You lower yourself into a bow, briefly considering just murdering the wizard off the bat. Instead you opt to play things more cautiously and feign obedience for the time being. The wizard seems satisfied that his spell has worked and issues a series of commands to obey every order to the letter, to make no attempt to betray or kill him et cetera - you get the feeling this is fairly standard practice. He picks up the sword and fastens it to his belt in a scabbard. Thereafter he immediately sets you to a number of menial tasks - chopping wood, carrying water and so on. Whilst some newfound part of you finds this rather demeaning (Why even summon a Tartaran spirit to do grunt work? Isn't that what Brightfolk are for?) you cotton on to the purpose of it - the wizard is trying to make the fort more comfortable for whatever nefarious purpose he has planned.
As the wizard goes about his business, you take the opportunity to observe him when he is not aware of you. Indeed, it soon becomes apparent that the wizard considers you little more than a tool, incapable of independent thought let alone betrayal - and had he succeeded at the control portion of his spell, you might as well be.
The wizard appears to be a young man, almost a teen, with a shaved head and cinnamon skin. He wears a purple robe of simple design but fine cloth, tied with an azure silk belt around the waist and relatively well wearing boots in blue leather. He has a couple of burn scars on his fingers but a clear face, and his hands are delicate but inkstained - clearly used to indoor clerical work rather than heavy labour and without the calluses of a weaver. He wears a bronze ring on one of his fingers with a large cabouchon of red garnet set into the face and a plain gold band on another. The scabbard into which he placed the plain, servicable shortsword you are bound to is equally plain, servicable blue leather.
The wizard spends a lot of the day making notes in a pair of journals, one in some sort of code and the other a plaintext diary of some sort. You don't get a clear look at either.
The wizard has you dig several shallow pits in the ground beneath one of the intact sections of roof and then fill them with water from a stream at the base of the small hill the fort rests on. The wizard is clearly not concerned about you being spotted, and you can see why - apart from a handful of small buildings that might be cottages and barns in the distance (the nearby region looks to have been left to pasture) and the overgrown area around the fort that once had been cleared to give good vantage points, forest and wilderness seems to have spread all the way to the distant coast.
It becomes clear why the wizard has you perform such a task later in the day - he bids you stand guard and warn of anything approaching and sits down in the middle of the pools. You promptly ignore his order and watch him instead. He gestures with his wand at each of the pools, chanting in the nonsense tongue he used to summon you. It's hard to make out detail from your perspective, but you witness the reflections in the pools change to watery images of distant locations. The wizard gazes from one pool to another, making notes in his journals.
Of far greater import is what you witness using your own spiritual senses. It takes a little time to attune them, but such direct use of the wand lets you see it for what it really is - bound within the slender red wood is a spirit, like and yet unlike yourself! Whilst apparently conjured and bound using similar (but distinct) enchantments to your own binding, this spirit is clearly not Tartaran. Rather than the guttural sense of rage emanating from your own person, you detect almost a lack of emotion, a clear and clinical mind apparently removed from any lesser drives than that of intellect. Beneath this facade you see the spirit for what it really is; Greed. Greed for knowledge, greed for power, for influence over the world. The word 'Greywraith' pops into your mind, with associations of magic, knowledge and sight.
It is clear that whilst the mage is directing whatever spell he casts himself, the wand spirit is both assisting and empowering as well. Unlike you, the control bindings on the wand are expertly secured.
You return to your vigil temporarily to keep up the masquerade and wait for the wizard to let his guard down, but come evening actually spot something of interest. A lone, young ostral (a large predatory flightless bird) appears to have strayed out of the forest in search of food. The mage is busy frying a chunk of bacon on a cooking fire, the smell of which has probably attracted the ostral. Though easily able to break a man's limbs with their wings or tear one open with their claws, ostrals prefer small prey and are usually docile unless provoked. This particular ostral appears to be no exception.
Will you:
a) Alert your master to the potential threat?
b) Let it pass?
c) Something else entirely?
Status: Bronze Miniature.
Strength: 1 man!
Mind: 1 man.
Bodies
Bronze Statuette: Str 1, Damage Resistant.
Foci
Bound Sword: +2 Str to attacks w/ bound sword. If destroyed, banished.
Innate Powers
Possess Corpse: Possess a mostly intact corpse and animate it. Does not retard decay.
Wrath: Inspire irrational anger in a being capable of emotion.
Update delay due to wisdom teeth getting removed. Painful, and still rather tender at the moment. Also, images! Images are fun, but time consuming compared to text, so how would we like to do this?
1) Full Text (speediest updates!) = 100% Update Speed.
2) Critical Images (Maps etc, plus text.) = 90% Update Speed.
3) Current Image Level (Cutesy TANDY style graphics, plus text.) = 50% Update Speed.
Author
Topic: You are an Imp! (Read 8154 times)