Stealing Chains
Seventh Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
For all that she valued her art with the fierce possessive pride of a treasure that could never be taken from her, Siduri of Dis had to admit there were a few unfortunate limitations to the weaving of enchantment. Firstly, the unfortunate fact that most could be thrown off with a sufficient effort of will, and not just by beings mighty or strong in magic. In the Academy, she had seen starving slaves throw off shackles forged by master sorcerers, not often in the grand scheme of things, but often
enough, about one time out of every twenty. If one planned to snare a ship or three, twenty was not an unreasonable number of officers to mind, and the Heir of Iblis was not in the habit of using starving slaves as officers. No, he used very well fed slaves that dined on man-flesh, usually figuratively, though not always.
Fortunately, a
geas allowed not even the strongest of will to deny its touch... if only the target was unfortunate or otherwise restrained for the full ten minute long ritual it was required to place it. Killing an Efreeti officer was usually hard enough. Restraining one for that amount of time on their own ship would be an exercise in madness without a different sort of binding in play.
The sorceress took a long look at the sword ship just barely visible through the haze of ash and smoke. In the distance she could hear the parting calls of the whale pods that had helped the Golden Wind scout for it. They would not fight, of course, these were not their wars, but they were grateful enough to Yrten, Siduri, and their patron for setting up gem harvesting to keep an eye on things.
"Such beautiful songs His children sing," the priestess with hair of flame and cloak of shadow said wistfully.
"Are you ready for this?" Siduri asked. "If something goes wrong on your end..."
"Then we shall 'only' have a dragon sorceress to aid us while I make our escape," Lady Melisandre said dryly, motioning to the blue-grey dragon perched watchfully on her shoulder. Siduri was not quite sure how old the priestess was, though she suspected far older than she looked, and on a world that had been living on dregs of magic until a few scant years ago, that was no small thing. For just a moment, however, the spark of excitement in her eyes made her seem truly as young and carefree as a raider on her first looting. The moment passed, and the mask she wore as easily as Yrten wore his armor fixed itself in place. And then the shadows twisted and they were away...
***
"By the Will of R'hllor who is Fire,
obey!" the blessed amulet in the priestess' hand bled crimson light through her fingers and the Efreeti could do nothing but heed her words, for the very fire in his veins compelled him beyond the power of any talisman to ward, as thoroughly ensnared as Siduri would have managed for a common merchant captain.
"Sit," she commanded. As the officer sat, Siduri recited the ritual of
geas and at its height a command she doubted he had expected: "You will obey your captain orders given from this moment forth to the letter and the spirit, in mind and in deed never wavering from your duty, never questioning his orders or his person."
The best of gaesa did not go against the grain, against prior oath and character, but enforced them. Unlike with true domination, the enchanter could not adjust the reins in motion.
On they went through every last senior officer, past traps and tricks, past wards and far too close an encounter with a trio of fire giants who almost literally tripped over them in the tight corridors, but in the end they bound all eight of the officers to tightest obedience to their own captain. Then, after drawing the captain into his cabin with a touch of commotion from Zavaenia, they snared him too. Him Melisandre kept, for now.
The whole ship was snared as surely as a sparkfin on a line, and with the officers compelled to obey their captain without question, no matter how odd the orders he might give, there was far less of a danger of that eternal bane of enchanters, someone close to their victims removing the leverage they had, either by magic or by withdrawing support.
"A good job on the first ship, but from what I heard of the admiral the brass bastard sent out here, he will not be as easily bound," Siduri warned.
"He'd better be. I'd hate to have nothing to do while you two snare the whole fleet, ship by ship, and squadron by squadron."
OOC: The idea is to use geas to bind everyone below whoever is technically and officially in charge of whatever group they subverted to unquestioning obedience of that hierarchy and have Mel puppet that one with her command elemental supernatural ability. Said ability scoffs at most protections from enchantment because it's not even a spell. Siduri could do this trick on her own, but she just does not have the HD to command rather than rebuke Efreeti. Of course even Mel would not quite manage that if she did not have a magic item which increases her HD by 3 for the purposes of commanding fire elemetals. Only a brief mention of whales unfortunately, they would not really fit with Sidur's flow of consciousness. I'll get those numbers up tomorrow. Not yet edited
