Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

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Alberich
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Re: Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

Post by Alberich »

Mordan may not know how to "act like a god," but Desiree was a goddess to Anfisa just now, and she gazed in silence and true idolatry.

Once the mad fools had fled, she took up Desiree's clothes and ran up to help her dress, and fuss over her, and touch her in those subtle little ways she had when they'd first met in the Duravsky zenana, and tell her how brilliant that was, and how very very brave, and how wonderful, and what a world it would be if all wars could be won that way...

"Guess we won't need that Earthquake spell after all..."

No, she thought, Desiree doesn't need any spells at all to make that happen. And if the miracle had put her in the mood for some touching or anything else, even if it needed just a touch of privacy, then Anfisa was right there.
Last edited by Alberich on April 4th, 2013, 11:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

Post by Graybeard »

The girl who had been left at the idol's feet was still trembling in terror as her hands and feet were untied and the gag was removed. As soon as she could speak, she started to babble incomprehensibly.

Therese raised a hand, the hand that held the translator gadget (and still had some tingling in its fingers from the earlier magical repair). "Relax," she said in as soothing a tone as she could manage, knowing that while the words wouldn't be comprehensible yet, the tone should. "You are safe now. We will not harm you. This will speak for us as soon as it learns your language."

However, the girl didn't wait. With the resilience of youth, she scrambled to her feet, her eyes still darting to and fro with fear all over them. And then she sprinted, not to Mordan who had provided the distraction that saved her life, nor to Desiree whose seemingly divine appearance had driven off the Yonites (why did they run, rather than worshiping her? Therese wondered; by the Five Great Mothers, I was about to fall on my knees before her myself...), nor to Therese who was doing her best to radiate calm confidence; but rather for ...

... Argus.

The translator gadget wasn't needed to understand what she said as she threw her arms around him.

"DADDY!"
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Drusia
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Re: Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

Post by Drusia »

I watch the cultists - or whatever they are - run off in a terror. Well, that worked better than expected. I am about to go untie the girl when Anfisa runs up and starts trying to put my clothing back on. Is she embarassed?

Meanwhile, Therese helps the girl. Well, that's good anyway - at least someone is. Now, um... Anfisa is being rather affectionate with me. And the touch of Anilis on me is making that rather... well, this really isn't the time or place. I take a deep breath and concentrate on immediate concerns, like helping the girl. I imagine she must have some minor injuries from being carried about like a sack of potatoes.

But she seems pretty okay as she flings herself at Argus.

"DADDY!"

I blink. Then I look at Argus.

"How many children do you have?" I ask curiously. This is the third at least. Maybe fourth? Senilis must have blessed him.

-- Desiree
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Re: Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

Post by Graybeard »

[OOC: So a little movement down at the temple, while we're waiting for Argus to react to that "encounter"...]

"What's a Blaise?" Father Morton asked Sister Rose.

I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to tell him, thought Rose, and in any case, this is a complication that Emerylon doesn't know about. She decided to follow her time-honored means of evading difficult questions: tell the truth, nothing but the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth. "A very senior priest who was once a missionary down here," she answered. "He died recently." If Jeramel decides you need to know where, how and why, he can tell you himself. "He was the one who signed the order that keeps us out of Yona." A nod from Sister Helen confirmed this. How much does she know? Rose wondered, but she rapidly concluded the same principle applied for Helen as for Morton.

"Blaise," the mushroom man repeated, no translation being necessary. Then he gurgled in his own language, and after a moment, the translator gadget picked it up. [OOC: I presume the party has at least two of those things, one up at the pass and one here. Why doesn't everyone in the Errant World speak the same language? :roll: /OOC] "Blaise, yes, I know the name. His son lives in my village, good with healing, even knows a little magic."

Three or even four Veracian voices spoke as one. "His what?"
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Drannin
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Re: Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

Post by Drannin »

Oh weave, not again.

Argus sighed and put his hand on top of the girl's head. Of course, there was no way that this young one was his; she was likely terrified and just clinging onto someone, anyone. Argus probably looked like her father. But still... this was starting to get a little old.

"Easy," he said gently, "easy, child. I'm not your father, but I will help you. What's your name? What's going on here?"
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Re: Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

Post by Graybeard »

"easy, child. I'm not your father, but I will help you. What's your name? What's going on here?"

The translator gurgled. If the result was in the girl's language, she didn't seem to notice it; at least she didn't release the death-grip on the man she still perceived as her father. Another long string of clicks and glottals emerged between her sobs, and the translator was starting to get a grip on what she was saying, at least partially.

"Oh, Daddy, it was ______! The _________________, they said they would take me to you, but they _____! They were ______ to give me to the Bad Goddess!" The tears that followed this needed no translation.
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Re: Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

Post by Browncoat »

Determined to avoid being involved in a 'family moment', Mordan started making use of the remains of the temporary shelter. It appeared that he was making a dirt equivalent of a snowman.

[OOC: The alternative was to crack jokes about Desiree's "godliness" but I decided to save that for later]
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Alberich
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Re: Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

Post by Alberich »

Anfisa took her playful time lacing up her lover's clothes. It wasn't hard to sense the mood her body was in, but it wasn't Anfisa's way simply to grab her and crush her close, as she was longing to do. And she didn't know the mages' mind-speech for secret love-talk. But her own secret language of looks and flirts and touches said it all, to one who could read: They're busy with each other. You could steal a kiss and no one would know. Delicious agony.
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Re: Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

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As the little girl continued wailing into Argus' chest, the translator gadget slowly began to make sense out of her language, and to interpret what she was saying. The girl (she didn't give her own name) had been playing in the forest with her brother Dikembe, when suddenly, two men emerged from somewhere -- the translator didn't give a clear sense of where, but it sounded like a tree-that-walks might have been involved -- and captured them and taken them away from their village, to another one that could only be Yona. Dikembe had already been sacrificed to "The Good God." Now the villagers were taking her to be offered to "The Bad Goddess." She dissolved in tears again.

Therese had heard enough. She cleared her throat. "You are safe now," she said, and the translator gadget mumbled. "You are among friends. We will take care of you while your father grieves for Dikembe." She shot Argus an obvious, meaningful look ... and then turned to the others in the group with a different look on her face. For a moment she toggled the translator off.

"What now?" she asked anyone who would listen, before turning the thing back on.
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Re: Douaga: the search for Brother Dalton

Post by Graybeard »

[OOC: Where did everybody go? I'll move things back in the village while people on the ridge sort out what happens next, but there are real options up there depending on the way people react to that encounter and to the girl. Anyway:]

Sister Rose paged through the next book restlessly, almost irritably. The mushroom man hadn't had much more to say about Blaise's "son" -- the child of a single mother (that didn't seem to have any stigma attached to it down here, Rose reflected, but the Veracian Church's position would still be ... disapproving, and she wouldn't argue with it, at least as far as Blaise went), now about 20 (yes, that would fit with when Blaise and his party rescued Miguel, Rose calculated), worked the land (the term "farmer" seemed absent from the local language), had never been out of his village in his life, as far as the mushroom man knew. The village was too far away for a trip there to interview him.

She tossed the book aside; a compilation of the surviving, fragmentary works of the elven playwright Smerilon seemed hardly topical to their problem (indeed, Rose wondered why Brother Dalton would have been attracted to such a thing), and there were no marginal notes, by Dalton, Blaise or anyone else. "This isn't getting us anywhere," she muttered to Sister Helen. "Maybe you and Audie can keep looking here, but I don't think you'll find much. Shortround, let's go have a look at that tunnel the bear came out of."

There, however, the hunting was better.

The bear's body was long gone, apparently taken away by the villagers to butcher for meat; Rose hadn't seen any evidence of domesticated animals larger than chickens here, so its protein would not go to waste. The path into the underground was clear, and Rose put up all the magical detection she could manage, letting the local boy take the lead. Not a shred of magic was anywhere in evidence ...

... But they hadn't been underground for more than thirty seconds when the ground began to rumble again, and they could hear the rushing sound of something large approaching in the darkness beyond them. Furthermore, it didn't stay dark; glimmers of light began to appear in reflections off the ceiling of the tunnel.

"Not a sound," she cautioned Shortround, quite unnecessarily, as she did her best to make herself invisible behind a protruding rock ... and to prepare a Barrier spell, just in case.
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