Enchantment's End
Seventh Day of the First Month 294 AC
Ashford Woods, Camp of the Thrice-Blessed
In the stories old as time and new as mirror-craft, the hardest part of all was vanquishing the monster and then the natural order of things would just reestablish itself, the living would go back to their lives, the dead would be buried, and all would be well, at least until the next story was told. Life, Mia had discovered, since putting on the sword and book seal of an inquisitor, was a lot more complicated than that, especially when the monster was human and the people he'd taken and twisted against themselves didn't really have any lives to go back to.
Thoros holding his flaming sword aloft as he cast down the false god in the name of R'hllor the Red while Umber Hasty and Gerold Dayne plowed though his half-trained guard using shield, mailed fist, and the flat of their blades because they didn't even need more to win the fight.
It hadn't been hard to find 'The Thrice Blessed'. After all, their leader had to leave a few hooks lying around to draw in new followers when he broke the old ones. 'Atreus the All-Good', or as he had admitted under interrogation while affected by truth spells 'Art the Cooper'. And he was in the habit of breaking them.
Men and women weeping openly or standing in stunned silence that the man they had come to consider a god on earth had fallen. One cook trying to kill himself with a knife before Anya disarmed him. Having to chase down families with conjured beasts through the woods for fear of the parents harming their children in their grief...
Captured Art the Cooper (Beguiler 8, 8 HD/CR7)
As she stared at the dying flames, Mia had to remind herself repeatedly why the law only mandated execution by sacrifice for those who consorted with ruinous powers, twisted gods in truth, and not just in the minds of those addled by enchantment. The same reason, really, why we don't pay lawmen or judges using the confiscated possessions of those they arrest or whom they judge, as was the case in some places.
Having the folk involved in enforcing the law profiting off the punishment is a hell of a cliff to jump off of...
But the folk who thought that two-bit enchanter was a god, and treated him like it, would need a mind healer just the same as if it had been some daemon or far-spawned horror. Weeper knew what would happen to all the children he'd gotten on his followers. Would their mothers hate them for being part of the man who had raped them in body and mind or maybe worse yet try to raise them in some kind of twisted devotion of their 'martyred father'.
"Thinking of what we're going to do with the son of a bitch?" she heard Anya ask from behind her.
"Yeah, hanging seems too good for him," Mia admitted, glancing towards the crude houses of the little forest village. "Even if we get them all back to Sorcerer's Deep, or at least all who will come, we don't even know what that sort of long term enchantment does to the mind. It's going to take hundreds of sessions with mind healers to untangle it all, and you know how long the lines already are to see one. It's not like healing the body where you can try your luck with a ritual, a blessing, or a potion."
"Well, if we don't know... maybe we should find out?" Anya replied slowly after a moment. "That's one of the things the Scholarum's about isn't it, learning new things?"
"What, like a proper bit of arcane research looking into untangling enchanted folks' brains?" Mia asked dubiously. Proper arcane research went into the sort of stuff that was sometimes above even and inquisitor's pay grade.
"Might get farther than you think. I know some enchanters back in the Deep looking for a mastery project that won't risk like and limb. Shouldn't be that hard to get angels to help considering..."
They both knew that angel didn't necessarily mean what most would think when usingthe term, but most of the ones working as mind healers were selfless sorts.
"That just leaves the funding," Mia mused, with the first smile she had worn all day she added. "So how good are you at writing reports?"
The report from Ashford suggests looking into the effects of long term enchantment on the mind in order to better. Do you support it?
[] Yes (locks in a 15 Progress 8,000 IM Cost Research project for next month)
[] No, you have other priorities
OOC: I'll admit I was in a bit of a quandary about Ashford, you guys threw a lot of PCs at it, more than the fellow I had planned for it could realistically face. I could have of course made him retroactively stronger, but that just felt like cheating, like artificially increasing the DCs for something just because players tackle it at higher levels with no in story reasoning. If challenges scale perfectly to what is thrown at them than all strategy becomes pointless. So instead I made this about the aftermath. Not so much what you do with the 200 odd traumatized survivors but what their plight may suggest to the people on the spot. Not yet edited.
