Goriel and beyond

As we play, occasionally we'll close a thread and open a new one to keep the size of threads (and relative complexity) down to a dull roar. Here's where we store the closed posts from the history of Errant Road.
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Drusia
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Re: Goriel and beyond

Post by Drusia »

"If you mean Arman himself...yes, you might be assigned to another member of the clan, or even an honored guest. But a getera is not just for anyone. It implies some higher status. Or a reward for a special deed."

Arman. Right. Duravsky refers to the entire clan, not just the head. Bad habit - in Snamish, one often uses the family name to refer to the matriarch or patriarch of that line. Here, it seems, that can cause confusion - probably because the families are on much bloodier terms with one another, and the clans here are much larger than the major families in Snamish.

"The cosmetics - we do not keep here. It might be hard to find exactly the oil you want. But if your friends would escort you, I could have someone show you the way to a merchant to find the next best thing. For us, it is soap and water. Probably you are best doing the rest in Duravsky's hall, before being presented. They are the richest so they will have the most, things you cannot find in town."

So no lilac scented bath. Damn. Lilac is a good scent for sensual and submissive. I have a tiny bit of lilac perfume with me - not enough for a bath, but enough to scent my neck. It will have to do. I'd rather arrive ready to present, as if our 'clan' had enough resources to make me presentable without assistance.

"We do some music. No harp as such. I could lend you a psaltery. With some practice it is close enough, yes?"

"A what?" I ask, confused. A minute of explanation and a quick drawing later. "Oh! A lap harp! Yes, Father Boris, that would be fine." Better than fine - I find lap harps far easier to play. Not as elegant, though.

Argus nodded to Rose. "We may as well rest up. I have a feeling it'll be busy tomorrow, and the next few days." He paused. "...Woman of mine," he added imperiously, with a slight smirk.

Argus is having too much fun with this. Time to tease them a bit.

"Do you wish me to attend you and your wife, master?" I ask innocently. "My pleasures won't be avaliable to you for several days, after all." I bat my eyes at both of them playfully. I figure the change of them actually taking me to bed with them is next to zero, but the chance that I can make Argus or Rose blush is at least 50% and that's well worth the effort.

-- Desiree
Alberich
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Re: Goriel and beyond

Post by Alberich »

"Have you ever felt the urge to take up the sword for your cause?" He asked. "Gather your best books, men, mercenaries... and come here to impose a fairer society on people like these? A holy crusade would be something for the history books."

"You can't see a place like this without wanting something like that," said Tim. "But our Church imposes discipline. Some places, they are ready for a missionary effort - the right words and the right deeds in the right place. This place, Father Boris made it clear, isn't. And our orders are not to convert them or change their ways." His voice didn't hold the full bitterness of what he'd been feeling - but it was clear enough, he hated to be powerless in the face of this. "And yes. If she's in danger - if their wretched 'honor' slips and they decide to hurt her - we'll have to get her out. Somehow."

This was turning in a direction he wanted to go anyway. His head snapped up and he looked Eli right in the face. "That was amazing, what you did this morning - that magic you'd learned - the way you could raise help when we needed it." Oh, it was amazing all right. "Do you think I could learn to do that?"

He hoped the context seemed natural to Eli as it did to him. It was logical for him, in these circumstances, to feel the need for more strength, and Eli's display in Port Lorrel had been of just such strength.

He did not consider the peril to his own soul, that he really did hate to be powerless in the face of so much evil.
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Jack Rothwell
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Re: Goriel and beyond

Post by Jack Rothwell »

"I daresay you could." Eli replied. "It's about will and knowledge and visualisation. An old magic." Even talking about it was giving him the urge to do it again. "The world has forgotten a lot since our parents... your enslavers, left us for their sanctuary of self-pity. I was lucky, finding it the way I did." He uttered a short bark that was some species of laughter. "Luckier still not to have it turn on us but... damn, Tim, it felt amazing. I could feel the connection, feel the Galdy bend to my very will."
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Re: Goriel and beyond

Post by Alberich »

Good! He wanted to talk. The best thing was to let him! Tim's next question was but one word -

"How?"

[OOC: His intent is to encourage Eli to tell more and not hog the conversation himself, so if you want to supply Tim's half with short questions like that to get more into one post, that is fine by me.]
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Graybeard
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Re: Goriel and beyond

Post by Graybeard »

"Do you wish me to attend you and your wife, master? My pleasures won't be avaliable to you for several days, after all."

"I think that would be a fine idea," Sister Rose replied, getting startled looks from both Argus and Desiree. She turned to Argus. "Don't you agree, my lord and master? Her skills in massage and conversation would be most welcome at such a time." Then in mind-speech, she added to Argus, <"Particularly conversation. This may be the last chance we get to, for lack of a better word, 'rehearse' her on what happens next ... because I have to say, I'm worried about it.">

---------------

"Skipper says we need to refuel for the rest of the trip north," Kattie told Rip, rather unnecessarily; his fine ear for the engines had detected that they were running so lean, trying to save fuel, that they were misfiring and threatening to overheat. "Form a landing party, in case we need to do some bargaining for fuel." She strode off.

Rip rolled his eyes. "Just in case it wasn't obvious, yes, 'bargaining' is is a euphemism, and you're right about what it's a euphemism for. Any of you new fish want to come along?" [OOC: Sorry to hear you'll be missing for a while, and we'll take care of Angrist.]
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Jack Rothwell
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Re: Goriel and beyond

Post by Jack Rothwell »

"How?"

"It's detailed in the book I was... I found." Eli continued. "Summoning magic, the diagrams and the beasts that respond to the call. There are..." He paused, brow furrowing, as he tried to recall the details he'd learned on the airship ride and the night before. "... creatures who were changed a long time ago, some native to the southern continent that that furball claimed she came from, some were taken from other... places. They were imposed with a sign, a channel linked them to the symbol. I've only scratched the surface so far but..."

Suddenly Eli looked over his shoulder to make sure the pair weren't being watched. He touched Tim's arm and jerked his head to a more secluded spot in the shadows of an unattended wall. A moment later the men were kneeling in the dirt while the half-elf drew a small diagram in the earth with a stick. It was of simple make, a handful of straight lines and circles barely six inches across.

"The symbol." He tapped the thing for emphasis, then drew the book from his inner pocket, and flipped hurredly to the correct page.

"This won't cause a panic?"

"No. It's only a small one. Non-violent. It's called a Silka. It won't draw attention, and that's kind of the point with this one."

The drawing on the page was that of a small rodent-like creature which bore a striking resemblence to a mouse except for its oversized ears and eyes, stronger legs and scaled tail. Eli stared at the picture as if memorising every detail of thing, then he turned back to the diagram and reached out with his mind.

'Come.'

The gust of smoke which blew from the symbol was far less impressive than the display from the creature he'd summoned earlier. The small circle of earth collapsed inwards and the mouse-thing jumped out with a squeak which might have been indignant. It landed neatly and immediately stood up on its back legs to observe the men who towered above it. Eli laughed, more genuinely this time.

"A lot cuter than a galdy." He said, reaching out a hand which the small creature stepped onto. "The tome says these things were used for information-gathering, even kept as pets when they weren't being drawn through the ether."
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Re: Goriel and beyond

Post by Alberich »

Tim was quite sure that using black magic on holy temple grounds was a terrible sin, and that encouraging it, watching it in wide-eyed fascination (well, that thing was cute after all), even joining in it -- this would subject him to the strictest discipline the Church knew. It didn't help that his Orthodox-trained mind was reinterpreting Eli's words in ways the half-elf didn't know - "through the ether" sounded like "from Hell" to Tim. Indeed, he was quite sure that the steps he was taking were not only perilous to his worldly career in the Church, and maybe to his specific mission on behalf of his country, but to his own soul. To convince Eli he was friendly and interested, he would have to try the beginnings of this himself - he would have to walk to the lip yet not leap in, and how to know he would not fall? On top of that, by undertaking this perilous adventure on his own, without telling even Rose what he was up to, he was being incredibly foolish. He knew this.

He kept doing it anyway.

Tim took up a stick of his own - and began to copy, line by line, the diagram Eli had shown him. But he stopped a stroke or two from completion - "Will I need to know anything else to control it? Or is it just concentrating, like controlling another spell? And what do you do to get rid of it? - That was impressive, the way the galdy vanished the moment you were through."

He intended to end the experiment soon, however his half turned out - but to propose that they take a room together, since this temple was being so obliging in that regard, so they could talk more. (And so Eli would not sneak off on a whim without him.)
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Jack Rothwell
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Re: Goriel and beyond

Post by Jack Rothwell »

Eli stroked the silka as he answered the Brother's question. The creature closed its eyes in what might have been contentment.

"Reach towards the symbol with your mind, visualise the animal and tell it to come to you." Eli replied. "You'll feel something like a... a line linking you to it. You'll feel it's thoughts. You can guide them." He tapped his head. "After that you just have to focus your will. Send it an order, watch it obey."

His speech had become clipped, but that wasn't a surprise, the thoughts of the creature connected to his mind were lightning fast, anxious. If the half-elf concentrated he could feel it's hummingbird heartbeat thudding in his temples.

"Don't worry. It's not dangerous."
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Re: Goriel and beyond

Post by Alberich »

"Don't worry. It's not dangerous."

Right, thought Tim. And Desiree is not alluring. And Brad's not devoted, and Harker's not perverse, and the sky isn't blue, there's no water in the sea, and I am not the damnedest fool that ever took holy orders!

He completed the symbol and began to reach out - a fleeting thought went past - Is this how Blaise got started?

...and then he was grasping the symbol, and he peeped falsetto, as to a puppy - "Come on."

...the feeling was strange, alien to the divine power he knew, and his heart was at double rate, and his brow was drenched, and even his loins were aroused at the sheer forbiddenness of this -- he wasn't letting himself think about it, for he did not know what might be watching his mind...

and there it was! And its mind was like his, and its thumping heart even faster than his, and it was he - and it was fascinating. Like many another young man who loved the outdoors, he'd had days when he'd come across a line of ants on a piece of fruit, or a worm driven up by the rain squirming along by a fence, or a bird in its nest that paid him no mind -- and spent an hour or more just watching. This was that, but more. He'd intended to act enchanted. There was no need to act. He whispered - "Wonderful." And lifted it in his palm, and stroked it as he had, and felt it - the thrill was amazing - and he held it to face Eli's, to compare them. "I've never felt anything like it" - as indeed he had not.

It was time to ask how to banish it. He didn't want to.

"I think...they wouldn't understand here...we have to banish them soon. Or hide them in our pockets? Could we take a room together to talk about it some more?" -- the staff had already made clear, the group's rooming preferences would be honored. And it made sense on the outside that these two unattached men, with a few things in common at least, would want that.
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Jack Rothwell
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Re: Goriel and beyond

Post by Jack Rothwell »

"Yes." Eli sighed, not making it immediately clear which question he was answering. "We can banish them, fortunately that part is easier. Even if we don't, the energy which holds them here would eventually weaken and draw them back naturally." His voice showed no irony at the mention of the last word of the sentence. "Quickly for a smaller creature such as this."

He closed his eyes.

"Just visualize the link. See the energy of the animal in your mind and will it to dissipate like a cloud of smoke. See it."

The silka in the half-elf's hand craned upwards to sniff at the air then froze in that position, the same way the galdy had back of the Lorrel docks. The animal turned into a wax figure before Brother Tim's eyes and collapsed inwards until nothing but a small pile of grains sat in Eli's hand like a sprinkling of brown sugar.

"Send the little darling on it's way. We can talk inside."
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