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Curdled Milk and Sour Apples (A Witch Quest)

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[X][Growth] Gathers one of every plant on the mountain

[X][Growth] Makes her father teach her to carve stones

[X][Growth] Learns to read and write
 
[X][Growth] Makes her father teach her to carve stones
[X][Growth] Learns to read and write
[X][Growth] Makes a rock garden
 
[X][Growth] Learns to read and write
[X][Growth] Tries to talk to the village kids
[X][Growth] Learns about things outside the village
 
[X][Growth] Makes a rock garden
[X][Growth] Learns about things outside the village
[X][Growth] Gathers one of every plant on the mountain
 
[X][Growth] Makes her father teach her to carve stones
[X][Growth] Learns to read and write
[X][Growth] Talks to other spirits
 
Oh, oh, a witch quest! I love classic witches. I can't wait to curse the ignorant and test the virtuous.

[X][Growth] Makes her father teach her to carve stones

[X][Growth] Learns to read and write

[X][Growth] Gathers one of every plant on the mountain
 
The first two actions are pretty much locked in with read and write and rock carving. Talk to spirits has 10 votes.

With the others:
Makes a rock garden
Tries to talk to the village kids
Gathers one of every plant on the mountain

All having 5 votes each. Putting this out there if anyone wants to make any last minute changes..
 
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[X][Growth] Makes her father teach her to carve stones
[X][Growth] Learns to read and write
[X][Growth] Makes a rock garden
 
[X][Growth] Makes her father teach her to carve stones
[X][Growth] Talks to other spirits
[X][Growth] Learns to read and write
 
[X][Growth] Makes her father teach her to carve stones
[X][Growth] Learns to read and write
[X][Growth] Tries to talk to other spirits

I'd rather not have our witch end up socially awkward or something along the line.

Edited: Maybe some of the spirits are nice people? Hopefully.
 
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Growth
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    • [X][Growth] Makes her father teach her to carve stones
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    Aurelia's relationship with her parents is strained at best. From their perspective, the mountain took their daughter away. After learning the extent of the spirit's strength, they gave up on the idea of getting her back. Aurelia still sleeps at the cabin and eats at the table, but that's the extent of the relationship on most days.

    So it's something of a surprise when one day she asks to be taught by her father. He sees it as some whim of the mountain, which isn't incorrect. He contends himself that at least it doesn't object to his carving.

    The work is grueling. Aurelia's hands are hardened and calloused, but the callouses break from the effort. Even so, she keeps going until she produces a block of stone suitable to be part of a stove or a stone house. Here her father moves on to the next one, but she keeps going. She carves and carves the same piece of stone for days, occasionally dripping blood from bandaged hands. At the end she's left with a crude facsimile of a mountain goat.

    Even children know that if a witch has a likeness of someone, she can work her magic through that likeness. A likeness fashioned by Aurelia from beginning to end, out of stone...this will be useful someday.

    [X][Growth] Learns to read and write
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    There are three writing systems used in the Kingdom of Ram's Head. The Long Form script, taught at the academies in the big cities. The Simplified script, also known as Merchant Script. And the Old Imperial writing, which doesn't use letters and instead has a unique symbol for each word.

    To learn the Merchant Script you go to a merchant. The village doesn't have a market, but at regular intervals a wagon comes by and the two men driving it will sell small bags of salt and finer cloth and pottery than the villagers can produce for themselves. Aurelia latches on to the smarter-looking man and demands to be taught, over and over again. He finally agrees just to get rid of her, and begins scrawling in the dirt with his staff. Over three visits he teaches the script to Aurelia. Most words are spelled like they sound, so from then on she can understand perhaps eighty or ninety percent of what actually gets written down.

    The Long Form script is more difficult. The merchants don't know it, of course. They might be able to get a book so Aurelia can try to figure it out, maybe on a trip to the coast to get more salt. But that would cost money, and Aurelia has no means of paying. She tries desperately to figure out some social gambit or some promise she can make that would be as good as money in the hand. But she can't. Maybe a girl who grew up in the village could, but years with only rocks to talk to haven't prepared Aurelia for manipulation of this level.

    The Old Imperial script is even further beyond Aurelia's reach. This is doubly frustrating because Aurelia can't help but imagine stumbling on some ancient grimoire and being unable to read it.

    Aurelia will continue her quests for literacy if the opportunity ever arises.

    [X][Growth] Talks to other spirits
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    There are three kinds of spirits in the world.

    First are 'natural' spirits. The one Aurelia carries inside her is one of those. So are the trolls that crawl the mountain's sides and the kobolds that chitter within its caves. So are the longshanks that stalk the forests and the flower sprites playing under their feet. So are the little men who hide behind the stove and come out to clean in exchange for food and make trouble otherwise. So are the guardians of the crossroads and the dagger-mouthed maidens who drown unwary young men. Such spirits are people, with their own needs, wants, and agendas.

    Second are the spirits of the dead. Death is not an all-or-nothing proposition, and many of the departed - especially the strong-willed or well-remembered ones - spend part of their time in the afterlife and part on earth. The ancestral spirits the village worships are such. They retain the same allegiances and attitudes they held in life, unable to truly grow or change. Though it's much more rare, some animals can also come back. When they do, they're more impressive than they were in life and serve as leaders for their living kin.

    Last are artificial spirits. These are created by exceptionally powerful magic users, usually as guards or workers. They aren't people so much as sentences of Language strung together, telling a part of the world what to be and how to act. Supposedly they were more common in the Empire, but of course witches and warlocks are more secretive these days, so they could just be better hidden.

    Understanding the spirits is mandatory for a witch, so Aurelia goes to talk with them.

    First of all, Aurelia speaks to the trolls. A potentially deadly endeavor for anyone else, but they can sense the spirit inside Aurelia and don't dare offend it. Aurelia speaks to the largest and the oldest, Crag Jumper Moss Beard at length, forcing her throat to make the gravely sounds of the language of stones. The old troll is impressed with her intelligence and thinks it would be too sad if she was killed before coming into her own. He promises that when the time comes - he doesn't say what time, it's already obvious - he will lend Aurelia one of his idiot grandsons, Flat Butt Dumb Head, to guard her for a time.

    Second, Aurelia tries to speak to the ancestral spirits in the graveyard. But they shun her. They know what she's becoming and want nothing to do with her. Even her own great-grandmother refuses to speak to her.

    It seems that dead or alive the villagers won't speak to a witch - even half a witch - unless they have no other choice.

    Lastly, Aurelia follows a mountain stream to a small river running through the woods. She is ill at ease here, where the ground is soft and the only rocks are pebbles hiding in the grass. Her second spirit can't do much to help her here, but she can't stay confined to the mountain forever. She has brought her entire rock collection, so she's at least well equipped to crack someone's head open.

    She speaks with a river maid. She refuses to be lured into the river, but she does offer her a piece of fluorspar in exchange for some pebbles from the river bottom. The maid is amused by Aurelia and begins gossiping with her. She tells Aurelia many outrageous stories, perhaps hoping to make the girl's stone crack. Over many visits she describes most of the spirits in local waters, greatly advancing Aurelia's knowledge.

    Aurelia has met spirits, but as on her thirteenth birthday she meets her first demon.

    Spirits are not necessarily safe or friendly. Some of them will kill and eat unwary humans. Others will attack a human because they wandered into the spirit's territory and failed to perform some specific ritual or because a long-dead warlock bound them to guard a house that has long since crumbled to dust. But most of them have their own lives to live. Demons are different.

    A demon is a spirit that's become so polluted with human regret and ill will that it turns into a kind of living curse. Whether the spirit starts out as a troll, a ghost, or an automaton, the end result is a dreadful creature that wants only to harm humans.

    Some witches and scholars make a practice of categorizing the different kinds of demons, but most people call them by their function. The one Aurelia meets is called...

    [ ] Horse Hobbler

    [ ] Pox Brewer

    [ ] Gold Swallower

    [ ] Trail Twister

    [ ] Doom Whisperer
     
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    • mmm, I think next turn we'll see what the options are, but yeah we'll want to look back into socialising some more.

    That said we seem to have made progress on various witchy options. The carvings is interesting and depending on how likenesses work this could be very useful (obviously we'll need to know more about how magic works first though.)

    An obvious idea is creating a likeness of the spirit within us for them to control, so we're not constantly sharing space. I have more ideas too, my fear is that that likenesses could be stolen or used against us.

    The spirit information is good to see. Tis a shame the dead don't like us, but that could just be the locals. We seem to get along well with elementals and its neat that we seem to not have any particular hostility to ones of different elements like water.

    We've also gotten more info on what the spirit living in with us is.

    1. Its very powerful, enough that in its prefered habitat of the mountain, even the strongest of the spirits there seems to respect it.
    2. However it doesn't seem to be especially controlling. Certainly it doesn't seem to have raised complaint to Aurelia leaving the mountain and going somewhere it is uncomfortable with.
    3. It is a natural spirit and thus it is a person.

    This leads to two questions. How can a spirit end up in a human? And depending on the answer to that question what does it want?

    In theory enough guessing from mythology and folk lore could lead us to what the spirit is, but in practice I don't think that's especially useful for now.

    The language stuff is also very interesting and valuable. Given how the third classification of spirit is supposed to be akin to sentences and how they were meant to be most common in the old empire I imagine said empire's language is a key ingredient in making them. At the very least we're fairly competent in the first language.

    Now daemons are also interesting and make me wonder how they come to be. While we are told, is it ambient dislike for a specific spirit, or does it have to be something targetted? Who knows. Either way, while it says they exist to bring harm to humans and given the tech level they're all pretty bad I think some are worse than others.

    SeptimusMagisto said:
    [ ] Pox Brewer
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    This one is likely the worst. Disease is incredibly dangerous and if this one's thing is making diseases then if they're not the most powerful they're certainly the most likely to wipe a settlement out. Depending on how its poxes work specifically it could wipe out multiple ones from survivors fleeing and build up into a black death plague. So I imagine these sorts of daemons also don't tend to live very long.

    SeptimusMagisto said:
    [ ] Doom Whisperer
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    From just the name I'm putting this one only a little bit lower in danger. If it accurately describes what they do, this one likely hits isolated settlements like Aurelia's hard. These places are built around social cohesion, so if their thing is effectively whispering around to break down that cohesion things can get bad fast. People accused of being witches IRL were often hit because of things like that, so my guess is this one poses the most direct threat to Aurelia. I'd also say it is probably the most intelligent or at least understanding of the human mind out of the creatures present.

    SeptimusMagisto said:
    [ ] Horse Hobbler
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    SeptimusMagisto said:
    [ ] Gold Swallower
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    I put these two in roughly the same category, dangerous, but not too bad in and of themselves. They're both attack something valuable, one maiming the other stealing. Depending on how they go about this suffering likely comes from the fall out of lacking that thing (say consuming a merchant's gold or hobbling their horses) or the results of tricking people (say framing another merchant so the first thinks they hurt their horses and stole their gold.).

    SeptimusMagisto said:
    [ ] Trail Twister
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    Not to downplay the danger of a creature that can presumably send people to their deaths pretty easily, when roads are likely very bad in quality and potentially angry spirits can be found with relative ease, but it does strike me as the least dangerous to the most people. It is however the most directly lethal in all probability with its likely prey being individual people.

    @SeptimusMagisto A few questions.
    1. What's the difference between a witch and a warlock? None save gender, or is it like the idea of high and low magics? She references them enough times to give the impression she knows.
    2. Similarly what does she know about the old empire? It feels like a Rome stand in, but I can't be certain.
    3. We're meeting a demon does that mean whether or not we survive depends on the demon we pick?

    Edit
    If we are meeting a demon I'd ironically pick Pox Brewer. Aurelia might be many things, but she is of stone and stone doesn't get diseases. The problem is a demon following us home, in which case Poxbringer is likely to kill the most people.

    Whatever happens we cannot pick Doomwhisperer, it is the worst of both possible worlds. Something Aurelia completely lacks the skill set to handle.
     
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    [X] Trail Twister

    A deemon that can twist trails? Either making people get lost or warping the land so that trails to wherever Aurelia sets up just aren't there anymore, leaving the way impassable? Count me in.
     
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