[X] Remain a Priest
[X] Character Flaw: Ambition
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Dust of the Past
Azriel wandered through the Merchant's Quarter with a dour look on his face, not feeling especially enthusiastic or animated even after reading the full letter.
His course made him feel as if he were a ghost moving between graves, one child cutting across the crowd of hundreds milling around the market and arguing with costermongers at their tarpaulin tents and rickety fruit stands, which were starting to fill with seasonal produce imported from the north: mostly strawberries and cherries, although one could also find apricots if looking carefully. There weren't a lot, and despite - or perhaps because of - the freshness, the prices were insurmountable to a young orphan's pockets; it'd cost him almost twice his weekly allowance to buy one wicker basket.
However, even despite the customary pangs of hunger, he wasn't actually here to stare at food.
His recent conversation with Hermes inspired him to contemplate the dirt under his feet much more than the people and goods for sale around him. The idea of moving to Pandemonium was unsavory; a concept that left him feeling sour. It made sense, since that shallow and lifeless dirt he was treading upon was their fault to begin with.
While Priests were afforded respect and understood as being off-limits as marks to the various criminal elements of town, and Azriel wore an acolyte's pin and mantle on top of his usual outfit - which consisted of nothing more than an unadorned linen shirt and pants, as well as heavy pass-me-down boots a half-size too big - he made sure to maintain a shroud of wariness about him, glancing around his surroundings every couple of moments, if only to make sure no one was trying to pickpocket him. He knew that for a desperate thief who needed something to sell by today to put food on the table, he'd make an easy-looking target.
Azriel couldn't find the malice to blame those poor fools. After all, the more he considered what Hermes had said, the more sadly apparent it became that Hermes was blatantly correct in every way imaginable. Yagersville - no, all of No Man's Land - was nothing more than a collection of meaningless ash and dust, unsuited at best for human habitation, downright evil at worst. He saw dozens of destitute panhandlers around the shadows of buildings, scampering pathetically about the feet of anyone who looked as if they were carrying more than half a dollar, begging for scraps, their moans suggesting what they suffered was less arthritis and more like early-onset rigor mortis.
Truthfully, even if mugged, he wouldn't have much to hand over to his would-be aggressor. Azriel almost never carried his personal urn with him into Yagersville nowadays, except when ordered to go over and take a shipment of rare ashes needed for the Rite of Renewal or some other such magical spell.
Besides, he didn't even know any defensive Rites - or indeed, any Rites besides Yesterday - and any Priest worth their dust hardly needed a whole sacred urn for that; one scoop of fine powder from underfoot would suffice.
He decided to do that, if only to distract himself. Casually and without breaking stride, he bent down midstep and ladled a bit of dust into his palm.
Then, muttering a couple of incantantions, he allowed that dust to disintegrate.
And, as if through a miracle, almost instantly, a second vision of the world unveiled itself to his senses.
Application of the Rite of Yesterday could be confusing for a novice, since the sensory apparatus it utilized was alien and intrusive at first; less a distraction and more an overwhelming, almost terrifying scream of signals. Azriel had needed an entire month to adjust to its informational overload after his first successful cast, and according to Hermes, he was remarkably fast at that; some Priests never fully adapted, their brains and methods of visualizing and parsing the feed of information insufficiently malleable.
Nowadays, the experience was conventional and casual - almost boring, requiring no more effort than maintaining conscious awareness of one's own breaths, and being no more distracting than a slight headache or perhaps a mild rash. He could even do it while maintaining a mostly sensible conversation with someone.
The Rite allowed him to 'feel' out a timeline of the world, stretching back a full several hours into the past, although some masters could allegedly pull off a look as far back as twenty-four hours. As if adjusting a zipper on a jacket, he could scroll through that recorded period of the past as he pleased, fast-forwarding or accelerating rapidly or slowly backwards, or skipping to particular moments. This was true retrocognition, affording data to each of the five senses: he could see and hear the past with about the same clarity as the present, but also detect scents or and even faintly acquire an idea of something's texture through phantasmal touch.
Azriel watched as sometime about three and a half hours ago, a police officer with a stern expression and a dark mustache chased away a whole bunch of starving beggars from the fountain near the market courtyard, telling them they were a public nuisance and chastising them.
Like someone plucking a flower, Azriel stuck his whole arm into the officer's stomach. There was an immediate feedback of full, responsive sensation, as if his limb were passing through a mass of unresisting and warm, slightly wet gelatin, accompanied by a firm pressure as well as a strangely soothing feeling of constant heat emanating from the various internal organs. Then Azriel raised his hand to poke about and found a heart in the man's chest, its beat consistent and repetitive; relaxed and utterly calm.
With a snort of amusement, Azriel concluded his search for a heart right as the beggars of the past started to vacate the area. He drew his arm out, unstained. With the Rite of Yesterday, one could sense and experience the past, but not alter its course whatsoever, so the police officer was unharmed.
Azriel stuffed his hands in his pockets started to roll the timeline of the Rite backward, and started to move after the backtracking policeman; facing each other, even as one walked backward and the other walked forward, after him. He made sure to evade the pedestrians in the present at the same time, sidestepping and swerving on his course, causing more than a couple of them to shoot him slightly strange or unnerved glances, or looks of annoyance in the case of the few he'd almost stumbled into.
With the scoop of dust he'd sacrificed to fuel the spell, he'd be able to do this for at least several minutes, exploring and having fun as he liked.
Suddenly, a familiar voice asked, "Using the Rite of Yesterday?"
Cancelling the Rite, Azriel turned to the speaker and his companion.
"Hey, Lewis, Graham," he said, slightly lukewarm toward the latter. "Just bored, I suppose."
With a sigh, Graham said, "You really don't have anything better to do than chasing phantasms around the market?"
"Not really, no," Azriel said, and then, fully dry, "Do you have something better for me to do?"
Graham's mouth clenched, as Lewis sighed and, far more diplomatically, communicated, "We're here on some errands for Hermes. Gotta buy food for the House and collect some ashes to do the Renewal with." He patted the painted, blue urn on his hip. "Wanna come with?"
"Don't we usually import some sort of high-quality ashes?" asked Azriel, slightly puzzled.
"Yes, but - well - how..." Lewis hesitated on wording the answer, then ended up rubbing his face with frustration and let out another sigh. "Look, we have low funding this month or whatever. Hermes said he'd sort it out, but basically until then, we're relying on standard ground grist."
"You mean ground shit," Graham said quietly, earning himself a reproachful look from the senior Priest.
Azriel felt a touch of sincere guilt at that moment, not because his question had indirectly caused Graham to earn a withering glare, but rather because of the implications of this entire issue. He'd already decided not to attend Redheart, even if he'd not told Hermes, so hearing that the House's overseer was also struggling in keeping everything together financially was... a little disheartening, as if he were rankly ungrateful lout and a total waste of food; as if he weren't giving back for what he was being given.
Azriel decided he'd try to do what he could to make up for it, and immediately shrugged with a downcast look, "Well, anyway... Yeah, I'll come with you. Sorry for the trouble."
"Damn," said Graham with a slight wince, "Apologizing for us having to tolerate your presence? That's, like... really sad... even for you, Mebet."
"Shut up," Azriel said, managing to suppress 'the fuck' in the middle of that phrase.
Graham looked a bit chastised, gritting his teeth and looking askance awkwardly. "Just saying, you're not usually so glum," he answered with a hard, dismissive tone.
If you have time to think about what I'm feeling, you're clearly starving. Maybe I should feed you some fist?
"Yeah, whatever," said Azriel, to cut off the conversation before Lewis could get on both of their cases. Lewis, who'd already been opening his mouth to speak with a displeased look, shut it the moment he saw the situation conclude. He shook his head at their behavior and proceeded to lead the way through the market.
---
Quest Mechanics
About time to introduce the mechanics for this Quest.
As mentioned within the informational Rules threadmark, all notable activity accretes a certain metafictional resource; henceforth, we'll call that accreted material appropriately: Sacrificial Points. After all, to excel on a world such as this demands someone exceptionally delusional... or devoted.
While I am hesitant to offer hard and consistent numbers on account of the entirely relative and subjective nature of the criteria, SP are accreted based on my own perception of how engaged (as well as, selfishly, engaging, to myself) the Quest's participants are in general; everything from discussion to fanwork can help you accumulate more SP; even a short reaction to a chapter or a particular paragraph shall be considered. Especially, considerably impressive or high-quality work can earn even more.
Given that my previous Quest didn't finish, all its currency was converted into Sacrificial Points. Until now, your combined earnings sum to 18.3 Sacrificial Points.
Now, I present you with a rare offer. Given I've seen and heard there was a lot of fear and some amount of discontent and concern over the Character Flaws, I've elected to offer the thread a unique opportunity to you to stake your Sacrificial Points to ease the associated burdens.
[ ] Choose a major Character Flaw - The default. Proceed as planned originally.
[ ] Choose a minor Character Flaw [16 SP] - Instead of a major Character Flaw, the third Flaw shall be reduced into a minor variant. Alternatively, you can choose either Lovelorn or Ambition to be reduced to a minor version by adulthood, with the third Flaw becoming major instead.
[ ] No third Flaw - You do not have a third Flaw but complete Ascension as normal. As a consequence, your generation of Sacrificial Points is irrevocably reduced by 40%, unless at any point you develop a third Flaw, which is unlikely. Furthermore, you relinquish all Sacrificial Points you've accumulated thus far; [18.3 SP].
There is virtually no other method through which expenditure of Sacrificial Points can mitigate or erase a Character Flaw, save maybe through spending them to enable situations in which the character can naturally ease them on their own.
---
Further, we should discuss the character-centric mechanics: Attributes and Skills.
Attributes are a measurement of the character's raw capabilities.
Common Attributes are the physical trio: Strength, Constitution, and Agility, which represent their own domains of corporeal development and condition. However, other Attributes may exist and shall appear occasionally, such as mental, social, or abstract Attributes; if they do appear and their role isn't evident from their name, their precise function shall be explained. Attribute increases are linear, unless otherwise noted at any point.
Each increase of an Attribute (in other words, every + to an Attribute) represents, roughly, about one-fifth of the expected capability of a peak-human, as well as a microscopically minute elevation of its conceptual flexibility, convenience and power; this notation is somewhat imperfect and breaks down at extremely high levels, but is essentially accurate for the general purposes and needs of this Quest, at least until you've started to ascend to city-shattering heights.
To summarize, if a character can be said to possess 5 in all Physical Attributes, then they are at - or very, very slightly beyond - a peak-human level physically. On the other hand, 50 in all Physical Attributes represents about tenfold that same capacity, and so on, and so on. Naturally, since you're still only a mere normal human in the prologue, your Attributes won't be very impressive for now, as you can't train them to a beyond peak-human level (and indeed, may even struggle to reach that marker.)
Skills are a measurement of the character's proficiency in various domains of talent, ability, or knowledge (theoretical or practical.) There are, in quintessential practice, too many Skills to realistically list. However, a handful that could serve as representative examples: Business, Travel, Brawling, Presence, Art, Engineering, Tactics, and more. One can further narrow their proficiency into specific specialties, which allows fast learning, such as Business (Investments) or Presence (Intimidate) and more in that vein. Broader Skills are slightly slower to advance overall; narrower Skills or specialties are much faster.
Having Skills with overlap is not redundant, as they are determined by their components; assuming you've attained partial mastery of a pre-existing Skill which covers certain techniques, then learning of a secondary Skill would be accelerated to a degree commensurate with your mastery of its relative; for instance, if two Skills were to somehow overlap in as much as 90% of their contents and you mastered one completely, learning the other to a similar threshold of mastery would be (imperfectly, not accounting for flawed learning methods, etc,) take about 90% less time than normal, as you wouldn't have to retread the same material.
Generally, Skills are represnted by ascending tiers of proficiency, which are numbered and exponentially more difficult to attain. Their values can be roughly summarized as such:
- A Skill at 0 represents total and complete unfamiliarity; generally, even passing awareness of a discipline's existence merits a fractionally higher rating
- At 3 represents the average expected starting level of an untalented but diligent professional
- At 5 represents the attainment of an average adept or a passionate and talented practitioner after several consistent years of training
- At 7 represents a lifetime of back-breaking work and achievement; a true master of martial art or the doctrines of medicine or engineering, etc
Generally, I won't bother listing or keeping track of Skills which are under Tier 2, as most humans can reasonably be said to possess hundreds of them at varying, highly fractional levels which change all the time as new, minor facts are learned or experiences acquired.
---
After about a month of deliberation, Azriel decided to Remain a Priest, and therefore won't travel to New Pandemonium. Hermes, while he'll be slightly disappointed with the decision, seeing it as throwing away an incredible opportunity, will ultimately accept and respect it.
Now, decide Azriel's Actions for the future; from age 13 to about age 15-16. These are additional spheres of focus on top of Azriel's natural, bare minimum inclinations; he's already pursuing basic maintenance of relationships with people he most cares about, as well as studying the Rites, if without any particularly outstanding zeal or great effort.
Choose three (3) options. In return for [5 SP], you may choose an additional option (only once.) It'd be downright arrogant to make use of this offer alongside a reduction of your Flaw to minor level. Voting by plan is highly recommended if you wish to avoid making a mess of this.
[ ] Gatecracking 101 - Advance Skill: Gatecracking to [2.3]. A minor chance to interact with a Gate.
[ ] Ambitious Gatecracking - Advance Skill: Gatecracking to [3.0]. Azriel acquires permission to interact with one Gate at will. Requires Gatecracking 101.
[ ] Conditioning - Ambition won't lay its own foundation: start and maintain a training regimen over the years. Gain +Strength and Constitution.
[ ] Hardcore Conditioning - Additional +Physical Attributes; can't garner more as consequence of malnutrition and environment (No Man's Land.) Advance Skill: Exercise to [3.0]. Req. Conditioning. Can be an immense advantage in early game, don't underestimate the worth of being a cut above the norm.
[ ] Ritemastery - Advance Skill: Rites of Ash and Dust to [2.9]. Learn the Rite of Renewal, as well as one other minor Rite
[ ] Ritemastery II - Advance Skill: Rites of Ash and Dust to [3.6]. Learn the Rite of Renewal, three other minor Rites. Requires Ritemastery.
[ ] Socialize: Leonora I - Your senior Priestess, while lacking in ambition compared to you, is still competent and dependable. +Leonora, advance Skill: Medicine to [2.0]
[ ] Socialize: Leonora II - Aim to develop as many fond memories with Leonora as you can. Additional ++Leonora, learn a secret, [???]. Req. Leonora I
[ ] Socialize: Hermes I - The Elder Priest of the Wasteland, as well as one of its most respected members. +Hermes, potentially learn a secret Rite (Ash and Dust)
[ ] Socialize: Hermes II - Get this old man to relax a bit and learn more about your mentor. Additional ++Hermes, [???]. Req. Hermes I
[ ] Seek Out Contacts - If you're to stand on your own and climb, you'll need reliable friends. Preferably, friends outside the Priesthood. Acquire contacts in No Man's Land.
[ ] Learn a Trade - One that isn't Gatecracking. This can only cover Skills which you could plausibly learn in No Man's Land: subterfuge, skulduggery, barter, stealth. Complex Skills, such a most combat Skills, are difficult, dangerous, and slow to learn without a dedicated trainer. Dedicated trainers cost money. You do not have money.
[ ] Write-in - Certain other actions which don't contradict Azriel's character may be considered if proposed, at 10-20% reduced efficacy compared to any of the above. You could, for instance, attempt to Socialize with Graham, although the benefits of doing so are dubious at best (aside from burying the hatchet with him, which'd at least benefit your mood.)
