[X] - Sometimes life just deals you a bad hand, there's worse ways to go ( + Willpower )
It takes solid brass ones to go up and cite precedent at the freaking Despot of all people.
[X] - Fish him up to higher ground. The rooftops are probably safer than the water right now and it'll give him a chance to catch up. ( + Athletics, Speciality: Urban Traversal )
Let's be parkour detectives, yo.
[X] - Find another way in, the water hasn't damaged this place but it has washed a lot of intriguingly climbable things up against its walls. (Athletics)
The little yellow puppy clambers from your telescoping pole onto your arm and shakes himself off, spraying you very thoroughly and not really getting himself much drier in the process. Resigning yourself to the smell of wet dog, you tuck him into the pocket you usually use to stash away things that other people don't need to worry about for a bit. He squirms a bit to try and get back out but eventually he settles down because it's warm in there and the leather lining is pretty comfy. Picking out a quick route to higher ground you reach up to grab the canvas rail of a market stall and try a swing for higher ground, the wet metal immediately threatening to slip out of your grip. There's a gut wrenching moment as you almost utterly embarrass yourself with a belly flop into the water but you catch yourself and hang onto the rail and reconsider. Do you have enough- yes you have enough room, you swing on the rail like a trapeze and then a pull and a tuck of your hips and you're using the leverage of the bar to get yourself up on the rail, pulling yourself up so you can quickly dance along the thin metal bar as it shakes in its joints and jump to the roof the stall was set against before it collapses.
It's hard to see far in this relentless downpour but you spy a blob of yellow arcing through the muddy river below and the occasional guiding bark gives away the mother dog and her children. Taking a second to map it out in your head, you have a pretty good idea where she might be going, and how to get there yourself. Making sure again that you're still the temporary owner of one soggy puppy, you plant your feet and surrender yourself to speed.
The chaotic sprawling mass of roofs would seem impassable to someone who hasn't spent the time to learn which mortar is soft and will give way to a sturdy toecap, or which climbs will leave you with just enough space to push off a wall, shimmy up a little with back pressed into smooth plaster and then slip onto a nice sloped roof which you can slide down to a slight overhang that will stop you from flying out into the street below. Experience like that can only be bought by someone who's spent their whole life running around a city from something or other.
You need to give yourself a little more leeway than usual because you're carrying a wriggly passenger who isn't quite as enthusiastic about full-speed somersaults as you are, but that's hardly a difference as you glide through it all until your lungs burn and your muscles ache. It's wet and slippery and you nearly miss your grip on a chimney that you're using to shimmy back to ground level but it seems you were almost right about their destination. There's a little nook that's formed out of the swept away remains of some poor bastards shack and the whole lot of them are using it to get dry. The mother looks up and growls at you as you approach, and doesn't stop until you've very carefully set down a very dizzy puppy, who only throws up on your hands a little as thanks for the ride.
You're panting like a, well, like a dog, and at this point it's down to hope that the burning pain in your chest is your lungs and not a heart attack, but the little guy wags his tail and so does his family. It takes you a few minutes before you no longer feel like throwing up, and the pins and needles of going all-out are still with you an hour later. But for all the things this damn city takes, every now and again you can give a little something back.
----
"Let me tell you a story," you say as you quickly duck in out of the rain, the Midnight Tales Trading house has a roof that extends out a good bit further than the walls creating a pocket of dry space too tempting for you to ignore right now.
(Perception+Awareness = 2 successes. Caught a glimpse)
"What part of 'piss off' didn't you hear?" the guard growls as she takes a step toward you. You catch a fleeting glimpse of a white of a bone handle jutting out from hip that had been hidden by her leather cloak until now and you can guess what it's attached to. You'd see the end of a sword from the shape of her cloak and while daggers are a popular carry item in Gem, they're pretty useless for guards who'd be hopelessly outmatched against anyone who brought a real weapon.
A Flame Piece then, far too expensive a thing for a mercenary guard to own so the Midnight Tales must have been so spooked by the murder they've provided her with one for a little extra security. You've never seen someone actually use one, but stories in Gem of the horrific things Firedust weapons can do to a person are a popular topic. Gem may have its considerable wealth endure on its namesake, but the mountain of firedust buried deep underground could be worth even more than all those gemstones put together.
"Care for a smoke?" you add quickly before she gets wild ideas that she should start waving the Flame Piece about. You offer her a still mostly dry cheroot from outstretched fingers, it's only a cheap rolled smoke but their appeal in the cold is universal. Your many pockets are well-waterproofed so you've even got dry matches, which normally aren't very impressive in the firedust capital of the world, but today they turn a cheap smoke into a luxury.
"You can talk," she says a few minutes later, as the two of you are smoking and looking out at the rain, and you've discovered that her name is Raicho, that she comes from a peaceful and incredibly boring sounding country up north called the Lap. She came this way to make her fortune and it's taking longer than she liked, but she has two children back home and she's going to send them to learn numbers and get comfy indoor jobs if it kills her. Which it might. "Then you can go fetch the paperwork."
She's still got her dumb looking mask on, but the long nosepiece of the jackal actually helps catch the warmth of the cheroot and you're starting to get a little jealous of it. It's padded with leather so it's probably quite comfy in this weather. It would be nice to be able to look her in the eyes properly before you lie your ass off to her, but you'll just have to hope a good lie can get through metal.
"Guild Prince is a big deal" you say, drawing on your admittedly shaky grasp of how the Guild operates. "Like a Head of House or a Commander, top of the chain. "
"About a year and a half back," you start, "there was a terrible killing. Assassination you might call it. About a girl, I think, but that's just my opinion. Victim was a great big burly one," you holding up your arms in a muscle pose gets another frown from her. "Big dumb son of one of the Dragons from over the ocean, family must have hated him to send him all the way out here but you know what the stories are about Dragons and family. They get real weird about it."
Corner of your eye you see Raicho's listening as the smoke curls out of her mask's nostrils, which is good or else you were in for a miserable walk.
"Anyway murder done in passion, so an easy case to solve especially when Rankar himself has taken an interest. They knew who was responsible and were hammering on their door before the sun even crossed the sky. But the killer ain't home, you got all the Despot's men lined up around the place and the big man himself looking livid and rather than try flee like any sensible person out comes the killer's father, eyes full of tears. 'He is not here!' he cries, getting on his knees before the Despot. 'He has been sent away. He will never trouble you again.' Old Rankar demands that if he doesn't give over his son, he and his whole household will be put to the sword. 'I know what has been done is terrible,' the father says, 'but I must protect my son.'"
Well, out of respect for the father's faithfulness, Rankar cuts his head off quickly. And then the rest of the household. And the servants. And the laborers." You take a long, slow drag of your cheroot, "all quick, all clean, all dead. Because when the Dragons came calling he wanted to be damn sure they knew he'd made sure it'd never happen again."
You aren't going to mention that the Dragons were someone the Despot tried to keep sweet, while the only reason he'd get involved in the death of a Guild Prince would be to gleefully rub salt in the wound, but you're banking she doesn't know that and you see it's a good investment as her grim expression deepens into a frown.
"I just don't want to tell the Guild we're being given the runaround. I've been in front of Rankar once, I don't want a second run of it," you add, hoping for a little sympathy here. You are being hard done by after all.
The smoke billows out of the nosepiece of her mask as she harrumphs. "Bullshit," she says, but she checks with her fellow inside the door, and it opens to you. "Bullshit," she repeats.
"Maybe" you say, tossing your stub of a smoke into the floodwaters and sweeping inside. "But why risk it?"
Intelligence + Bureaucracy + Laws = 2 successes, required some bribery but enough to get there.
"Oh, you must be the famous Miss Feathers! My deepest apologies for the trouble, you know guards, stubborn walls of meat the lot of them," you're greeted by a blond merchant in dark glasses. His smile is too wide and he's much too happy to see you. You had wondered if Raicho was just irritatingly by-the-book but seeing her boss you're pretty sure now she had orders to delay as long as she could.
"Miss Zenteno," you correct him automatically, and by the way his mouth hangs open for just a moment he's having the exact same thought as you right now. Shit, someone else is working this case? "I'm going to see the crime scene right now."
"Of course, of course," he rallies so quickly you'd swear it was just your imagination, "such a nasty business, hardly a way for a man in our profession to take his leave. Better in your bed surrounded by beautiful women, am I right?" He walks backwards as he keeps ahead of you, looking a little bit like a fat duck trying to keep a piece of bread from escaping.
"Of course we sealed up the room the second we discovered the body, can't have ruffians tromping through and disturbing evidence that an investigator of your stature doubtless requires…"
Now this one, this one could use a good brick to the face, you muse as you sweep through marbled halls and trophy cases full of bones of monsters that this particular toad definitely had no hand in killing. As your hanger-on fumbles with his keys you take a minute to examine a mural twice as tall as you are, a starlit sky in ultramarine blue fading to black, a camp surrounded by red and yellow and white desert flowers, the small silhouettes of men around a campfire with instruments while their pack animals water. The brush strokes are so fine they're practically invisible, and the night sky threatens to swallow you up. The original Midnight Tales. A humble origin on a painting that probably cost a whole vault's worth of silver.
[ ] - Were those flowers Dahlia? They could have made good money selling those for aching bones. They really missed a trick there. ( + Medicine )
[ ] - Meh. The book was better. ( + Linguistics )
[ ] - You know someone who could fence it too. You'd need bigger pockets for a whole painting though, even you have your limits. ( + Larceny )
The first thing that hits you when the door opens is the smell. Sickeningly dry, sweet and metallic, you can taste the scent of blood right on the tip of your tongue and want to wash it out immediately. The room certainly has enough fine wine stashed around it that would do the job.
Cheshago hadn't had a particularly clean death, splatters of blood are flecked across the room some going high enough to touch the lofty ceiling above and eventually coming to a final rest in a pool of his own blood that has marred the colourful and no doubt very expensive carpets a ghastly dark red. You'd have expected a fat man from the amount of blood that had been carved out of him and you aren't disappointed, a bit of a paunch had been a very polite description, Cheshago can at least go back into the cycle proud that he's eaten more than his fair share of meals.
Intelligence + Investigation= 6 successes. Crushed it.
Right away your eyes hone in on the jade pin styled like a small flame that's still binding Cheshago's black bun of hair together. The dark green polished gemstone is a sign of wealth like no other, Jade is the currency of the incredibly rich and no thief or common hired killer would pass up a chance to fatten their pockets with an easy score like that.
You decide to leave the body till last though, give a chance for your stomach to settle and get used to the smell before getting even closer to it. Instead you examine the blood splatters and try to work out how they were made. They'd flicked off something and Cheshago certainly has a fair number of punctures on his body if the blood spots staining his silk robes are anything to go by, but even with someone really hacking away at a resisting body you wouldn't expect this much of a mess from a murder. It's excessive, incredibly excessive and some of them must surely have been inflicted after death. So it was deliberate? What would the point of that be?
A few years experience hunting the lost lambs of Gem has taught you to not get stuck on a rabbit hole of enquiry so you set that question aside for a moment. There is more to unpick from this scene before you really get down to making some wild theories. Like how one trail of blood that splashed across the desk has been neatly bisected by something blocking it. Walking around the room you try to imagine a position that the attacker could have been but nothing really works unless it was some ludicrous scenario like Cheshago being hung from the ceiling and stuck like a pig.
Wits+Awareness = 3 successes. More than enough.
Of course! It wasn't the killer which had blocked Cheshago's blood splatter, it was whatever was on this now suspiciously spotless desk. Raicho's Boss had said they hadn't touched the crime scene but it would not surprise you in the least to find out Raicho's Boss is a liar. Or perhaps you've found the only honest merchant in Gem and the thief had taken whatever was here with them? But why would they kill Cheshago so messily then only take the Midnight Tales' things? You are going to have some words after this, if they're going to keep making cooperation difficult they clearly have something to hide.
Intelligence + Medicine= 1 successes. She's not trained in medicine, so this is pretty lucky actually!
There's no avoiding the corpse any longer. You wish you could say don't deal with dead bodies but you haven't led so charmed a life. You just don't do it very often and you quickly remember why as the gorge in your throat threatens to escape as you unstick limbs thick with blood and cut away silk clothes that have been pressed into wounds and make stripping the corpse just that little bit more difficult.
The cuts are deep and numerous, haphazard in placement and furthering your idea that they were done more out of malice and deception than an intent to kill. It couldn't be more than a dagger blade that inflicted them from the size of the stab wounds but there is no sign of slashes and no ragged wounds. Cheshago hadn't been able to fight back or even struggle when these were inflicted. Or had he? Under the fingernails you notice the shining glitter of gold and you pull his hand up to get a better look. It is flakes rather than paint and a quick pull with a pair of tweezers gets you a tiny piece of it that you can play with. It's soft and bends easily, but doesn't break. Is this actual gold and if so where had it come from? You aren't a metallurgist but you know gold is useless for anything but jewelry, so it isn't from a weapon and nothing else in this room has a matching golden shine. Whatever it was, it's gone now.
Cutting open the robe on the chest you find a useful hidden pocket that matches the kind you favour, deep enough to hide something of reasonable size and lined with fur and a fine leather to keep whatever is inside both dry and well cushioned. You feel a little touch of respect at the gentle reminder that the Guild Princes might enjoy a fine life, but they aren't stupid.
Looting the dead is bad luck, but that rule probably doesn't really apply to those trying to find their killers so you cut the pocket free first before dumping it out on the ground away from the stained bloody mats.
A simple leather bound journal comes out first, bound with a leather string that pins a peafowl feathered quill to the front of it. A personal journal? You quickly crack it open to be faced with an incomprehensible wall of scratches and looping circles. Pages upon pages of the stuff and no helpful key to be seen at the front of the back. Staring at it right now isn't going to help you make any more sense of it so you close it back up and rebind it with the leather cord and gently set aside.
There's still something caught in the pocket so you give it a good shake and an ornate gold key comes tumbling out first making a disconcertingly loud clang as it bounces off the wooden floor. Inlaid with two bright yellow gems to form a stylized lions head at the bow, the bit is a cross shaped piece with grooves cut into it quite unlike anything you'd ever seen before. Incredibly fanciful for a key, if this is the cost they put into the key then whatever it unlocks must be worth a ridiculous fortune. You pick it up to check it for scratches that might match the gold under Cheshago's fingernails but you don't see any, it's in absolutely pristine condition, even your little drop hadn't put a dent in it. If gold is soft enough to be scratched off then what is this stuff?
If anyone knows about these items they haven't mentioned it, now the question is: will they be missed?
[ ] - Keep the Gold Flake
[ ] - Leave the Gold Flake
[ ] - Keep the Golden Lion Key
[ ] - Leave the Golden Lion Key
[ ] - Keep the Coded Journal
[ ] - Leave the Coded Journal
The loud impact of the key against the floor suddenly makes you aware of how quiet it's been. In the dark corner of the room you spot movement and become suddenly aware that you are not alone.
You hear the growl first, and as your eyes adjust to the light you see the outline. The familiar outline. That's Guild Prince Cheshago all right, quite thoroughly out of his body. Faintly translucent, his face is half taken up by a fanged maw packed with far too many teeth, his long black hair is matted and mangy and slightly prehensile, and there's no intelligence whatsoever in his eyes - only a deep, burning hunger.
You are struck with three thoughts in rapid succession.
First, it's pretty damn impossible for this to really be him - an improperly handled body usually takes a few days to release a bestial hunger spirit like this.
Which leads right to the Second, either Cheshago has been dead a lot longer than you've been told - and you're pretty sure he hasn't been given the body had still been warm-ish while you undressed it, or something spiritual had gone really badly wrong here.
On the Flat Earth, the human soul is composed of two parts. The higher soul, or hun, is the seat of reason, intelligence and memory. Should it persist beyond death rather than returning to the cycle of reincarnation it becomes a ghost: a stilted being powerfully driven by the memories of its life, but nonetheless one that can be spoken to and reasoned with. These can be called upon for their wisdom, magically summoned for service or even enslaved by the exceptionally powerful, or develop cordial long-term relationships with their descendents in places where the veil between this life and the next is thin. Perhaps more relevantly to the situation at hand, they can also be questioned on how they died.
The charming creature currently stinking up the parlor is not that. The lower soul, or po, is the seat of a human's feelings, emotions, and animalistic instincts. If proper burial rites are not observed to lay it to rest, it will rise up after a few days and become a hungry ghost. Deprived of reason and memory it is a bestial thing that seeks blood. It is not, however, much better at killing things than the human that it came from; a battlefield full of the restless dead can be a real nightmare realm, but one paunchy merchant prince might be more manageable.
Oh yes, and a not very distant third hot on the heels of the others, you are currently alone in a room with a monster.
To someone who's never dealt with this sort of thing before, being stuck in a room with an animalistic half-soul that's just become aware of you would be the stuff of horror stories.
You have never dealt with this sort of thing before and you really don't like horror stories.
Breathless panic has you go for your pockets, if you're about to die you aren't going to go easy. Your hand closes around…
[ ] - Long needles kissed with salt are a bane to the restless dead, or at least you heard a story about it once. You carry them mainly to quickly prove people wrong who pretend they were possessed when committing a crime, maybe it's time to test the tales. (+Melee, +Specialty: Improvised Weapons)
[ ] - Screw fighting this thing! Duck outside, toss in a grenade you've packed with nails and just the lightest touch of firedust you'd gotten your hands on, shut the door and let them deal with it. (+Thrown, +Specialty: Improvised Grenades)
[ ] - No, really, screw fighting this thing! Your contract said nothing about fighting evil ghosts. Throw down a smoke bomb and get out of there fast. There's no telling what it will get up to in a confused state, but that's all kinds of not your problem. (+Dodge, +Specialty: Distractions)
There will be chances after this to gain more skills, but this will finalize character creation. We'll put up a proper character sheet once it's all done. Voting closes in 48 hours.
[X] Keep everything
- I'm worried that "gold" might be orichalcum and really lots of this stuff is concerning, but evidence is evidence
[X{ - Screw fighting this thing! Duck outside, toss in a grenade you've packed with nails and just the lightest touch of firedust you'd gotten your hands on, shut the door and let them deal with it. (+Thrown, +Specialty: Improvised Grenades)
-Thrown is hardly the best combat skill by the book, but I'm trusting the QM to not screw us here, and it's not like we're getting charms anyway. Plus, melee with a spirit, as a mortal no less? No thank you!
[X] - You know someone who could fence it too. You'd need bigger pockets for a whole painting though, even you have your limits. ( + Larceny )
We have a background in occidental thievery, so might as well bump up Larceny while we have the chance.
[X] Keep everything
Flakes for bribery, the Key and Book for plot coupons. Never leave good loot behind.
[X] - No, really, screw fighting this thing! Your contract said nothing about fighting evil ghosts. Throw down a smoke bomb and get out of there fast. There's no telling what it will get up to in a confused state, but that's all kinds of not your problem. (+Dodge, +Specialty: Distractions)
We're a noodle. Time to get the fusilli out of here before something breaks us over their knee. Seriously, fighting should be way down on our list right now.
[X] - Meh. The book was better. ( + Linguistics )
[X] - Leave the Gold Flake
[X] - Leave the Golden Lion Key
[X] - Keep the Coded Journal [X] - No, really, screw fighting this thing! Your contract said nothing about fighting evil ghosts. Throw down a smoke bomb and get out of there fast. There's no telling what it will get up to in a confused state, but that's all kinds of not your problem. (+Dodge, +Specialty: Distractions)
The flake of gold is neat and all, but it's not important to have on us. Some thaumaturge might be able to use it for tracking, but that's not us, and it seems a bit too small for using as a bribe, if it was under a nail. The lion key is probably orichalcum, and hell no. I'd bet it involves some bullshit from the First Age, and we don't want to be anywhere near that. Big players start squeezing out little people when that stuff shows up. The journal, though, looks like a coded notebook. That it's in Guild Can't isn't great, but hopefully we can decode that, and we can say that only the key was in his hidden pocket. As for the fighting? Hell no. Better to set the building on fire and run, if we have to, and it goes well with out other dodge specialty.
Oh we also made a little change to the quest pitch, since it sounded a bit like we were gonna eventually murder people no matter the decisions. Instead now we'll be following their story and we'll jump off when it reaches a natural end. We'll still be doing the legacy perk if you retire to a farm somewhere, so don't feel you have to jump into a wood-chipper at the last moment to get it.
Also that natural end might still be dying horribly, but now it doesn't have to be.
Art Appreciation: Meh. The book was better. ( + Linguistics ) 2
You know someone who could fence it too. You'd need bigger pockets for a whole painting though, even you have your limits. ( + Larceny ) 1
Investigation Findings: Keep everything 2
Leave the Gold Flake 1
Leave the Golden Lion Key 1
Keep the Coded Journal 1
Battle Plan: No, really, screw fighting this thing! Your contract said nothing about fighting evil ghosts. Throw down a smoke bomb and get out of there fast. There's no telling what it will get up to in a confused state, but that's all kinds of not your problem. (+Dodge, +Specialty: Distractions) 2
Screw fighting this thing! Duck outside, toss in a grenade you've packed with nails and just the lightest touch of firedust you'd gotten your hands on, shut the door and let them deal with it. (+Thrown, +Specialty: Improvised Grenades) 1
Guancyto is away for the weekend but they've kindly promised to threadmark anything I do so there shouldn't be too long a wait. Writing begins!
I'll also try get the character sheet on the main page updated to show her full spread. Character Building is officially over now so shouldn't be any more inner thoughts flavour choices unless it's somehow important to the plot (Eg: Fair Folk Nonsense). Hope we didn't take too long getting this off the blocks for real, it's our first time!
Merits
Contacts 1 (Criminal Contacts - Gem)
Iron Stomach 1
Fleet of Foot 4
Resource 1
Gadgets 2 (Character may, within reason, claim to have a miniature form of existing equipment to hand. Equipment is one use per scene.)
Intimacies
If there's no law but what we make for ourselves, I'll make it myself (Defining)
Too clever by half (Major)
Runts should stick together (Minor)
A full belly makes everything better (Minor)
You could feel with your fingers that the small wooden ball still had some of the carved grooves from when it was a childs toy. With patience, a little bit of swearing and a hand drill you'd turned that toy into a pretty good container for a smoke bomb. You use your thumb to push off the blob of wax keeping the powdered sugar and refined saltpeter nice and dry and hammer the metal striker hard, praying it makes enough of a spark to light properly before you toss it.
The sugar burns so much better than you'd expect and with a hiss as the heated ball burns your fingers you half throw, half drop the smoke bomb towards Cheshago's toothy ghost. The wooden ball pinwheels on the ground as it spews out a thick stream of white smoke. The hungry ghosts robes shimmer as it steps around the billowing ball and advances, white smoke rising up round its legs parting in billowing wisps as it advances. It might be feral but it's damn quick on the uptake about what the smoke bomb means and lurches at you while it can still see. You dive sideways into the smoke to escape hands that have grown disturbingly long fingernails, it's not a graceful landing on all fours as you hit the deck but a sprawl, your vision completely swamped and throat burning as the air becomes thick with smoke but you had the good sense to remember where the door was and scramble on all fours for it. Clambering up when your hand slaps what you hope is the edge of the room you fumble about for the door handle, feeling it bump into your side as you roll your body along the wall searching desperately for the exit.
Hands sweaty from panic you grab onto this lifeline as hard as you can and wrench down, pressing your shoulder to the door. It doesn't budge, the only thing you can coax out of it as you shake the handle up and down frantically is the rattle of a simple mechanism refusing to play along. That slimy bastard had locked you in here!
You stop rattling the door handle as you hear the Hungry Ghost through the smoke making horrible guttural snuffling noises with a throat that doesn't sound like it was made for any human body.
Wits 2 + Awareness 3 = 1 Success. Not enough, Sharell loses track of where the ghost was in the room.
Pressing your back to the wall you hold back a groan of revulsion as you feel the sticky sensation of Cheshago's blood from the stained walls seep into your hair. Bone-deep terror is a good motivator to keep dead quiet right now. You can't work out what that noise it's making is meant to achieve, is it trying to sniff you out? The mix of burnt sugar and blood in this room was a disgusting, overpowering stench and you're pretty sure it'd easily disguise your sweat, so it surely couldn't do that.
Sharell tries to Go to Ground.
Sharell: Dexterity 3 + Stealth 3 - Action Penalty 3 = 0 Success
Hungry Ghost: Senses 5 - Smoke Bomb 2 = 1 Successes
She fails and is spotted.
Hungry Ghost uses Withering Claw Attack.
Claw 10 - Smoke Bomb 2 = 2 Successes
Sharell has an Evasion of 3 so this isn't enough a hit. Technically she has a penalty in the smoke too and should be on 2, but her speciality in Distractions helps to get it back up to 3
A single dice roll for people to turn up to investigate failed.
The Smoke bomb ceases to provide penalties as it disperses thank to silhouettes becoming easy to pick out. Next turn it will be fully gone and cannot be used to hide either.
The wood of the door explodes right beside your head as the Ghosts fingernails hammer themselves into it as if it was made of soft clay. You tilt your head away as splinters bounce off your face and in a panic throw yourself out into the middle of the room, body checking the creature as you barely evade its grasp in the confusion of the smoke.
Initiative
Sharell - 5
Hungry Ghost - 4
Sharell dives for cover.
Sharell: Dexterity 3 + Dodge (+ Distraction) 4 = 1 Success
Was going for heavy cover, but with a poor roll will say she only manages light.
Hungry Ghost uses Withering Claw Attack again.
Claw 10 - Smoke Bomb 2 = 3 Successes
Sharell has an Evasion of 4 with the light cover so this misses!
A two dice roll for people to turn up to investigate failed.
Your foot clips the rug of the room as you run blind into the smoke and you fall forward. Years of experience clambering around the roofs of Gem give you the good sense to break the fall with a roll and your leg kicks against something heavy as you come out of the impromptu tumble. It felt heavy and right now something heavy between you and a monster felt like a great idea.
Feeling out the lacquered wood with your hand you remember the big heavy desk in the room and crawl for the space underneath it, sliding and kicking your body along the ground as you scramble for cover. A deafening bang makes you press body flat on the ground, you were making more than enough noise for the Hungry Ghost to follow you but whatever it used to sense you clearly didn't work for desks as you heard a flurry of harsh grunts as it pried its hand loose of the thick wood.
Gasping for a breath you almost begin to push yourself out the other side of the desk, the chair grinds along the floor annoyingly slowly as you try to get it out of the way so you just give it a good shove to tip it over and finish the crawl through. Your leg snaps straight and a shock runs up your spine as you pull on a leg that suddenly won't move. You feel pressure on your foot and can see the outline of the creature in the thinning smoke down by your legs. The fuckers bitten into your boot! Giving it a good kick in the face with the other, you're really glad for the metal toe caps as you hear the growls muffled by a bite choke and then get more frantic.
It has you and doesn't want to let go, but thankfully your boots are stronger than it's bite and a few more good kicks to the face as you try to drag yourself free you feel it snap away. You pull your legs in fast before it can grab you instead and wriggle past that damn chair.
Initiative
Sharell 5
Hungry Ghost 4
Sharell tries Stealth.
Sharell: Dexterity 3 + Stealth 3 = 1 Success
Hungry Ghost: Senses 5 - Smoke Bomb 2 = 0 Successes
She is hidden, with no combat skills she wouldn't try to attack but if she wanted extended stealth she'd have to try the much harder Go to Ground maneuver and I don't think she'd pass it. So stunting a bit of an accidental attack. Since it's an improvised weapon she loses 1 Initiative to do it. A bookcase is obviously a heavy weapon!
Sharell uses Withering Book Attack. Using a willpower because she is having a bad day.
Sharell: Dexterity 3 = 1 Success + 1 Success from Willpower.
Hungry Ghost's defence is down due to the smoke and the sneak attack, they only got an Evasion of 1.
Move hits and Sharell gains 1 Initiative from the Ghost, recouping her loss. A bookcase does +11 Bashing Damage and Sharell adds 1 from her strength. The Hungry ghost has 3 Soak so Sharell gets to roll 9 damage dice.
Damage 9 = 5 Successes
Withering attacks can only steal initiative, but this is good because you need initiative to do any real damage. The Hungry Ghost goes to -1 Initiative and is in an initiative crash. You don't want to be there! Sharell gets another 5 Initiative from Initiative break.
The Ghost may have a bruised ego but goes for yet another Withering Claw Attack
Claw 10 = 5 Successes
Sharell has an Evasion of 3 so this hits.
Hungry Ghost does 13 Damage, Sharell has 5 soak.
Damage 8 = 2 Successes
The ghost reclaims 2 initiative off Sharell, leaving still a good bit ahead.
The smoke is now gone.
A three dice roll for people to turn up to investigate succeeded! They'll add to combat next round.
Crawling out the other side of the desk you feel relief as the ghost is feral enough that it crawls after you. If it'd been smart enough to just go round the desk you'd have been utterly fucked. Pangs of shock in your leg echo as you walk but you bite through the pain and reach to press one hand to the wall, following it round to the bookcases on the walls before the door. The desk behind you crashes over as the hungry ghost stands up, the unreal strength of it easily tipping over something that you'd have broken your back even trying to lift. Again you try to calm your breath and fade away into the smoke, or at least what's left of it. There must be some ventilation here because it's thinning out way too fast for your liking. You can see the black shape of the Hungry Ghost through the white mist now and you're damn sure it can do the same so you press yourself back against the bookshelves and hope disguising your silhouette will buy you just a moment to think.
You're coming up real short on ideas.
The wood creaks under the monster's feet as it sniffs the air again, misshapen throat gargling breath as its head bobs around. It approaches your position unsteadily, body lilting left and right as it tries to pick you out from all the messy scents of the crime scene. Long fingernails reach out to test the air and they're less than a feet away as they scratch along the wood of the shelf. As the smoke begins to show flecks of colour of their ethereal robes, you don't take the chance this time. You jump and grab the top of the bookcase and kick out your legs to the side, spilling books everywhere as you kick out a shelf to try find purchase and then when they finally stick you heave harder than you've ever done before, spikes of adrenaline giving you a strength you didn't even know you had in you.
It works, you feel the bookcase come away from the wall and begin to fall and you push hard with your hands and let your body swing out away from it. The landing on the wooden floor sucks for you, but it sucks so much worse for the hungry ghost as some fine Southern Texts and expensive imported wood comes crashing down on top of it with a crash so bone shattering the whole room shook.
Nursing what was going to be a splendid bruise if you survived this, you stand up and catch you breath. The Hungry Ghost wasn't moving, with a fleck of annoyance you realise it didn't even give you a chance for a snappy one line before you threw the books at it.
A ghostly hand punched out from the wood with its fingers bunch up to make a deadly bouquet of sharpened fingernails and slashes along your right thigh. You feel the tug on your coat as claw meets leather and then a line of fire is dragged down your flesh. Stumbling back you avoid a second stab, but the scratch does wonders to sharpen your focus. Ghosts, not so easy to kill, right.
Watching books spill off it as it rises, right now you're starting to regret never properly throwing in with a god. You could really use something to pray to right now.
Initiative
Sharell 13
Raicho 8
Hungry Ghost 2
Sharell is using her action to move away so she can withdraw.
Raicho is going straight for a Decisive Attack with the Flame Piece.
Attack 9 = 5 Successes
More than enough to hit. She deals 3 health levels of lethal damage.
The ghost swings for her in return.
Attack 11 - Wound Penalty 1 = 4 Successes.
It needs 5 so this misses.
With it unlikely the Ghost can catch you until its fight is resolved with Raicho one way or another I'm calling this combat over
There's a click and the doors thrown open with an angry cry of "I'm going to take you outside and drown you, you little sh-"
Raicho's threat dies in her throat as she sees the ghostly visage of Cheshago, his lolling tongue, sharpened nails and hungry eyes. You don't waste time and run for her, giving her a pat on the hip as you pass.
"He's all yours!" you say, short of breath but so relieved that you can't help but smile.
The ghost comes screaming after you and runs right into the barrel of Raicho's flame piece as she draws it and fires it point blank. The rumours didn't do it justice, the sound of its discharge is a punch to the ears and you almost lose your balance as a flare of light blazes down the corridor. From the screeching the monster is making that wasn't enough to finally kill it properly but it definitely didn't enjoy the experience. You see as you step back that Raicho's drawing the shortsword at her hip and taking a determined stance in the door.
Yeah she's got this, you'd just get in the way.
Turning down the hall, you try to ignore the pain in your leg as you jog out of the building past confused looking servants and into the downpour, pockets heavy with mysteries and a head full of questions.
Injuries - None
Willpower - 7/8
If you want to know what a Hungry Ghost stats are like they're here. They're actually not that threatening to most starter characters, but Sharell is a noodle.
Merits
Blood Scent: Hungry ghosts adds three successes on any
Perception-based roll to sense the presence of spilt blood,
and can smell battles or massacres from five miles away.
If it is specifically attempting to track or detect a character
who is bleeding, it adds an additional success for each
point of wound penalty that character is suffering.
As a Hungry Ghost it (thankfully) has no ghost charms.
Sharell survived her first combat, but the case is far from solved. Her wound was superficial and doesn't need special attention beyond a little cleaning, which means there's enough daylight for her to go one place before the end of the day.
Pick Two Investigation Targets for the night. You can do any number of actions under each target while you are there unless it specifically states to only pick one. So if you pick The Guild and one other location, you can if you wish do all five Guild Actions, or only one of them.
THE GUILD
[ ] - Renegotiate your Contract. No one told you about killer ghosts.
[ ] - Get details on Cheshago's reasons for being at the Midnight Tales.
[ ] - Press for Details on what's really going on. Clearly they know more than they're saying.
[ ] - Turn in the Code Book.
[ ] - Turn in the Gold Lion Key
MIDNIGHT TALES
[ ] - Go back and check if the ghost is dead and Raicho is okay.
[ ] - Go back and yell at the guy who locked you in. A lot. Then get him to talk.
[ ] - Investigate them legally. Ask contacts around the city about them. Gather rumour.
[ ] - Investigate them illegally. Break into offices, find out info.
[ ] - Turn in the Guild Code Book. Maybe they'll give you something for it?
[ ] - Turn in the Gold Lion Key.
CODED NOTEBOOK
PICK ONE
[ ] - Go home. Brew some tea. See if you can crack this thing.
[ ] - Hit the streets, see if the Sun Market is open even in the rain and if anyone is willing to trade some stolen guild codes for a few favours. It'll make this so much easier.
GOLD LION KEY
PICK ONE
[ ] - You got an old associate working in the grand libraries of House Iblan who will happily do a little research on the Key in exchange for smuggling them in some cheroots. They're not allowed to smoke. It's a tragic existence.
[ ] - Go get it appraised by trustworthy but disreputable sorts. They'll know what it's worth and what its made of at the very least.
[ ] - You found a missing cat for an Antiquitary from overseas about a month back, maybe they're still here? If anyone knows about strange things it's them.
GOLD FLAKES
PICK ONE
[ ] - Gold and silver is House Iblan's trade. Ask around contacts if anyone is trading it under the table, after all the Guild got it from somewhere right?
[ ] - A recently stolen item of gold from the guild. Someone has to know something. Shakedown time.
HUNGRY GHOST
[ ] - Find a priest. Ask them way too much about ghosts.
KILLER
[ ] - Stabbing a body relentlessly, painting the scene in blood. Killers like that are going to be infamous, asking around you contacts will give you a good list of who it might be and just how much trouble you're in.
TEN FEATHERS
PICK ONE
[ ] - The Midnight Tales merchant mentioned her briefly. Who is she and why is she also investigating this? Time to go ask around about this lady.
[ ] - Cut the bullshit. Let's just go find her and ask her directly what she's playing at.
WRITE IN
[ ] - Write in your own idea of where to start.
Every round when choosing what to investigate you also get this choice. If you only catch a few hours sleep you'll boost the chance of success of anything you do, especially if they'd benefit from being done at night or over a long period of time. A missed night of sleep won't be any trouble, it's when you start doing it regularly that things might begin to slide.
BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL
[ ] - Sleep
[ ] - Can't let the case get cold, you'll sleep when you're dead.
CODED NOTEBOOK
PICK ONE
[X] - Go home. Brew some tea. See if you can crack this thing.
GOLD LION KEY
PICK ONE
[X] - You got an old associate working in the grand libraries of House Iblan who will happily do a little research on the Key in exchange for smuggling them in some cheroots. They're not allowed to smoke. It's a tragic existence.
[X] - Can't let the case get cold, you'll sleep when you're dead.
-"When we're dead" may very well be within the next couple days, so there really aren't any downsides to this choice.
The Hungry Ghost wasn't moving, with a fleck of annoyance you realise it didn't even give you a chance for a snappy one line before you threw the books at it.
Lots of things to do, not enough hours in a day. The codebook bears some investigation, but we could probably make use of our time at Midnight Tales while the iron is hot and the body is warm-ish.
MIDNIGHT TALES
[x] - Go back and check if the ghost is dead and Raicho is okay.
[x] - Go back and yell at the guy who locked you in. A lot. Then get him to talk.
[x] - Investigate them legally. Ask contacts around the city about them. Gather rumour.
[ ] - Investigate them illegally. Break into offices, find out info.
Really tempted to do the last one instead, but perhaps it isn't warranted yet.
CODED NOTEBOOK
[x] - Hit the streets, see if the Sun Market is open even in the rain and if anyone is willing to trade some stolen guild codes for a few favours. It'll make this so much easier.
We could probably use the help. Of course, asking around for codes after starting an investigation might be not the most careful course of action, but they have already tried to get rid of us anyway.
Maybe we'll end up turning it in to the Guild, but not before trying to decipher it and seeing if it helps our investigation any.
The key, Ten Feathers and a bit of Ghost Fact Hunt (why was it there?) would be next on my list.
[x] - Can't let the case get cold, you'll sleep when you're dead.
D'aww thanks. Thankfully Third Edition Exalted is so much more forgiving for combat than Second Edition, so low power combat isn't all about who gets the first hit in anymore and instantly explodes the other person. The flow of Withering and Decisive attacks is actually pretty fun to write for a combat scene as it gives you an idea of the pacing. This one for example, was just a flailing mess.
Picking me up on spelling mistakes is good too, I actually told the spellchecker off for prised and then realised that no, I was the wrong one.
CODED NOTEBOOK
PICK ONE
[X] - Go home. Brew some tea. See if you can crack this thing.
On the one hand, there's the possibility that this might just be some encrypted Guild ledger. On the other hand, it might be a book of blackmail material. Either way, we should figure out what it is before we let anyone know we have it. Plus, we're pretty good at Linguistics, so it's worth a shot.
HUNGRY GHOST
[X] - Find a priest. Ask them way too much about ghosts.
Hungry ghosts don't rise up that quickly, supposedly. Time to get an expert opinion, since we know precisely jack and dick about Occult.
BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL
[X] - Sleep
Sleep is precious. We may not have a chance to do it later depending on how the ball rolls. Best get it in while we can.
You shove your hands in your pockets and brace yourself for an oncoming wall of water as you step back out into the elements. For some reason it's not as much of a shock as it was before as it spatters off your hat in sheets. It feels a little more warming. Maybe it's just the adrenaline or an eagerness to be gone but you make excellent time walking away from the House of the Midnight Tales. You could have gleaned a little more there but you already know three things:
There's apparently some kind of famous investigator coming
The Tales might have just tried to kill you for not being said famous investigator?
With the way that flame piece unloaded, even if that fight goes their way (which you see no reason to doubt) the crime scene is going to be an unholy mess of things that are currently on fire, things that were recently on fire and things that have yet to realize the fire is coming.
In short, you're happy to make that particular disaster someone else's problem and you need more spiritual answers. You're pretty sure that a man killed this morning shouldn't be disgorging evil hunger ghosts no matter what happened to him, but you have no idea what went wrong or if that's sort of like the story about how drinking milk while doing it means you can't get pregnant. You know at least three people who came into the world because their parents believed that one. Certainty that you know the rules is a tremendously dangerous thing.
If everything you know about evil hunger ghosts has suddenly come into question, you need an expert opinion and a reassurance that they're not going to start popping up everywhere on this case. Saltpeter bombs are heavy and you are hesitantly willing to admit to that even you may not have enough pockets to deal with that.
The rich in Gem might be able to afford elaborate tombs that inevitably get raided and mortuary priests from abroad with a ten thousand year tradition or something. For someone in your price range the best expert opinion is a man in the business of handling services for the dead and simultaneously handling the worst corpse manglings the city has to offer. That means it's time to visit the nook of Gem affectionately nicknamed the Eatery.
The Eatery is the square of a longstanding rivalry between the three temples of Consumption, the premier purveyors of discount funerary services in the Southern Jewel. The God of Being Consumed By Insects is both freakishly influential and widely despised and although you're no stranger to bugs, poking your head inside that hive during a rainstorm is a little much even for you. The priests of the God of Being Consumed By Jackals are aggressive sorts and not always entirely picky about what's dead and what isn't, which has never sat right with you. A third temple, styled as an eyrie, has fallen into ruin - the rest joined forces and in what was a bracing night out for all concerned, ran the priests of the God of Being Consumed By Vultures out of town some years ago. Your selection is the happy medium between these and you head for the towering termite's nest of little tunnels and hidey-holes that has been made in honour of Templeton, the God of Being Consumed by Rats.
You immediately regret your decision to not go with the bugs. There's a bit of a rise as you come in but it's still flooded up to your ankles and as the candlelight shines on the water it also glints on thousands of beady little eyes. Every pew, every table, every chair, every floating bit of driftwood is entirely covered with rats, refugees from the storm. The great furry throng of rats are silent and although many look at you as you brush past, some of their attention is focused forward on a little man in dark robes and a noticeable stoop to his posture. He's holding a thin white needle of some kind pointing it at… there are about twenty rats in front of him and whenever he points to one with the needle they squeak. Coaxing out squeak upon squeak from them he forms a melody to some hymn that probably sounds a lot better outside the range of human hearing.
You clear your throat and announce yourself.
"Not really a good night for choir practice, is it Niall?" you say and the melody breaks. Rats are sent in a wave squeaking off to their hidey-holes and you suddenly become aware that every single one of those thousands of beady little eyes are now entirely focused on you.
Niall, Priest of Being Consumed By Rats, turns, pushing back greying hair and adjusting his spectacles as he captures his thoughts.
"I had just gotten them lined up and motivated. If you think herding cats is difficult, well…" He grunts in disapproval, but as he stands to face you his dark eyes are smiling, "you've come up in the world since we saw each other last, haven't you? What brings you back to this hole in the wall?"
"Working a case," you say, "I'm looking for a…"
"Rat, yes, of course. I don't suppose I can persuade you to be serious?"
"...spiritual advisor," you finish, and it's almost worth almost getting eaten by an evil ghost to see the look of shock across his face, although this is immediately replaced by the look of someone who is just so immensely pleased you've finally shown an interest.
Oh no.
You really might not have thought this through.
Manipulation + Presence = 1 success. We're going to hear a thing or two about rats.
"...and it's exceptional to me that people assume they have a monopoly on compassion, rats will care for their sick and injured just the same as we will, better sometimes in fact," he's telling you a solid hour later as the two of you feed vegetables to a pew full of rats and the sheer wastefulness of it makes your teeth hurt.
"Niall!"
"Of course they aren't much for organization, I tried to set up a proper infirmary on the third level but they insisted on-"
"Niall!"
"Oh, yes! You had a question, didn't you?"
You explain to him that you're looking for information on hungry ghosts - leaving out all the dangerous details. No sense in bringing more trouble to his doorstep.
He ponders on it for a long minute. Well, "ponders" isn't quite the right word. He's silent for a long minute while affectionately patting his fur babies.
"You've come to the right place, you know!" he starts at last, his enthusiasm undimmed, "the beast soul, it's all about wants and feelings. People envy the tombs and the funeral services, feel like it's unfair that they don't get something like that. It's not logical at all but the beast soul isn't the least bit logical, you know! It seems sordid, but my job is to dampen people's expectations. If you happen to be eaten by rats, well, that's just the circle of life! But if you feel done wrong by when that happens, the beast soul might rise up and seek vengeance. And since you can't really seek vengeance on rats in any meaningful way, you'll either target people you knew and didn't like or just blindly attack things. Neither is good!"
"So you have to be… angry about something?"
"More than that! Either you have to feel that your body was desecrated or you have to feel that sort of boiling sense of injustice that soaks down to your bones. You know what I mean?"
Your breath catches in your throat. You very much know what he means. You felt it on the day you lost Cricket. You don't have a good word for it but the closest was something you read in a book once.
Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.
He looks keenly at you for a second then continues as though he hadn't noticed. "But if you're expecting to be eaten by rats after you go, you won't rise up and seek vengeance! The others are that way too - jackals are just going to eat people's bodies if they get thrown out in the desert and that's all there is to it. Our duty is to convince people that it's a holy act and not a desecration."
You stop. You really want to press on but it's bothering you... "Wait, what about the vulture temple? Vultures are going to eat bodies too."
He pushes his spectacles up on his nose and gives a little shrug as a rat snatches a cut tuber out of his hands and starts to chew into it, "Well, you know, that's just politics."
You frown and he pats you on the head. "Now, unless you've changed a great deal you don't need to worry about hungry ghosts. I can't see you doing anything that would provoke one."
Dammit you're getting further away from answers, not closer. "And how long does it take one to rise?"
"At least three days and three nights for the souls to disassociate from each other. Was that what you were worried about? Before that the beast soul is too tied to the reason soul to get up to anything by itself. Always."
That unpleasant wrenching in your gut is the familiar feeling of being right when you'd rather you weren't. "Always? What if it happens sooner?"
"It can't," he shakes his head, "believe me, if it could I'd have a much more dangerous job. Even so I get them sometimes. You can ward or entrap them behind a line of salt. They can't stand sunlight and can only move at night. Like to hide inside things during the day, usually their own body but if it's gone that's not always the end of them. If the body is entirely surrounded by sunlight they can't escape and might dissolve but it's almost always by laying the body to proper rest or finding justice for them that they find peace. Don't underestimate the beast soul - my good friends here," he nods down at the large black rat currently eating seeds out of his hand, "are incapable of reason, hence the failure of the infirmary, but they're very intelligent."
Intelligence + Occult = 3 successes. Got a notion!
Oh. Oh, shit. "Wait, you say it dissociates from the higher soul, and that's what makes the time limit?"
"That's right, it's much like-"
"So if something bad happened to the higher soul it could happen right away? Say it got lost or stolen-"
He stops dead and you can swear you see him shiver. He looks down his spectacles at you, and in place of his kindly and eccentric twinkle his expression is very dark, and very, very concerned.
"That, my dear, would take real power. Someone who can turn and twist the souls of men is beyond the ken of you and I, I'm afraid." His voice is stone-heavy as he turns back to his rats. "For your own sake, keep it that way."
Well. That's a thing.
You had to fight a hungry ghost today and yet it's somehow still less annoying than your own front door. The caldera of Gem protects it from the worst of the storm's wind but a portion of the wind has slipped down and got trapped, fated to chase its own tail around the city until it finally runs out of breath. Right now though it's having great fun trying to wrench your own front door out of your grip as you do your best to open it just enough to slip inside. If it catches and throws it open all the way you're not sure you can even get it closed tonight and might seriously consider undoing the hinges and letting the wind have its prize.
No. Not today nature, you uncooperative bastard. You squeeze in through the gap and quickly pull it behind, snapping the latch down before it gets any ideas about abandoning you for its new windy love. Safe at home at last a tense exhaustion stored up in your body finally lets itself uncoil. You sink your head against the smooth wood and take some slow breaths.
You lie to yourself and blame this wave of fatigue on all the wading through water you've had to do today. Gem has no place for an investigator with jangly nerves, so you can't be that lady right now.
Warm food and a drink will make everything better. Opening the grate on your hearth you're relieved to see there's still a warm glow among the coal. It'd been so good to get a fireplace you'd played around with it for a whole week and learned that if you layered the leftover ash on top it'd hold a flame much better. It saved relighting it every day, just one of those life changing discoveries that you couldn't charge anyone money for. Probably half of Gem already knows about it and has never bothered to tell each other, though how they can keep such exciting discoveries to themselves completely eludes you.
As the tin kettle and buckwheat balls warm up you hang up your coat and empty out the pockets. The golden lion headed key glimmers bright in the flames of the fire, it's pretty to look at but turning it in your hand reveals it is sadly free of conveniently helpful engravings that explain its purpose. You drop it back into the pocket for later, already getting annoyed at how the flared cross end of it catches on the top of the pocket every single time.
Int(4) + Linguistics(3) = 3 successes. A solid start
The code book holds a lot more promise, page upon page thick with small swirling loops joined with immaculately penned strokes. You start with the obvious, that each symbol is just an easy swap for a letter but it quickly becomes obvious that this isn't the case. There's a lot more potential letters than you're used to and the words would be all the wrong size. Some spiral across almost the whole length of the page while others are a quick simple stroke. There is a pattern, you see enough repeats and grouping of symbols it's clear there is a language at play here, but it doesn't follow any of the normal rules of writing.
Int(4) + Linguistics(3) = 2 successes. Struggling
A few hours later the tea is cold. A refilled kettle and a second batch of buckwheat balls are on the cook, a few dates sliced up and mashed into them to give a bit of flavour. Your notes are spread all across the table, as haphazard as the book itself and yet very little has been accomplished. You've ruled out a lot of things it can't be by simple deduction but frustratingly nothing it can be. This is a code he wrote often, so a particularly complicated cipher would be too time consuming. He carried it on him so he must have read it and the pen that came with it suggested he added to it too. This thankfully rules out any system where you put something into a code and then recode it again, a system that you don't quite understand but sounds well beyond your abilities to break.
The kettle has finally warmed up in the background and rattles as the steam billows out, but you let it hiss away to itself.
You aren't going to let words defeat you so easily: you'd gotten into reading the hard way. Fascinated by all the secrets held up in books you couldn't understand your carrypack had always been home to a few dogeared paper novels when you were younger. If someone spotted them and tried to bully you for trying to be fancy, you always had the fallback excuse that it made a good firelighter. Which was true, but the real truth was you spent a lot of time up on roofs trying to sound the words on the page out. Making noises that you thought matched the letters and trying to keep it consistent in a long, rambling stretch of grunts and moans that if anyone had seen you do would probably have gotten you locked up and checked for evil spirits. The words on the page didn't work like you thought, but you'd gotten close eventually, able to mumble strangely through the book and slowly unpick the strange other rules that governed your sounds and let them be nailed down onto a page properly. Possibly the first mystery you'd ever solved and easily the most satisfying.
The hiss of the kettle isn't going to stop and with a sigh you go to shut the thing up. What has no mouth but still sings? That was always a shitty riddle, Kettles didn't sing they hissed.
Perception(3) + Linguistics(3) + Night Time Bonuses (3) = 4 successes. Enough to just get us over the line!
No wonder so few people learn to read on their own if they don't even listen to sounds properly…. Oh. Oh surely it can't be that easy?
A frantically made cup of tea later and you're willing to forgive the kettle for all past and future hissing crimes. The code isn't letters and words at all, it's sounds! Well of course letters are meant to just be sounds in theory, but they don't really follow that rule or reading would have been so much easier to pick up. Cheshago's code is the reading you'd tried to do, each flick a clipped noise and each loop a rolling note. On their own confusing and meaningless but taken as a whole you can pack a whole sentence into a single flowing line.
Int(4) + Linguistics(3) + Night Time Bonuses (3) = 4 successes. But going to use a little kick of willpower to get us up to 5.That'll do it!
It's still a bitch to crack and as words begin to form out of the mess you run into another problem: you've a suspicion Cheshago had an accent and without knowing what it was you can't really tell how he talked. This would make the code a little unique to each person and maddening to people trying to decipher it by conventional methods, not to mention if he'd used another language than Firetongue you'd have had no chance of unpicking it. A code that works on any language, but gives the appearance of being unique and inscrutable. Clever.
Night has set long ago but you're too into this to stop and have moved the desk over to the hearth so you can strain your eyes doing the last of your notes by the warm glow of the coals. It is a notebook, so even what you can understand still has the problem that you're missing context Chesago would have but what you can pick out is tantalising.
Wave Crashes Against the Rocks is the Guild's leader in Gem and the one who you have a Guild contract with right now. Your conversation with them had been brief, but it's easy to pick their long name out of the text once you know what to look for, Cheshago certainly mentions them often enough. She'd been apparently bothering him for reports he'd been putting off and from the tone of it for not entirely good reasons. He sounded frustrated he even has to answer to her as most his comments come just after she asks him to do something, you don't want to disrespect the dead but they're some pretty whiny complaints.
Diamond in Your Knapsack is another name that features a lot and you've a vague idea they're also in the Guild somewhere. Cheshago has some kind of promise or deal with them, but frustratingly he never goes into the details. He's stalling with them as much as he is Wave Crashes Against the Rocks, but clearly feels more confident as his tone here is more teasing. Like he's dangling a juicy plum right in front of Diamond's face and enjoying their futile attempts to snap at it.
There's no mention of the key anywhere you can find, but there is plenty of talk of The Vault. The Vault is the subject of a lot of ideas of Cheshago's and all seem to fall through shortly after. He's tried bargaining with the Vault, bribing it, briefly considered forcing his way in and all have failed. His last plan was trying to visit the Midnight Tales and see if they could help him steal the Words that Would Open the Way. It's so nice to be reading a language that allows for such a large amount of emphasis on words or you'd think that's just a metaphor rather than an actual thing.
The very last line he wrote before his death was "Ten Feathers may know more than they let on, I should be wary". That person again? Why would she be investigating him before his death and after?
Int(4) + Bureaucracy(3) = 5 successes. No night time bonus as this wasn't the focus but absolutely smashed it anyway.
The rest of the notebook is filled with the more mundane business he dealt with, but that doesn't mean you can't take an interest. The Guild are clearly far more hungry for Gem's firedust trade than it is the mineral wealth, but they're going about it by buying up as much critical infrastructure and goods as they can and then sitting on it. The dancing around the Despot's auditors' suspicions makes for a complicated to follow dance, but you get a good idea of the various shell games Cheshago was involved with that let the Guild trade in areas they shouldn't have a hand in and claim stakes in things that were very much not theirs to barter with. A dangerous game to be playing, anyone caught out doing this would be finding themselves staked out in the sun in short order with as many generations of their family as the Despot could find, though right now he'd have to settle for drowning them.
Maybe the rest is more relevant to your immediate investigation, but learning that last bit is easily the most dangerous thing you've done today. A day of ever increasing peril, hopefully this isn't going to become a habit.
A day over!
We begin again in the morning, though there isn't going to be much sleep for poor Sharell. This round will take us up to the mid-day if all goes well.
It's another pick Two Topics with the ability to pick as many options for each topic as you like unless it says otherwise, same as last time!
[ ] - The GUILD-
-[ ] - Renegotiate your Contract with Wave Crashes Against the Rocks. She did not tell you about killer ghosts.
-[ ] - Find out who Diamond in your Knapsack is and their role in the guild. Why was Cheshago messing about with them?
-[ ] - Get details on Cheshago's reasons for being at the Midnight Tales.
-[ ] - Press Wave Crashes Against the Rocks for details on what's really going on. Clearly they know more than they're saying, you don't have to tell her you got proof she was keeping an eye on it, but you do know for sure she was.
-[ ] - Blackmail them. You have dirt on them now, maybe you can force them to cooperate with you fully.
-[ ] - Turn in the Code Book. Hope they don't realise you've worked it out.
-[ ] - Turn in the Gold Lion Key
[ ] - MIDNIGHT TALES-
-[ ] - Go back and check if the ghost is dead and Raicho is okay.
-[ ] - Go back and yell at the guy who locked you in. A lot. Then get him to talk.
-[ ] - Investigate them legally. Ask contacts around the city about them. Gather rumour.
-[ ] - Investigate them illegally. Break into offices, find out info.
-[ ] - Press them to tell you about The Vault. You've no leverage, but you can bluff.
-[ ] - Get them to tell you about the Words that Would Open the Way. You've no leverage, but you can bluff.
-[ ] - Turn in the Guild Code Book. Maybe they'll give you something for it?
-[ ] - Turn in the Gold Lion Key.
GOLD LION KEY-
PICK ONE
[ ] - You got an old associate working in the grand libraries of House Iblan who will happily do a little research on the Key in exchange for smuggling them in some cheroots. They're not allowed to smoke. It's a tragic existence.
[ ] - Go get it appraised by trustworthy but disreputable sorts. They'll know what it's worth and what its made of at the very least.
[ ] - You found a missing cat for an Antiquitary from overseas about a month back, maybe they're still here? If anyone knows about strange things it's them.
GOLD FLAKES-
PICK ONE
[ ] - Gold and silver is House Iblan's trade. But you have evidence in Cheshago's notes that the Guild is trading it under the table now. Get their help in finding out more.
[ ] - You got Cheshago's notes, spend a little extra time working out who he got the gold item from then go pay them a visit directly.
[ ] LOST SOUL AT THE SUN MARKET (The Sun Market is where the majority of Gem's illegal activity happens, completely in the open. It's also a good place to find most of your useful contacts.)
-[ ] - A lost soul sounds like it would be awfully conspicuous, or at least the sort of thing someone would know about. Discreetly ask around the Sun Market about it.
-[ ] - Soul Stealers and Dream Weavers. That's what they call the people who live far down south. Only the worst of the worst would actually admit to trading with them, but then what is the Sun Market for if you can't admit there that you do deal in things you shouldn't and it's all on sale for the right price.
-[ ] - Getting completely torched might not have killed a Hungry Ghost? You should get yourself better armed.
-[ ] - Stabbing a body relentlessly, painting the scene in blood. Killers like that are going to be infamous, asking around you contacts might give you a good list of who it might be and just how much trouble you're in.
THE DESPOT-
[ ] - You got proof the Guild is surely going beyond what he'd find acceptable. Present your findings and let him bring fire and blood.
TEN FEATHERS-
PICK ONE
[ ] - The Midnight Tales merchant mentioned her briefly. Who is she and why is she also investigating this? Time to go ask around.
[ ] - Cut the bullshit. They were the last thing mentioned in Cheshago's notes. Let's just go find them and ask them directly what they're playing at.
Well, that's escalated quickly. I get the feeling that we're rapidly getting out of our depth here, and it's only going to get deeper from here. Let's just hope we can keep treading water. For right now, I urge caution and care; mostly because I want to see how long we can run with this before our inevitable (and likely spectacular) demise.
[X] GOLD FLAKES-
[X] - You got Cheshago's notes, spend a little extra time working out who he got the gold item from then go pay them a visit directly.
If we're going to do this, we're going to do it right and we're going to do it prepared. We've got the book, so why not use it?
[X] LOST SOUL AT THE SUN MARKET [X] - A lost soul sounds like it would be awfully conspicuous, or at least the sort of thing someone would know about. Discreetly ask around the Sun Market about it.
[X] - Stabbing a body relentlessly, painting the scene in blood. Killers like that are going to be infamous, asking around your contacts might give you a good list of who it might be and just how much trouble you're in.
We don't really have the resources to pay for more impressive armaments, so let's get something we can actually use; information.
[X] - You got Cheshago's notes, spend a little extra time working out who he got the gold item from then go pay them a visit directly.
[X] - The Midnight Tales merchant mentioned her briefly. Who is she and why is she also investigating this? Time to go ask around.
Follow up on the notes! But also directly going to find Ten Feathers sounds actively suicidal, and we're only passively suicidal. Also paying a Willpower for a success hurt my soul. Ah for the decadence that is an Excellency.
[X] - The GUILD-
-[X] - Renegotiate your Contract with Wave Crashes Against the Rocks. She did not tell you about killer ghosts.
-[X] - Find out who Diamond in your Knapsack is and their role in the guild. Why was Cheshago messing about with them?
-[X] - Get details on Cheshago's reasons for being at the Midnight Tales.
-[X] - Press Wave Crashes Against the Rocks for details on what's really going on. Clearly they know more than they're saying, you don't have to tell her you got proof she was keeping an eye on it, but you do know for sure she was.
[X] - MIDNIGHT TALES-
-[X] - Go back and check if the ghost is dead and Raicho is okay.
-[X] - Go back and yell at the guy who locked you in. A lot. Then get him to talk.
-[X] - Investigate them legally. Ask contacts around the city about them. Gather rumour.
-[X] - Investigate them illegally. Break into offices, find out info.
Well this is going to be very interesting. We've apparently walked into Guild business that's trying to evade Despot sanctions, on top of the crazy magic that rips out your soul and the (talking?) vault.
Ah! A thing people miss in 3E is Resource has changed. It used to be you needed 2 Resource dots to just live normally, in 3E this changed to being the default and any Resource dots are now money in excess of what you need to live. Being poor is more of an optional problem for yourself you can probably get willpower off.
Sharell only has one resource dot, but this does mean she does actually have a little spending money beyond paying rent.
It's rough! Since awarding ourselves stunts would feel a little weird we've given her a bit of leeway with the Willpower instead so she only needs to spend it when she really need it. Not sure I'll let it save her from a Botch.
How stunts work in quests has been bugging me a little. Still new to quests, is there a generally accepted way to handle them? I guess with two writers we could possibly rate each other but that still feels a bit odd.
Honestly I think it should be a finite resource that should largely be restored by sleeping, unless we go and do something exceptionally cool or something important that's in line with our Defining intimacy.
