In a series of quick movements, you move into the next room, knock the inexplicable furniture in front of the entrance, and hop on a low table: The closest available thing to a podium or stage. The talent scouts come in, seeing one by one that you've ceased to run, and at the critical moment—
right as the group's started piling into the room, and their speed has reached its nadir—you yell, scream even:
"WHY ARE YOU CHASING ME!"
After a single beat of silence, just enough for them to absorb the question, you continue. Over the course of perhaps thirty seconds, you rebuke them for their decision making, berate them for trying to
chase someone for leaving conversation of their own free will, remonstrate against the hurts they've inflicted upon you, and—above
all else—raised question after question as to their decision-making process. Then, finally, you issue an ultimatum: That they explain themselves, not to you but to each other, and themselves.
"WHY!!"
Then you start sidling towards the door, an expression of betrayal still affixed to your face.
Answer Fast, and Well ('Talent Scouts' Overmind): Automatic Major Failure
Exploit Weakness/Try to Salvage This(You vs 'Talent Scouts' Overmind): 3 vs. 1, Minor Success goes to You
The overmind freezes in shock, and its little narrative shatters around it. Concurrently, the talent scouts fall upon each other and you in accusation and argument—or so the overmind would wish. After all this running and shouting, most of your attention is tied up leaning against a wall and not falling over, but you can still deny its will well enough, and give its puppets the occasional poke in the right direction. Its anchorings remain—if you could break
that, you would've wounded it into retreat about ten minutes ago—but its mental grip loosens, and its reality-warping ethereal tendrils wither one by one. (You're too tired to make a proper study of it, but it seems that it really needs the support of its puppet-minds and the backing of at least a little narrative to do that sort of thing.) The group's discussion circles towards leaving you alone and the denial of supernatural influences, and consider taking the win and leaving, but then—.
But
then—.
The overmind tries something stupid: It lashes out with its remaining tendrils, seizes direct control of the talent scout closest to you, and goes on the attack. You see it happening, you yell and point, and the possessed scout gets dogpiled. There's a moment of
stutter, as pseudo-authorial spite meets weight of flesh and
fails,
fails to the greatest possible degree. The overmind
recoils, truly and personally (if slightly) damaged for quite possibly the first time ever. The talent scouts' opposition to it grows willful, barbed with quasi-resolution and imitation hate.
They are not persons, not truly, not even particularly good puppet-minds. This will not last, cannot last, this is ultimately just the outward manifestation of you recasting the overmind from author to antagonist, anything you could do to further hurt the overmind would turn its puppets against you, there's nothing left to do but run—but before you do, that closest talent scout (the one possessed) meets your eyes and speaks. "We'll do what we can, girlie. Good luck." You thank her, taking the sentiment in the spirit it was meant with, and leave.
As you close the door beyond you, taking care to jam a chair beneath the doorknob, you realize that the overmind probably enspelled her to see you as Katie Birch, for extra redundancy. You chuckle.
[Skill gained: Enhanced Communication (Basic). This represents skill in communicating through narrative- or spell-induced barriers, and the use of words and rhetoric to manipulate, disrupt, and reinforce narratives. Extends (with imperfect reliability) to attempts at clear communication (or rhetorical shenanigans) on a metaphysically level playing field.]
[The 'Talent Scouts' overmind will remember this, and talk about it. Once it regains control. And make its way to someone both willing to listen and able to rally the troops, metaphorically speaking. (The City is not a military place.)]
A short time later, you approach the other end of the passage: A door, which truesight tells you doesn't lead to another room, but instead an open-air place. Out of caution, you open it slowly, keeping your eye near the door crack, then quickly, because there's no-one there. You look around…
…and quickly realize that this place is not a Realm: Too small, too lifeless, and near-entirely devoid of the essence-flows of active narrative or the energy of magic. Then you stop entirely, to figure out where the term Realm came from. The following pops into your head: "The automatic knowledge that appears upon looking upon/thinking about something or someone is a form of natural and innate magic that comes from the conceptual association/interplay between your own mind-supporting Essence and whatever part of the world you're focusing on, including more abstract constructs such as this very mechanism, or the scholarly consensus on some subject."
"Wha-", you whisper to yourself, flinching. You aim your truesight at that answer, and it finds that there's
something significant left unsaid there, with no idea of what. Obviously, that does not satisfy you: You scrunch your eyes shut, dedicate your full mental focus to this one question, and get nothing back but mental static. Maybe something's blocking you. Perhaps your mind isn't built to grasp this answer. It could be that your truesight simply doesn't suffice to ferret out that missing detail.
Whatever the problem, you have to move. Time burns. Looking around again, you quickly conclude that this place is a little island of sorts in the sea of chaos. It has a single landmark, a small hill, and the rest of it is covered by varying sizes and depths of broken rock and gravel. Some part of you (almost certainly the one that served up that inexplicable answer earlier) expects a few hardy weeds, but there are none in evidence. This is a lifeless place.
As you pick your way forward, it soon occurs to you that the top of the hill would be a good vantage point. You dimly recall that when you entered the passage, you had to navigate a messy series of non-euclidean hallways, but the boundary between this place and the murk between realms is far weaker: All you have to do is
look.
Though you take care to avoid injury, you still reach the hill-top in good time: There turns out to be a path of manageable gravel, with the larger rocks pushed to each side, and the hill itself is of manageable steepness. At one point, you have to steady yourself with your hand, but there is never a moment of danger. (Though you are caught off guard by the novel sensation of grasping cold grit and rough rock—both truesight and that automatic knowledge mechanism had nothing to say about
that.) The only real delay is when you get your first good look at the stars, which this nearly lightless place makes so visible. (The inter-realm Essence murk averages just a little bit of light emission per exposed square, and truesight does many things.)
The moment your feet are properly planted on the hill's top, you look around, starting with the island's outer rim. From this height, you can more-or-less look out 'over' the inter-Realm murk, and detect the parts of it that cover shielded passageways by (in essence) tracing out the areas where the concepts of distance and direction aren't quite so corroded. There's a surprising number of doors embedded in the island's rim, which seem like the place to start…
"...okay, so the passage that I know is passable because I just used it looks like
that…and the extra high-floating murk between me and the farther areas distort what I see like
so…"
You reach a conclusion and double-check it. There is a temptation to freeze up, to pointlessly triple and quadruple check out of disbelieving fear, but you know you can afford no such luxury.
"
SHIT!"
After a moment, you decide that the one swear does not suffice, and work your way down the list. A moment later, you realize the list was provided by the automatic knowledge mechanism. (Then you resolve to stop wasting time specifically noting its actions, pending actual lasting safety.) Instead of trying to invent a few entirely new swear words, you refocus yourself on your predicament: That there's no path from this island to another Realm, besides the place you just fled from. This island has plenty of
exits, to be sure, but for some (likely inane) reason, those paths either circle about the island (often meeting each other in the process), trail off into unmaintained and decaying nothingness, or arc back towards the larger tangle you can just about see surrounding the City. (That being the name of the Realm you just fled from, obtained by dint of lightly trueseeing its entire mass.) Come to think of it, it's unclear whether passages of this style
could usefully connect Realms (all the non-cities ones are unambiguously quite far away), you noticed a bit of middle-section decay in the one that got you here—no. Contours of reality later, survival
now.
For lack of another option, you narrow your focus to the City itself. (Succumbing to despair is hardly an option.) It's entirely too large for your truesight to usefully examine at once, to say nothing of the higher-floating inter-realm essence murk, but you soon find a range of different 'focuses' that, when added together, give a halfway-decent picture of the Realm's whole. One could pull quite a few insights from it, especially combined with literally any (trustworthy) ground-level experience, but only a few matter, the ones that together constitute
hope. The first is that it's a
deeply non-euclidian place, once one gets away from the points of power and major thoroughfares. The second is that it's
divided: Different areas have different symbols, different aesthetics, different concept-tags of allegiance and occupancy. Then there's the related third: The empty spaces, unclaimed even by cobweb and dust. The details are pretty indistinct, with physical distance and metaphysical distortion translating into the unconventional truesight-use version of vague and blurry shapes, but—.
Gah. Enough. All this is corroborated by the auto-knowledge mechanism's comments on all the side areas that "haven't contained any events of note for a long time". Furthermore, you are starting to discover what a headache feels like. Contours of reality later, survival
now.
You turn your gaze to the tangled passageways surrounding and connecting this island and the City. What you find…is
opportunity. And a big decision to make.
———
What strategy does Tabula pick: How does she spend her time? Note that no matter the vote, Tabula will carry out the most cost-effective options for getting an edge, such as picking up a pointy-ended rock, and the more cost-effective options for 'lay a false trail'. Note that Tabula will be much more effective in general, what with being able to plan and prepare (instead of making shit up literally on the run). A moment's rest also goes a long way.
Also: You may want to start thinking about, discussing, and asking me about tricks and tactics Tabula could use. One of the vote categories for the next update will be 'toss in ideas for Tabula': Good ideas will translate into narrative and mechanical advantages. Feel free to @ me with your questions—I realize the descriptions in the update aren't exactly a labeled map 
[X] Run the Blockade
Tabula knows the passageway network much, much better than anyone will expect, and it's all but certain that this next wave of pursuers will come from more than a few distinct factions, arriving at different times.* Furthermore, one of truesight's many competencies is the on-the-run spotting of hidden and non-obvious passages. Then there's their real ace: Tabula possesses a certain amount of real reality-shifting power, the laws of the world care about narratives, it's easy to make surface edits to a blank slate…it's plot armor time, or if not
armor then at least the padded leather jacket afforded to cool-looking individuals doing cool things.
If Tabula goes for this, they'll stand a very good chance of succeeding outright, without caveat or cost. The opposition fundamentally doesn't expect to encounter her so soon after setting out and so close to the City.
This strategy is built around speed, surprise, and a relatively small amount of stealth. The forward-running searchers will be deeply unlikely to walk stealthily or check hiding spots until they're close to the island (heck, they might even move at a dead sprint so as to reach the prize first). Similarly, anyone acting as the goalie, which is to say hanging about closer to City in case you slip the net, is likely to be unprepared at best.
(Of course, this means ignoring the island's opportunities.)
[X] Rely on Trickery, but first…
Tabula knows the passageway network much, much better than anyone will expect, including its underlying metaphysics. Furthermore, one trick available to
tabula rasa(s) is to 'melt' into destabilized Essence, such as the murk between realms. That sort of thing comes with certain costs and risks, so they daren't do it more than once—and not just because if someone pokes the wall-gash or unwisely-opened door they're hiding in, Tabula would be unable to run. Still, if they were to hammer a hole in every weakened wall/ceiling/floor, open every door-that-leads-to-nothing, set up an obviously false trail and an inobvious false trail, that would translate that parlor trick into quite an advantage: Let the most everyone pass you by, miring themselves in the muck and chasing your false trails, then make your run for it when all that remains are the stragglers (slow and likely dispirited) and anyone camping the chokepoints (the main problem).
This strategy is built around trickery (mire-based crowd control to be precise), magic-boosted camouflage, and a bit of luck. As the QM, I guarantee you and Tabula will not be screwed over by absolutely no one wandering near Tabula and giving them an idea of how far the search parties have got (they know how to pick a good hiding spot with strong listening/peephole properties) or some ass with a 10-foot pole. (That sort of utility attachment doesn't handle inter-Realm murk well and also it'd be a massive dick move on my part.) That does mean Tabula won't encounter stronger opposition than in the other option: Even a vaguely prepared chokepoint-holder constitutes serious trouble for a fella whose big ace is basically a pointy rock. (That, and the chaos between realms isn't exactly cleansing skin lotion.)
This stratagem is unlikely to work out flawlessly, but it's much more unlikely to fail outright. I'm serious about Tabula being rather more capable going forward—more on this next update. Even if the dice do something godawful, one of my jobs as a QM is to make sure this Quest's story stays worthwhile and its game-aspects, engaging—in the end, we're all here to have fun. That, and this is pretty much the tutorial (for combative Events).
- [X] …you make sure to grab several rocks. They're rocks, yes, but they're also deeply non-magical and impressively
real. Some of them are made of something other than Essence…
- [X] …look at the stars. It is in the nature of Realms to make their own sky, and you have seen how the City folds in upon itself. This could be your only chance for a long time…and the memory of it would be a powerful motivation, among other uses.
- [X] …do just a little detective work. Seriously,
why does this hill have person-shaped depressions in it!
P.S. As you may have surmised, this is the sort of place that one returns to again and again, as one accrues knowledge, ability, and confidence that your enemies won't interrupt you mid-contemplation.
P.P.S. What with one thing or another, I seem to have ended up posting very late indeed—it's only the same day in the sense of not having slept. To be honest, this has probably impacted clarity.
I expect to be around for question answering (albeit through the medium of my phone) for a shortish time, punctuated by my bedtime routine. Afterward, it'll be a while before I'm up again to answer questions—though please still ask them. Speaking of which: If there appear to be any continuity issues here, please let me know. I'm also willing to elaborate on the meaning of most any bit of prose, or vote description. Particularly the descriptions, I think they're where my first-time-QM status shows through the most.
Jokes aside, I should also note that Aspects are shorthands, which gloss over a fair bit of detail—but bear in mind that Tabula can be trusted to notice and adjust for these things to the best of their ability.