just as the door creaks open and three tough-looking fellows with brawny arms and workman's clothes step out into the light, then melt into the market crowds. You flinch back when one glances from side to side, but he keeps on walking in step with the others.
Curious, you look above the entranceway to the shop, and see a hanging signpost with a picture of a scissors and straight razor, and the words: "Buckley's Barbery".
((I am now a masochistic bounty hunter who lost his wife and his family disowned him. Bring it on.))
Gee, those stars are pricks. Well, there's got to be a better way to do this...
Jadan stood up and tried to get a good look at the others in the tavern, but stopped. It'd be fancy to find at least one man that wasn't a drunkard, but all things considered with the current crisis, everyone must be drinking their heads off.
Maybe I have to act on that memory somehow before I can continue.
Recall the memory (If I can. Just remember it, no sacrifice needed.) See if I can remember what the guard looked like, then head to the cemetery and see if I can find him. If I can't, try to find him at the militia quarters, and ask if anyone's gone missing if I can't find him there.
{_} You try, your eyebrows knitting together in focus, but the details of your vision elude you. All you can remember is that you saw someone, a guard judging by their attire, working through the night. Doing what? Guarding the gates? Enforcing curfew? There's just... nothing else there in your mind but fog, damnable fog. Annoyed, you drum your fingers on the edge of the table. Seems you'll have to figure this out the old-fashioned way.
You rise from your seat without a sound, leaving the bottles for the establishment's staff to clean up. Pulling your cloak tight around you, you make a beeline for the exit, ignoring the sounds of conversation in the room as you pass.
The oaken double-doors to the building swing open at your touch, and almost immediately a gentle breeze catches your face. As you step over the threshold, you wonder where to go first. You do still want to figure out what's so curious about that vision...
{_} Finally, you decide to make for the cemetery. Perhaps there would be guards stationed there during the night to ward off vandals and grave robbers.
Your walk to the west gate is uneventful, but once you arrive, you are greeted by two of the town militia standing guard before the open portal to the outside. One, a stocky fellow with short brown hair and wearing a green padded vest, approaches you with his hand held out in signal to halt.
You don't even sigh. Your mouth opens automatically, prepared to deliver your rote explanation for leaving town -- when suddenly the guard freezes, his neutral expression darkening to one of stark, wide-eyed horror, and his hand rises to point somewhere over your shoulder.
"S-sir, behind you!
Look out!"
Webley wipes the sweat from his brow and looks out the window. With the marketplace being as busy as ever, Webley decides that now is a great time to get some food, especially since it's likely that he has been forgotten about for lunch. Or he ignored the call for it. Oh well. If he hadn't broken the chest yet, then he might just need a bit of a walk to clear his head (which had been throbbing a bit) and food to fill his stomach.
Before he leaves, he takes out his pocketwatch and opens it, taking note of the time and the picture within. His headache dulls a bit as he recalls the time the photograph had been taken. It wasn't anything special, really, but it always sticks out as a fond memory even so. He puts the watch away.
With that, Webley leaves the chest behind and goes out for a walk to find food.
((Time to get myself involved in something big.))
You step back, shaking your head slowly. This is all a bit much to handle at the moment... Deciding it wouldn't hurt to leave the shop closed a little while longer, you head for the door, undo the latch, and step outside. Hopefully some lunch will clear your head. The door automatically re-locks behind you, and a sign reading "CLOSED" slides into place in the middle of the frame; another rather useful and ingenious mechanism you had devised some time ago.
"
There you are, sir! I-I've been waiting for hours!"
The sudden voice catches you off guard before you even take two steps from the door. You whirl around, and find yourself eyes-to-legs with...
"I-I know it's probably not convenient for you, sir, but there's a certain timepiece I'd
really like commissioned
now, if possible, i-it's for a very important experiment of mine, you see..." the man belts out rapidly, and is still talking by the time you register his slightly red-tinged complexion, and mouth full of disjointed teeth running a mile a minute. His black hair is wild and unkempt, looking like he hasn't gone outside in days. Your nose wrinkles. He certainly smells like it, too.
"...and those are all the specifications I can think of now, but if you could be open to changes, I'd
very much appreciate it!" he finally finishes, leaving you staring at him, dumbstruck, while the normal clamour of the busy marketplace goes on around you.
My satchel was heavy with the fruit of my search deep into the earth's bowels. Corpses would do for this experiment. Unfortunately an intact body was impossible to lift with my physique. I offered Big Boy Jim his weight in gold if he could lift it but he cried some nonsense about violating the dead. Thinking about it, that foolish leviathan must have alerted the guards in the first place. So, I had to borrow the butcher's blade and make the corpses more... portable.
I unloaded the satchel onto my worktable, scattering rotten arms and legs all over. The miasma almost made me choke, even though my mask. There must pestilence afoot - the vile fog at the edge of town must be infecting the ground and intruding within the coffins. I swear I have seen the corpses of this graveyard dance and sing under the moonlight, but perhaps that was the result of those recreational herbs I partook in a few nights past. Either way, I suspected a plague would not be long for us.
I extracted the bones from the flesh and crushed them in my mortar and pestle. Bone dust. What could I create from this? A healing balm? No... A poison to strike at those fools on the council. Hah, what I would give to see the look on their faces...
I was just about finished with the bone dust grenades when I heard a great clamor from outside. What was that racket? Who walks the cemetery at night other than I? Only bandits, bucketmen, and bastards. I grabbed at the nearest weapon (The pick I used to crack the earth? The shovel I used to break the seal on the tombs? The butcher's blade that I divided the corpses with?) and went outside, calling out for whomever was cowardly enough to clothe themselves in the darkness to show themselves!
I squinted. Dear Lord, was the moonlight bright! Wait. Was it day already?
Ophelia works on making a grenade from crushed bone dust. She then hears a noise (Webley on his stroll, Jadan investigating the cemetery, or something else entirely) and leaves her shack, threatening the source of the noise with the nearest available weapon.
Feeling particularly vengeful at the moment, you already know what your first experiment is going to be. Within a minute you have your equipment laid out and ready for work.
{_} You manage to scrounge up just enough bonemeal from your remaining stocks to work with. Good thing, too, because grinding it up from scratch takes a lot of time and effort, and about the only other alternative is melting it down via acids and filtering out the calcium from there. Within minutes, you have...
Firebloom Grenade acquired!
Huh. You wound up not needing the bonemeal after all. Ah, well... it'll certainly prove useful for further experiments. Your work complete, you lift your newly-created implement of destruction
very carefully off your workbench, and place it in a readily accessible pouch of your clothes. You just hope you got the powdered Redtail Crystal to Yhagoro's Wort ratio right...
Now that you mention it, the info you got from the foreign memories
was a little unspecific. Maybe you're just slipping? Still, you pad over to the one window you have at the front end of your abode, gently poking open the curtains.
{_} Ah, the fog is still out there. You smile beneath your mask. At least it helped keep out most of the damnably bright afternoon sun. It makes it much easier to see the... man... walking... ...What?
You blink. You're just barely able to make out the form of a cloaked figure, a man judging by their gait, walking slowly down the road towards Harker's Ford's open west gate. Normally that wouldn't be so strange; there are plentiful reports of missing persons who wander off into the fog and get lost these days. Some of them are found, some... are not. Or it could just be one of the local militia out on patrol. Still, there's something about him... maybe the way he moves...? it just feels... strange.
Rachael walks slowly in a large, wobbly circle. She can't believe what she just did. She just defied the laws of the universe and brought a flower back to life using just her willpower. She could feel the energy coming from her and seeping into the plant. It was fantastic; it revealed a whole sky of possibilities for her. Could she do the same with animals, perhaps humans? How often could she do it?
She stops in her tracks and looks at her hands. She was still shaking from the realization of her new power. One of her goals in life was to study the art of medicine and to help as many people as possible. With this power, she might be further along than she had anticipated. She looks back to the flower and admires its aura of energy. I really can do it, Rachael thinks to herself. I can make a difference.
She looks all around her, noticing the fog. Examine the fog. Does it appear like normal fog, or is there something different about it? How long has it been here? How long have I been standing in the fog? Does it affect me to keep standing in the fog?
Examine!
{_} Your glance becomes a long stare. For all the fogbank's size and how well it occludes the landscape, it just doesn't quite...
seem like fog. You do notice that there's a noticeable sheen of moisture over your skin and clothes like you might expect; fog
is essentially a cloud of water vapor, after all.
But if that's true, then the grassy turf beneath your feet should be covered in moisture as well. Condensation should be dripping off the water mill almost like rain. You should
hear droplets of water falling to the ground. Yet there's hardly any of that registering in your senses. It doesn't even
smell that thick, now that you think about it.
((Well this is a very nice twist 
Though I'm partly wishful that it seems the only skill that can 'level up' is given to our healer and not for everyone else. Also, if I overshoot, does my bonus (ie If '5', then '5+1') improve the effect rather than 'make it horribly worse? Asking in general and not in 'GM moments of hilarity and fun'))
A curious phenomenon. Insight in self-doubt of memory; how intriguing. What is this source, and why is it external? I need a way to mark my memories. Thank you Socrates' Labyrinth.
Amelia smiled as wit came to her. She was trained and was personally trained in noticing when a sudden moment of 'AHA' presented itself, no matter how wily or strange the conclusion came to be--she could reverse and deconstruct that thinking in mere seconds. But the thought that the fog was connected to something, or may even be a cause, was something of value.
Was it an airborne vapor? A liquid in the mist? A pheromone? Many curious ideas came to mind, but priorities at hand, she needed to retrieve her journal back at the Inn. Though...she wondered if she had one in the first place.
To the Adventurer's Guild with haste! I need to gather my belongings and probably find a long staff of some sort, for reach and such.
{_} Deciding it would be best to at least start with proper materials for research in the absence of a clear reference point, you begin making your way west, back along the wooden bridge and into Harker's Ford proper. To your north, the calls of merchants and criers filter through the alleys and spaces between houses. Recalling that the inn -- or guild, however the owner runs it -- lies south, you continue past the market, looking around for any sign of the place in which you are currently staying.
Even in the midday sun, however, finding such a large and easily recognizable building is quite a bit trickier than you hoped. Since you can't really see it from the road due to other buildings and decorative trees standing in the way, you are forced to rely on guesswork to try and find the correct side path. This leads to quite a bit of fruitless plodding past houses, workshop lean-tos and small vegetable gardens.
Time/Environment: It is a bright and early afternoon, and only partly cloudy.
Character Status:Location: On the shady outside of a structure called "Buckley's Barbery" in the marketplace, near a handful of tools, ironware, and crafts stalls.
Abilities: Confers +1 to all speech- or persuasion-related rolls. You are also more adept at spotting opportunities for interesting conversation and spotting tells and mannerisms. However, you must make an additional roll to avoid becoming 'locked' in conversation whenever you enter one, due to your almost preternatural desire for talk. Should you become 'locked', any attempt to disengage from conversation on your own initiative must pass a roll. You incur a -1 penalty on the roll to avoid becoming conversation-locked if you have not spoken to anyone for multiple turns in a row, but this penalty only applies for the first such roll.
Location: Amidst the buildings on the south side of Harker's Ford.
Abilities: With your mind spurred by the enormous breadth of new possibilities unlocked by discovering the Veil, your innate will to strive for perfection in all things academical has risen to the fore, allowing you to constantly process new details about the world around you at an alarming rate. Your attention to detail coupled with mental fortitude lets you notice details many would give up on; however, this comes at the cost of it being very difficult for you to trust anything that you haven't had a chance to thoroughly examine yourself.
You gain +1 to all rolls involving tracking, observation, research, or looking for hidden clues. This bonus even applies to searching through the Veil for new memories and information, but not for assimilating entirely new abilities. However, when attempting to use most unfamiliar items, devices, or recipes you have not properly researched or looked over to satisfy your scientist's curiosity, any roll above 3 (Meager success) is automatically reduced to 3.
Location: Standing at the open western gate to Harker's Ford (on the inside).
Abilities: You may spend a full turn to attempt a reading of the Veil, sorting through the myriad memories within specifically for those that occurred during the night. You must select a subject to match this reading: The movements of a single person over the course of a turn, monitoring an area to look for memories created by those who passed through it, whether anyone has entered a certain house or not, etc.
To prove your faith and devotion and activate this power, you must also make a minor sacrifice, typically either wounding yourself (roll to determine the severity of the damage), destroying an item of value to you, or becoming wounded in honorable combat (challenging a worthy opponent and not trying to run away, for example). As long as your memory of this sacrifice remains fresh, you may attempt a reading of the Veil in a turn after it with no penalty -- and even "accumulate" these sacrifices to potentially strengthen the effect or broaden your search.
Location: Near the water mill, between Harker's Ford and the few farms on its southeastern outskirts.
Abilities: At will, you may channel your energies into a living being by touching them directly in order to drastically accelerate their natural healing process. This allows you to not only heal most minor to moderate wounds on living beings, but also revive dried-out flowers and other plants. Consistently rolling 5's when healing living beings can result in skill increases.
Location: Inside her shack, at the cemetery on the western outskirts of Harker's Ford. Looking out her north window towards the road.
Items: Alchemist's Satchel, Firebloom Grenade.
Abilities: You may choose to create any of three different types of items listed below. The item produced will always be random, unless you opt to try and produce one with specifically desired effects from scratch -- this will incur a -2 penalty to your ability roll, as your excitement over your newfound bursting-at-the-seams knowledge of alchemy makes it very difficult to focus on any one variety of item.
Potion - Produce a fluid potion to carry in a bottle, flask, or other receptacle. You may select a helpful or harmful variety.
Application - Produce a topical oil, ointment, powder or other substance to carry in a jar, tin, or similar container. You may select whether it will apply to people, or to items.
Grenade/Bomb - Produce a volatile substance contained in a jar, ball, or similar object. Grenades and bombs may only be harmful.
Location: Just outside their watchmaking shop near the marketplace of Harker's Ford, currently being accosted by a strange man about a commission.
Items: Keepsake pocketwatch.
Abilities: After realizing that the Veil surrounding Harker's Ford does not behave quite like real fog, you have learned to literally meld parts of your body with it and thus gain some of its unique properties, among them the ability to phase effortlessly through most solid matter. Any intangible body part is immune to physical damage and attacks, but also cannot be part of any physical attack or other overt action. You will still be able to feel physical objects if you will it, but you cannot interact with them -- no reaching through a wall to grab an object on the other side.
Using this power in an area with low to no Veil concentration (where you can't see much if any of the blue fog) only allows you to turn certain parts of yourself intangible, such as your limbs and head, and "intangiating" anything but just your hands at once carries a -1 roll penalty. You may "retangiate" an intangible body part at will, thus returning it back to normal. It is not recommended to do this with any part of your body phased into solid matter.
However, you may turn parts of yourself intangible without a penalty if you are standing right amongst the Veil, and may even turn your entire body intangible to pass straight through solid walls -- but doing so requires intense concentration, and is done at a -1 penalty. Merging your whole body with the Veil makes it very difficult to focus on anything else; every turn you spend this way, you must pass a roll to avoid short-term memory loss, on top of any such rolls you may already be rolling. Failing this roll prevents you from "retangiating" that turn, and can also carry all the problems involved in getting lost amidst the Veil.
Locations:Harker’s Ford: A quaint but rapidly-growing medieval hamlet that lies astride a small river and the new land trade route connecting... actually, you can't remember the name of the nation. What you do know is that close to 700 people currently live here, and that number has steadily been growing as its prime location makes it a popular stop for travelers. The river Tearsfall runs partially through it from the north and creates its south border, the main road runs right through the center, whilst the west and north are mostly covered by forest. A palisade wall hewn out of trees from the nearby forest rings the town on all sides, with gates opening up on the west, east, and north ends. The blue fog blanketing the region seems to be far less prevalent within the town.
Webley has a shop that doubles as his home here.
1) The Adventurer's Guild: A large three-story boarding house/inn for travelers coming along the main road, located between it and the bulk of town. The front door leads into a common room where ale and food are served.
Jadan, Amelia, Vi and
Rachael each have rooms at the Adventurer's Guild.
2) Market: An ambling line of market stalls with a few permanent shops covering the space primarily around the east and south sides of the central town square. It is also one of the few places in town where the Veil seems to be almost non-existent.
3) Town hall: The center of local government for Harker's Ford. Jiles Harker himself sits on the council here along with a small committee of aldermen.
4) Harker's shack: The residence of Jiles Harker, founder of Harker's Ford. Technically a clean and well-kept log cabin, but so small and spartan that it may as well be a shack.
5) Militia drill ground: A flat square of ground on the east side of town across the river, enclosed by the palisade. Includes the town's emergency armory, though most of the guards in Harker's Ford keep their own gear in their homes.
6) Cemetery: A pair of hillocks and mostly flat ground makes up the primary resting place of the less fortunate near Harker's Ford, sitting just outside the west gate.
Ophelia lives in a nearby lean-to shack using part of one of the hillocks as support.
The Wilderness: This is a region of old growth forest about a hundred meters off from the edge of town. You can’t even remember its name, if it even had one to begin with. When viewed from the town’s edge, it looks as though the fog that’s been steadily creeping in around and through Harker’s Ford is particularly thick beneath the tree canopy.
The River Tearsfall: A fair-sized body of slowly running water which covers much of the town’s eastern edge. A large wooden bridge, simply referred to as "The Span" by some inhabitants of Harker's Ford, marks the quickest and most direct way over, and is completely enclosed by the town's palisade walls. Still, you could probably swim across without too much trouble, as long as you're careful. The river snakes north and disappears behind the wall of trees marking the Wilderness' edge.
The river owes its name to a local legend surrounding three men who became lost amidst the caves and rocks of the mountains lying far to the north of what is today Harker's Ford. When they finally managed to find their way through and emerge into the sun, they wept so openly at the sight that their tears created the river Tearsfall, ever flowing with joy down from the mountains.
The Road: All you can really remember of this particularly large cobblestone thoroughfare running along the south edge of Harker’s Ford is that it was designed as a trade route, though you have no idea where to or from. The road is fairly busy; you can typically see at least three traveling parties of some description heading along it every day, though lately, most of them seem to divert off the road and wind up in town. A path on the east side of town diverges south for about a day's journey towards a nearby keep overlooking the region, but you can remember even less about that.
GM Notes: Phew. Finally got it done. Sorry about the wait! If I missed anything or made any mistakes, please let me know.
Author
Topic: The Veil of Memories [Remake] (dead) (Read 11082 times)