Mountain(s) of Madness

[AdamZero]

At Jamie's response, while waiting for Lucas's, I mulled over the gist.

"Well.... let's just say you DID get married, for reals, have kids, and get that out of the way NOW. In the long run, you'd be better off. Instead of your mom tracking you down when your a short little cougar, and she's got enough life in her to do it, you end up the hot young mom, keep the kids safe with Grandma, and bring home the bacon in your own right."

I thought it over for a moment. "yeah, that sounds a lot less appealing when I say it aloud. Plain version is we get hitched and she's happy with that, find a nice quiet place to set up shop. You kill peoples, steal stuff, et cetera et cetera et cetera. I watch the kids, help you out when jobs get magey, we have Grandma watch the kids in that case."

I could almost feel the malice roll of Jamie, and damnit if she didn't look hotter angry.....

"You'd get as many death bullets as you'd need." I felt an ebb. "No charge." And there was the evil smile....

I think I just walked into a trap.
Men are the architects of their own demise
and women?
Orchestrate the fall of others.

[Graybeard]

"I'm down, Mom," Layla answered her mother, thinking that it might be best not to go into too much detail as to why.

"That's to be expected," Faye said soothingly, making a rare misread of her daughter's emotional state. "One of the reasons we do funerals is to help with that, to remember what they were like, to provide some closure, to --"

"I don't give a rat's ass about the funeral," Layla interrupted with some heat. "Arty's gone. The funeral isn't going to bring him back. And I will move on. I will. But that's not what I'm down about."

"Oh?" Somehow this didn't sound good.

Layla chose her words carefully, remembering that one of the things that precipitated her existential crisis was her mother's blase reaction to her own near-miss in Kiyoka and the carnage at the pass. "It's about death. I feel like I'm surrounded by it, and so much of it is pointless. I'd rather be surrounded by life, like Zachary's. I --"

"Layla, all death is pointless," Faye interrupted. "But it happens, one to one with life. Can't have one without the other. When the deaths come in a bundle, it can weigh on you if the people who are dying are ones you care about." Although I don't get why you care about Clem and his pals, if that's part of your problem. "You'll feel better after --"

It was Faye's turn to be interrupted again, as Plato came running after them. "Layla! Faye! I've got something..."

[Sareth]

I blinked. Twice. "You could at least by me flowers first some time."

I had to give him this. He had a hell of a warped sense of humor. Take my little quip about him having an idea and run with it like that? Yeah, pretty funny. I could actually feel my mood improving after his little joke.

I smiled at the group. "So shall we find us a troll then?"

[Viking-Sensei]

"Well, between the troll and the chapel, I'd take the troll..." Lucas said with a smirk. "Then again, I'm aclimatized for trolls. I've spent some time with Grope... that's as much of his name as I can get out, anyway... It's more like Gah-roh-pei, but in order to say it properly someone's gotta punch you in the gut while trying to bite your own tongue off..."

[Sareth]

"Sounds like a charming language." I finished packing the last of my things, tying my blankets to my pack. "I should try learning it next time I feel like getting a good blow to the gut." It was at this point I realized I had a problem. "Oi! You ate all of my rabbit!"

[Graybeard]

"By a troll?" Layla said, not quite believing what she'd just heard.

"There's no doubt about it," Plato said. "Here, let me show you." He reached for a small dish and slid it under a formidable-looking contraption with two eyepieces. "There are some particles in here that I recovered from the penetrating wound. They look like they spalled off an arrowhead when it hit the humerus -- that's the big arm bone. Check the way they glow."

Layla looked through the eyepieces at what appeared to be rocks -- magnified, of course. There was a faint but definite reddish aura to some of them, courtesy of whatever weird magical forensic technique Plato had used. "I see a red glow. Is that what you're talking about?"

"It is," Plato said. "Now look at these standards." He pulled the dish out of the arcane gadget and put it back on a shelf, replacing it with a series of similar, smaller dishes contained in a long, narrow tray. One was labeled "human," another "half elf," a third "elf," and a fourth "troll." (No "dwarf"? Layla wondered, not sure whether she was serious or not.) Layla peered into the eyepieces as Plato slid the tray back and forth. "This one's human. You should see a blue glow." Layla nodded, and Plato shifted the tray. "Elven material has a kind of yellowish aura." Another nod. "Half-elven samples, unsurprisingly, are a mix of the two." Another nod. "And then the troll matter..."

Layla stood up. "Okay, I'm convinced, weird as it all is. I don't suppose you can tell which troll?" She was thinking of the one she'd seen in the mountains north of Kugelheim -- but she was also thinking of what "decorated" the large farm house in Kiyoka. She'd thought that was a terrible idea from the get-go; trolls hunted in pairs, and that one's mate, let there be no doubt, would have ample cause to seek revenge...

"Not with this test," Plato said. "There are some other things that I could do if there were samples from suspect trolls to compare these bits to. I, uh, don't recommend traveling to the troll homelands to get those samples."

Layla chuckled humorlessly. "Fair enough. Thank you, Plato; this is ... thought-provoking. I need to figure out what to do next."

She turned to go, and Faye started to follow her, but Plato said, "Faye, hang on just a second here. We need to talk about -- logistics." When Layla was safely out of earshot, he motioned Faye to the eyepiece, the reference standards still in the instrument. "Can you see anything here?"

Faye was puzzled. "No. They just look like rocks. Let me study them for a minute..." She squinted back into the lenses, shook her head. "I can't see a thing out of the ordinary."

When she stood up, she noticed Plato looking at her oddly. "Most people can't. At least most people from Farrel can't. The overwhelming majority."

Faye was starting to get an idea, but Plato pre-empted and confirmed it. "This instrument diagnoses other things in addition to forensics. Layla has undetected, incipient, never-developed magical talent."

[AdamZero]

I was already a bit ways out, retrailing my steps with a smile. I had food in my belly and it felt GOOD. I was happy for that, and I put Jamie's distaste for the plan out of my head. She'd come up with something eventually. I'd just pay the dinners and move on. Yawning I started outward, not sure where I was going, just that a troll and a chipmunk were in the general direction.

It might not be my normal sort of venture, but it was sure following the basic formula. Wander aimlessly. Permit sufficient time. Jobs will surface. Adventure ensues.

[Graybeard]

OOC: This thread is getting long, and we seem to be in between adventures on almost all fronts. Would this be a good time to open a "Mountains of Madness, Part 2" topic? It's purely for bookkeeping, as was done in Kiyoka, and need have no discontinuity in what people are up to.

[AdamZero]

ooc: How bout Mountains of Madness, The Wild North?

[Graybeard]

OOC:

ooc: How bout Mountains of Madness, The Wild North?

For reasons yet to be revealed, I'd rather not invoke "The Wild North" quite yet. Interesting idea, though. /OOC:

Faye didn't seem as surprised as Plato expected her to be; curious, yes, but astonished, no. "You're sure?"

Plato nodded. "No doubt about it. People without the talent can't see any glow at all from this test. Even some known magic users have to have it pointed out to them. That was one of the reasons they took me into that program down in Port Lorrel: I saw the glow right away."

"Well, that's interesting," Faye allowed. "How'd she get it, though? It obviously wasn't inherited from me, and her father didn't have any magical skills that I knew of. His father was from Veracia --" both true of Gabriel, and consistent with the fiction that she'd created about Layla's purportedly deceased father -- "but again, no magic that I ever saw. How did it happen?"

"The Tsuirakuans have put a lot of effort into that question, without ever getting a clear answer," Plato said. "There's a hereditary component, they know that, but there's more to it. Some of it seems to be environmental. Layla spent quite a bit of time in Kiyoka, right?" Faye nodded. "There might be something in the water there that the Tsuirakuans have never found, or something like that. Mainly, they just think that the skill ... just happens."

"I've wondered whether there are other potential magic users among us that we just never develop, because we don't know about the skills," Faye mused.

"As have I. The fraction may be larger than we think. The Tsuirakuans seem to think that maybe as many as one or two Farrelites in a hundred may have something that can be developed -- not that they're exactly willing to try to find out. Why create competition for themselves?"

"Indeed," Faye said. "Thanks, Plato. I'll be back in touch." She headed home, thinking, That's very interesting ... and it may offer my daughter some very entertaining career opportunities.