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[omada]

Less drunk now so I will say it in better words

we headed east but we aren't on oriental lands yet

we are just a few miles away still inside the area of effect from the plague.

We are still on the "ocidental country"

[Devastator]

Wait, did we vote to go away from the plague?

[Liquefied Spleens]

Update delayed. I don't have the will for it after dealing with a meeting that lasted twice as long as it should have.

[omada]

Wait, did we vote to go away from the plague?

Right. We're heading to the east. Going through the economic hub of the continent isn't likely to end well with all this plague business. We'll find a bordertown in half a day's walk, I figure.

Yes

[Devastator]

Dang it, this is the epitomine of a die tired situation.  Running away will just guarantee everyone dies.

[omada]

there was one vote to the tower (mine)
to go north and two votes to go east and leave... so...

just came back to put this trope here, I think it is closer to Sidney getting sick of assholes and doing even a war crime (using biological weapons) while doing good to the others

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KnightInSourArmor

[Liquefied Spleens]

Oh would you look at that.
I am... Who do you think is going the burning?
I think it's "who cares". From the country of "not our problem". Let's just go around, shall we?
We're just going to leave them there?
You turn to him, and without changing your expression from pure deadpan, you say Yes. . The party looks at you for a small moment, before either shrugging or looking at the ground. Not the most popular option, but they put you in charge and there's more apathy than indignation.
It takes a little while to properly go around, as the tilled fields are hard to traverse, but you figured that you'd prefer the remains of a fence between you and the arsonists in there. Besides, you might be able to take along a little food if you're lucky. Your undead cat is already on the prowl for any sort of bird that is too slow to get away. As it stands, the crows seem a little fat... It doesn't take long before your proud hunter snags one, plays with it for about a minute as you all keep moving, and then lets it go when it remembers it doesn't need to eat any more. The bird is a little injured, but could still fly. The going isn't as fast as it could be, as everybody is doing their best not to look at the burning town in ways that aren't brief glimpses. At one point, you see a burning figure get on the field, and you hear the screams echo on the wind. Hal doesn't say a word before nocking an arrow and firing. A full second later, the arrow hits the poor figure, hopefully ending that particular brand of pure unimaginable torture.
We can't keep ignoring this.
We can, and we will. Look, Hal, look at it like this. If the plague hits you, you're dead. We can fight monsters, but we can't fight germs.
...Shit. I get it but...
I don't like it either. Just shut up and keep moving.

We're going to need something to protect ourselves long-term, against this plague.
I know.
And it's likely to be everywhere in no time. Even if it isn't in the east, they have enough infighting to make sure people will intentionally spread it.
I know.
We need a place to go. Do we even have a destination other than "East?"
No. I know the name of ONE place, and I know bits and pieces of the Eastern languages. The one they use to trade, at least.
What are we doing if we've no plan? Or are you looking for a cure here?
I don't know anything about this plague. No more than you do. If we can fix it, fine, but there are others people than us out there. We're not even the big fish, you know. We're an above average group, if I really had to make a gander.
Considering the people I've seen? Yeah, we're just above average, if that. Best if we don't get too full of ourselves.
Still, we can't exactly hope this problem will go away on its own. I don't think the world has been kind enough to allow that.
...Can't help but agree.
I don't. Things... Things will get better.
Yunikki the optimist. That's a new one. A few people are staring at her, clearly getting that this isn't a regular occurance. Except Francine, who just smirks at her. Or maybe it's a genuine smile, you're not sure. You just don't trust that lady.
Exactly! There aren't enough people that follow that. Things always get better. Not always fast, but things have rarely turned incorrigibly bad. People are good at making the best out of a bad situation.
Neat idea. Mind telling that to the rest of the world? Because things have been pretty god-damn negative in the last century.
Has it, now? Well, they'll get over it. If they won't, the children will.
Hm.

The talk was distracting enough. You all reach the road again and keep travelling, leaving the burning city behind you. You can't quite see if the figures are humanoid or not, most are wearing cloaks from the look of things. Sure is a lot of excited jumping, though. Or maybe that's just the flickering flames causing a visual effect on the figures. Either way, it's probably best that you decided against making it your problem.
The traveling continues, though the talk is a bit more muted. Nobody's quite sure what to make of the burning town. Purgings, raiding, or a plain old case of getting rid of delapidated buildings? A careless baker, perhaps? Who knows. Again, it's not your problem.
The road continues for a while longer, and it doesn't take long before the weather starts getting hot. Soon enough, you'll have to get used to arid heat and long stretches of bloody nothing. Still, it won't be too hard to survive. The east thrives off the waterways, and there's a massive web of rivers and lakes spread throughout these varying deserts. You've got rocks, sand, even a long stretch of literally nothing but grass. Inedible grass, mind you. It's considered the most frustrating place on earth, provided you are also a cow or perhaps a goat. Sheep are cool with it.
Well, it's the first few steps, and there's even a border. You see a collection of armed guards on the other side of a barricade made up of rocks and proper building material where applicable.
HALT! Do ANY of you carry the plague?
We've been avoiding it like the... uh, Plague. No need to worry here.
The driders may come up, but the rest will undergo a scan from our Gondi. Driders, climb up here with the guards. We are keeping you under close watch.
...This seems strange.
And yet, here we are. Now get up here, paraaya.

Comply
No need to get tough with border patrol...

How about we just go around, instead.
This barricade can't last forever, and nobody ever died from a little dehydration in a desert, right?

Reason with them
You'd rather not be seperated. Or, at least, you'd prefer having Francine tied up if you have to split from the rest for a bit.

Get tough with border patrol.
Enter a new county, establish dominance by stabbing a dude. Foolproof!

Other


Basic Stats

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 13
60/60
Stress: 25/70
Poison stings: 1/1
Restraint 3/3
Mana: 50/50
Corruption: 5/10
Thirst: Sated

Children
Adam 8/8
Alice 9/9
Cactus 10/10

Items and equipment

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Items:
450 gold coins
14 outfits
1 fancy outfit
Magic Cookbook.
10 rations
Equipment:
Bone scimitar
First Tome of Eternal Darkness
D-VA armor

Skills and spells

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 14 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Control Undead: Allows you to attempt to control an undead that doesn't belong to you. (mana cost of 2 per second, unmastered)
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Disintegrate undead: Delete a corpse you currently control.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 0 mana)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (1 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (9 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (9 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs zero mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (4 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (1 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (1 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (4 Mana)
Pinworks: You can apply spells into a bone spike, relative to the size of the victim. You can also make traps if you use an offensive spell.

Companions
Tom(cat)
Pidgeotto (Pigeon)

Skills:
Claws: Your arm has been replaced with a powerful claw. This is BOUND to you, and cannot be removed.
Pride: You have a mind-controlling leech in your arm. This is so mindblowingly unethical/illegal it would put you in "kill on sight" status with a lot of organisations/people.
Broodmother: Once per day, you can sting something to create spiderlings, which are large, clever spiders that adore you by default. Your instincts cause you to be VERY protective of them.
Crossbow usage: Novice
Adaptation: You regenerate mana faster than most
Gun usage: Novice
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining: Can drain blood using fangs.
Major experience in blocking and swordplay.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent 
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent. 
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer

Gotta say, I didn't expect this amount of talk on the plague. I expected a bit, sure, but not to this extent. I'm happy about that, considering this plague is most certainly not going to be background fluff.

[Devastator]

(Not our problem?  I mean, really?  It's everyone's problem.  I wanted to go around because we didn't have a solution, not because it isn't our problem.)

I would have voted for a direction if I knew what direction was towards the problem, isntead of away from it.  I just saw the cardinal directions up for vote and I had no idea what any of them actually meant.

Don't be seperated, but make it adamantly clear that we're avoiding the plague, because we have experts, and we intend to do everything in our power to help people.  We went to the edge because we can possibly do something here, instead of being in a tiny locked room with broken glassware and zombies pounding on the door.

(I wish it were background fluff.  Generally, my experience of high-magic worlds has been utter boredrom, as it throws away all meaningful shared elements of existance, which leaves it with people arguing about who is having sex with whom and what nightclub to go to next.)

[Egan_BW]

The problem, I gather, is everywhere.
And STILL not our problem. Seriously, what are we gonna do about it?

No need to get tough with the border guard. Unless there is a need. If there is a need Alexia can handle it, quite frankly.

[Devastator]

There's lots we can do about it.  The difficulty is that we can probably fairly easily prevent a few dozen or hundred or thousand people from dying, more than that is going to be very difficult.  IOW, we should be able to save plenty of people, but saving the world is going to be very challenging.

[omada]

Yes, I know, but we are in the east now, we should solve our problems fast, with luck we maybe we can return to the west like a gandalf, with a bunch of dumb drider clones thinking we are their mother or big sister to clean portion of the cities without fear of screwing our friends by contagious, and become a big fish.

reason with them, say that we don't desire to be too far from our friends because there isn't something called "too much precaution" as they are having, and we don't know the uniforms, say that we are here to gather volunteers and support

[Liquefied Spleens]

Can't we stay together? We've been very careful about the plague, haven't even met anybody.
Find that hard to believe. Our scout says the closest village was completely contaminated.
We decided against going through a burning town. It really only makes sense.
Fine. You may stay close, but you will not be placed with the Gondi. Your presence could throw off his magic.
Fair enough.
The guard yells something in his own language. Get kholen, khokhale!
You don't understand it, it must be native. Still, a large wooden gate is opened. When you and the group enter, you see the people on the ground are the blue driders. They look eerily like you, all of them, though you're obviously bigger. Not to mention the rather unusual arm, to say the least. They all look at the group with empty stares, which is profoundly unnerving.
Follow the one with the hat into the chamber there. Go in one by one, and don't try anything!

It's kind of odd that the driders are separated by hats, to be honest. You guess they aren't really made to be "people", and they sure don't look like they're intelligent enough to complain. Again, considering these are likely your half-brothers and sisters, it's very unnerving. You end up before a an odd tower, with a strange mix of a bulb and a swirl for a roof. The drider with the hat says something that sounds rehearsed, though the monotone makes it hard to tell.
Please enter only one at a time. Not following this rule will cause you and your companions to be shot and killed.
Simple enough. The first one to enter is Hal, and you hear some murmuring on the inside, the curtain that makes up the door blocking most noise. After a very short amount of time, however, Hal leaves again.
Clean as a whistle. Who would have thought.
I'll go in next, I suppose.
Leave the sample here. It's likely to detect it.
You... wouldn't have thought of that, would you? Welp, alright, that's one good thing she's done. It doesn't make up for all the rest. Sucy enters, and you hear some louder murmuring, along with something high-pitched. Then, Sucy comes back out at a higher speed than Hal did, and with a telltale grin on her face, showing off her sharp chompers again. A small, dark-skinned man is quick to follow, wearing nothing but an odd loincloth and looking outright malnourished. He's babbling something in a language you don't understand. It's so rapid you can hardly even catch the tone of it, but he seems very agitated. Finally, he pushes her, points at her while saying some more words with a tone of finality, and then stomps back into his tent.
What was that about?
I may have forgotten to turn off one part of my defences. It means he looked a bit farther than he should have, though. Reading thoughts shouldn't be done, especially not mine.
Privacy aside, why "especially" not yours?
She just smiles at Hal again, no teeth. It looks like a genuine, laid-back sort of smile, but considering what you've come to expect from her, it's unnerving. It's her eyes, mainly, they're kind of... dull? It's hard to explain. Yunikki went in during this interaction, and it takes a little longer than before. Eventually, she comes back out with a steel expression on her face, and the small man has his hand on her back. He walks over to you with solemn expression on his face, and then hands you a pouch with some strange pods inside.
Ah, an opiate. Dragon's breath, I believe call it? Powerful stuff, from the east. I imported that a few times during my research.
Why did he give it to us?
Because I'm a freak when I get too excited. Just keep it around until I get fixed.
...right. So, that was everybody, right?
Yes. That's about it. Now what?
The drider with the hat comes up to your party and says some more in his droning, monotone voice.
There will be a final baggage check, and then you can be on your way. There is a city half an hour's travel. One can see the mirror-tower from here.
He points in the direction of the road, and you can see a glint coming in and out of view. Looks like they make the cities easy to find using a big tower and mirrors. Handy.

Of course, the baggage check might be a problem. You have an alchemist with you that has enough poison on her to kill a country, if you had to guess. Not to mention a sample of the plague they would prefer to keep out.

Maybe you should take a precaution of some sort?

Basic Stats

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 13
Health: 60/60
Stress: 25/70
Poison stings: 1/1
Restraint 3/3
Mana: 50/50
Corruption: 5/10
Thirst: Sated

Children
Adam 8/8
Alice 9/9
Cactus 10/10

Items and equipment

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Items:
450 gold coins
14 outfits
1 fancy outfit
Magic Cookbook.
10 rations
Equipment:
Bone scimitar
First Tome of Eternal Darkness
D-VA armor

Skills and spells

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 14 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Control Undead: Allows you to attempt to control an undead that doesn't belong to you. (mana cost of 2 per second, unmastered)
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Disintegrate undead: Delete a corpse you currently control.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 0 mana)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (1 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (9 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (9 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs zero mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (4 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (1 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (1 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (4 Mana)
Pinworks: You can apply spells into a bone spike, relative to the size of the victim. You can also make traps if you use an offensive spell.

Companions
Tom(cat)
Pidgeotto (Pigeon)

Skills:
Claws: Your arm has been replaced with a powerful claw. This is BOUND to you, and cannot be removed.
Pride: You have a mind-controlling leech in your arm. This is so mindblowingly unethical/illegal it would put you in "kill on sight" status with a lot of organisations/people.
Broodmother: Once per day, you can sting something to create spiderlings, which are large, clever spiders that adore you by default. Your instincts cause you to be VERY protective of them.
Crossbow usage: Novice
Adaptation: You regenerate mana faster than most
Gun usage: Novice
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining: Can drain blood using fangs.
Major experience in blocking and swordplay.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent 
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent. 
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer

I'd like to make it clear that the increased magic will not affect most things. It's mostly an explanation/extension for some of the slightly more weird (and still incredibly rare) parts. like, for instance, a dragon existing at all. Their combination of size, flying and breathing fire was just a bit past the allowed horsecrap. We can accept driders and dogpeople, but not quite that. People won't be growing turnips out of their nostrils or anything like that. Not to mention transforming something just takes up a lot of magic. The plague needs it to work as fast as it does. Transforming more than ten people or so would have one reach the rare example of background magic running out.

[Egan_BW]

What is Sucy, exactly? Just a human with pointy teeth?

[Liquefied Spleens]

What is Sucy, exactly? Just a human with pointy teeth?

Sucy from Little Witch Academia, ripped off and made far more morally ambiguous. Though, in my defence, she wasn't intended as a character that sticks around. I just found her too fun to write to not have her stay around. I do quite a few references to things, some more blatant than others.

Clarification 2: Yes, she is a human with pointy teeth.

[Egan_BW]

This does not answer my question very well, because I don't watch that. :v

Is human?